Reading Response: The Good Immigrant Student

I enjoyed reading this story. Sometimes it can be hard to empathize with someone of another ethnicity or race, considering I’ve never dealt with discrimination personally. The author really helped me get into her shoes and see what it was like being the odd ball out. To be honest it was uncomfortable. Hearing it from a Vietnamese view point was a breathe of fresh air. I was unaware of the influx of Vietnamese families during the time of her story. This story and others like it help me to appreciate the time and place where I have grown up; dilemmas like the author’s are far less of an issue, if at all. She made a great point at the end about the shy children, how she can see that it is more than just quiet they want to disappear.

The author’s voice had a confidence about it that was lacking in the self she was describing as a child. However, you could see the child who wanted to disappear with passages like: “I would like to make a broad, accurate statement about immigrant children in schools. I would like to speak for them (us). I hesitate; I cannot.”