Rhetorical Analysis Memo - Essay Example

Erick Liu: s of A Native Speaker A Rhetorical Analysis Essay Novelist, Eric Liu, in his magazine post, s of A Native Speaker “attempts to justify his identity as a white (Liu 1). He refers to his experiences growing up as an Asian American male in America. The American culture entailed discrimination of Asian American immigrants. Liu’s ideologies illustrate that when immigrating to America, an individual undergoes assimilation. Assimilation involves one achieving ‘’whiteness’’ to comfortably and completely fit the society (Liu 1).

Liu begins his text by a series of comparison between the Americans and himself as an Asian. He attempts to prove that he is similar to whites by doing everything that the Americans do. He speaks perfect, unaccented English to show that he is no less than Americans discriminative against race and other immigrants.Liu appeals to the sympathetic emotions of the audience by admitting that he had never been a victim of discrimination (Liu 1). Liu proceeds to tell about the betrayal he earned from his hair.

The hair betrayal instance shows how petty his discriminators were. Liu’s curse arose from his hair that failed to feather back. The hair remained straight, rigid, and wiry and continued to grow in the wrong way as he adds on. The nature of this discrimination was cruel as the discriminators blamed Liu’s natural being. It pushed him towards blaming his Chinese genes, a factor that he could neither moderate nor change. Liu lived a disgusting and complicated life trying every day to live other people’s lives.

Liu’s text reveals seclusion that dominated relations between Whites and Asians in America. He views the blending and assimilation as cruel and fair giving justifying evidences. The reader can tell how Liu’s life at school was more complicated since the American tutors extended discrimination to school.Work CitedLiu, Eric. “Notes of a Native Speaker”. The Washington Post. May 17, 1998. Web. September 17, 2014. Accessed from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/middleground/liu.htm