Thoughts on Issues From Discussion

In the discussion with Chang-Rae Lee, we talked a lot about identity. Identity is a big inner conflict of Henry Park's in Native Speaker. A lot of questions centered around this in our discussion. He talked about growin gup in New York, which made it easier to fit in because of the diversity. In Hawaii, it's also easier to fit in than it is in other places because of the diversity. Living in Hawaii, I've always felt like I fit in ethnically. I never really felt different than everyone else because a lot of people here are Asian or part Asian, so growing up, I never really thought about it. Problems with identity come in other forms too, though. High school is kind of the perfect example of the inner struggle of identity. We have to decide where we fit in, with what group aand our place within that group. It's not something that is as unchangeably permenant as ethnicity, but it's still a situation in which we have to find the category into which we fit in. Something else that we talked about a lot in the discussion was immigration. I agree with the statement that only the Native Americans, if anyone, can call this country theirs. Saying that the Europeans got here first isn't true, they got here second (Yay, Ada Valley metaphor! The Wanyamans got there first, then the Kakungans, then the Hos). And like in Ada Valley, having everyone get along is not going to solve anything, but it's a step. It's not that simple. There's no way that everyone will be happy when it comes to issues like immigration.