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Summary Of Eat Turkey, Become American By Marie Myung-Ok Lee

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ENG 122: 5-2 First Draft of the Critical Analysis Essay
In the article “Eat Turkey, Become American,” Marie Myung-Ok Lee uses her family memories of Thanksgiving to share with her readers, with personal details and historical data, her family's migratory trajectory to the United States, and their experience living in a small town in Minnesota. The author also discusses the country's immigration system and how their Korean background affected her parents' process of obtaining citizenship. And how, despite a part of the city's population being racist and xenophobic, a group of people from the community where they lived joined forces to save a doctor from being deported. The article's main claim to illustrate the difficulties of immigration in a family is persuasive because it explores how children perceive a foreign culture, highlights the problems with the immigration system and xenophobia in the nation, and suggests ways the community can work together to help other immigrants who are experiencing a similar situation.
It can be overwhelming to immigrate to a new nation since everything is unfamiliar—new …show more content…

Families serve as children's principal settings for cultural and racial transmission, serving as their primary crucible for socialization, “What it all comes down to is that the family is the unit of cultural preservation. This is true for all families, but for immigrants, it is particularly bittersweet; to do one thing means something else is excluded” (Lee). Lee says that she felt lost at times for not knowing about her family's history before migrating to the United States, "Because our parents never spoke about Korea, we felt as if we’d landed in the middle of the Iron Range of Minnesota via spaceship" (Lee), and for not practicing the culture of their country of origin, “They (author’s parents) insisted that we were not Koreans or even Korean-Americans, but Americans”

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