1: Summary and Personal Response - Assignment Example

Summary and Personal Response: Facing Poverty with a Rich Girl’s Habits By Suki Kim Facing Poverty with a Rich Girl’s Habits By Suki Kim Suki Kim writes the essay named ‘facing poverty with a rich girl’s habits’ from her self-experience, it is more like an auto-biography which describes the early years of Suki Kim in which she moved to America. Kim highlights the drawbacks she faced when she moved to America, according to her the two most significant of the problems were, first of them being a change in her financial status and second being a change in her cultural and society.

Kim faced both these problems as soon as she entered America and tries to write about what she felt about these major changes in her life. The author very clearly draws an image for how her life was in Korea and how it changed in America, using little minute details of her houses in both places draws the reader in to her experience and helps the reader to create a mental image of how exactly her life changed. She writes about the change in attitudes of people towards her and even towards things in general, like when she writes about how distinctly students behave in Korean schools compared to the American schools.

Mentioning the phrase ‘Fresh off the boat’ and calling herself as the ‘1.5 generation’ clearly shows in the essay that Kim was not only experiencing change in environments but she also difficulty coping to this change due the ‘language barrier’ she faced. Kim also talks about how for the first time she felt discriminated because of being Asian and how her skin tone was one of the things that made up her identity. The genre of this essay is auto-biography in which Kim keeps a very personal tone as she goes on explaining the experiences of her life.

She uses simple word and small details to connect with the reader on an emotional level. Her tone shows how understanding she is to the whole situation, and even though it was hard on her she does not harbor feelings of anger, but some instances show the slight sadness in her words like when she describes her mother, ‘I had watched my glamorous mother, not long ago a society lady who lunched, taking on a job as a fish filleter at a market’. The audience of this essay would be young immigrated children who are around the age of Kim in the essay, as they can connect and relate easily to the experiences of Kim.

She aims to share her experiences as an immigrant, who found it hard to ‘blend in’ mainly due to the difference in her race and language. Reading this essay left me with a very sympathetic feeling towards the author, it definitely spurned up an emotional side in me, as the simple experiences of her life made me compassionate towards the difficulties she faced. Her simple choice of words and touch of emotion in her writing made it easier for me to connect with her and left this urge in me to know more about her life and read more of her work.

ReferencesKim, S. (2008). Facing Poverty with a Rich Girl’s Habits. D, Roen, The Brief McGraw-Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life (pp 18 part 2) McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages; 1 edition