With the increasing emphasis on cultural exchange in recent literature, the authors have attempted to highlight how difficult it was for people to maintain their ethnic identity in addition to their national identity. Assimilation to dominant American culture seems to be a primary path of survival for Asian Americans, victims of many stereotypes from which it would be natural to escape. This essay will therefore analyze how Asian Americans perceive their assimilation process, that is, whether assimilation can be said to be primary but can be used as a charade by focusing primarily on novel by Kim Wong Keltner, The Dim Sum of All Things. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Keltner's novel addresses the issue of assimilation as a discursive process. Its protagonist Lindsey Owyang is a Chinese-American girl in her twenties, but she relates more to the white dominant space. Its hybrid identity is further underlined by its name. “Lindsey” is more Western and modern while “Owyang” reflects its belonging to Chinese culture. A Chinese American named Lindsey highlights the importance of assimilation into dominant white culture. Already with a first name like “Lindsey”, she does not escape negative stereotypes concerning her Chinese origin. As a child, she didn't really understand why she had been treated unfairly, but she soon realized that it "was all because she was Chinese." She therefore grew up far from her parents, with the exception of Pau Pau, her grandmother. She is more identifiable with the dominant white space than with her belonging to Chinese culture. From the beginning of the novel itself, her free spirit shows that in order to deconstruct the stereotype that Chinese Americans are an “unassimilable entity,” she had to adopt a Western way of life. She goes clubbing, dates white men, and even considers her mother “old fashioned.” Keltner therefore attempted to critique the impact of negative stereotypes on a young adult trying to be part of decorum. Lindsey doesn't speak "Mandarin" or "Cantonese" but speaks English. Whether full assimilation took place remains a matter of debate, as Lindsay grows up to be someone she was never meant to be from her family's perspective. In fact, when visiting her family, her English is called "Chinglish" which indicated that from time to time she used "Chinese words in her sentences". Even if she presents herself as a modern girl with “ignorance of Chinese grammar”, we can say that the traces of her belonging to a Chinese culture are indeed alive in her. The beauty of Chinese culture that she was exposed to touched her heart and showed that being Chinese is not something bad. His visit made him understand that celebrating “Chineseness” is not at all so outdated and old-fashioned. It was a culture like all other cultures. In presenting such a narrative, Keltner shows that the notion of the "perpetual myth of the foreigner" advanced by Claire Jean Kim is in fact what makes Asian Americans feel inferior on American soil. Now that Lindsey has discovered the beauty of her Chinese culture, readers are eager to know if she will abandon her Western lifestyle or continue living as before. The author soon ends the suspense and shows that Lindsey has accepted Michael as he is even though the latter has declared that being Chinese is a part of himself that he has never accepted..”