1. “The Struggle to be an All- American Girl” by: Elizabeth Wong Period II

2. Despite the new coat of paint and the high wire fence, the school I knew 10 years ago remains remarkably, stoically the same. --- Although covered with a new coat of paint and enclosed with a high wire fence, the school I knew 10 years ago continues to be the same, showing remarkable defiance of the changing of time. P 1

3. No amount of kicking, screaming, or pleading could dissuade my mother, who was solidly determined to have us learn the language of our heritage. P 2

4. --- No matter how desperately my brother and I resisted going to the Chinese school, kicking, yelling, or repeatedly begging, we could not make our mother change her mind, because she was determined to get us to learn Chinese, our mother tongue, which had been passed down from generation to generation.

5. Forcibly, she walked us the seven long, hilly blocks from our home to school, depositing our defiant tearful faces before the stern principal.--- Tran 1

6. From our home to school there are seven long groups of buildings bounded by streets on all sides and erected on hilly slopes. She forced us to walk past these blocks, leaving both of us in front of the grim and serious headmaster, our faces showing rebellious reluctance and wet with tears.

7. I recognized him as a repressed maniacal child killer, and knew that if we ever saw his hands we'd be in big trouble. --- In my opinion, the principal was a man who suffered from suppression of emotions and who was so stern and severe that he would be liable to beat up a child. And I knew if we ever saw his twitching hands, we would be in for severe physical punishment, extreme pain, anxiety and worry, etc.

8. Trans 2 Being ten years old, I had better things to learn than ideographs copied painstakingly in lines that ran right to left from the tip of a moc but, a real ink pen that had to be held in an awkward way if blotches were to be avoided.

9. ---As a ten-year-old girl, I had more interesting things to learn than ideograms which were to be written by hand after models, one stroke after another, in lines that ran right to left, from the tip of an ink pen which I had to clasp in a clumsy way if large ink marks, instead of Chinese characters, were not to be made.

10. P 3 The language was a source of embarrassment. --- The language caused me to feel self-conscious or ashamed of my racial origin.

11. More times than not, I had tried to disassociate myself from the nagging loud voice that followed me wherever I wandered in the nearby American supermarket outside Chinatown.

12. Quite often I had made efforts to escape from the annoyingly loud voice that accompanied me wherever I roamed in the nearby American supermarket outside Chinatown.

13. P4 It was not like the quiet, lilting romance of French or the gentle refinement of the American South. Chinese sounded pedestrian. Public.

14. Her Chinese was quite different from the elegant and romantic French or the graceful, cultured sounds of the American South. Chinese sounded very dull, incapable of arousing imagination or inspiration. It sounded average and commonplace, without any distinctive or noble characteristics.

15. P 5 "My, doesn't she move her lips fast, " they would say, meaning that I'd be able to keep up with the world outside Chinatown.

16. ---"My goodness, doesn't she speak English fast?" they would say, meaning that I would be able to keep pace with the world outside Chinatown. // "My God, how fast she speaks English!" the people in my culture would say, indicating that I would be able to move or progress at the same rate as the world, and that I would be able to stay well informed and live an active social life outside Chinatown.

17. Trans 3 He was especially hard on my mother, criticizing her, often cruelly, for her pidgin speech -- smatterings of Chinese scattered like chop suey in her conversation.

18. --- He treated my mother with severity, criticizing her, often mercilessly, for her speech containing elements of both Chinese and English -- words and expressions of Chinese dispersed like chop suey in her conversation.

19. P 6 What infuriated my mother most was when my brother cornered her on her consonants, especially "r".

20. ---What made my mother extremely angry was when my brother put her into a difficult or awkward situation by asking her to practice her consonants correctly, in particular the consonant "r". My mother was extremely enraged when my brother put her into an embarrassing situation by finding fault with her consonants and demanding that she pronounce them again and again, in particular the consonant "r".