Chapter 6

I found this chapter to be extremely interesting. I marked all over the pages with important information that I plan to use in my final paper. One of the issues discussed in this book is the struggle that many of the immigrants face in terms of identity. For these young girls, they struggle between becoming like the "American girls" and staying true to their religion, culture, and beliefs. In their eyes, the American girl is seen as one who is sexually active with other men. It does not always mean sex, but it means that they date a lot of guys, dress racy, and are able to kiss and hold their hands. For them this can be viewed as almost never happening. And yet so many of these young girls are so hooked on the American notion of falling in love that the temptation is almost to good to give in to. For many of the young girls, school is an escape from their strict home life in which they are either forced to work to provide for the family, or live in fear of being part of an arranged marriage. So many of them choose to date anyways and just lie to their parents about it. This causes them to feel shame because they do not like lying to their parents. I find it interesting the whole struggle that those face who are going through arranged marriages: they fear that they will lose everything they have to give in to the life of a man that they do not even know. They see school as a tool to be used to gain power in the relationship. Many wish to continue their education so that they can get a good job, and will not have to rely so much on the man to take care of them. They seek independence so that they can continue to be social and provide for themselves, instead of being locked inside the home caring for the husband and children while cleaning all day. For many of the girls, this life seems pointless to them, therefore they wish to find ways to become financially independent.

In this sense education does seem to be important to the young girls. For those who are the oldest of their siblings, they are often times sought to be the caretaker of the younger ones, working to help provide and cleaning and taking care of them. This is important, because for the oldest ones, school is not so significant. What is significant is taking care of the younger siblings so that they can succeed in school.

All these young girls want is to find love, but for them the American way of love means that they have to explore sexually with their significant other. Although this seems to be a stereotype that is not exactly true, they fear that they will betray their culture and religion, and even more importantly; the parents are worried that their immigrant children will "cross the line". For this reason, many of the girls are deported back to live with their family in their own culture, because the parents want the children to marry in their own race and not to mix. They want this so that their culture, language, and beliefs will be passed down to the next generation. They are so worried about keeping their identity that they do not want their children to experience dating, unless the end outcome is marriage with someone of their kind.