Community Education: Student Empowerment

Assignment 1: History and Autobiography

Essay Assignment (Autobiography & History): According to sociologist C. Wright Mills, we can always discover an intersection between autobiography and history. Each person’s life unfolds within a particular historical period, and an individual can understand their own experience by locating their life within history. Each person’s life is shaped by historic events such as war, immigration, racism, oppression of women, economic recession, civil unrest, etc. As C. Wright Mills states, this discovery "in many ways is a terrible lesson; in many ways a magnificent one." For this Essay Assignment, each student will write a three-to-five page autobiography linking their life to history. Students should provide some background information about themselves (where they were born, where they live, what are the important things in their life, what are their life aspirations, etc.). However, they should focus their essays on three main questions: 1) How does their life intersect with history? (Have certain historical events, such as war, immigration, etc. shaped their lives or influenced their life plans?) 2) Why is the discovery of the intersection of autobiography and history "in many ways a terrible lesson; in many ways a magnificent one"? 3) Once a person has discovered this intersection, what meaning does this discovery have for that person’s life? This assignment is due by Friday, Oct. 5.

Intersecting Life with History

By Minyoung Bae

Looking back to my life experiences, I see how the intersection of my life and history shaped who I am today.  My life began when I was born in Toronto, Canada.  My parents had immigrated to Toronto because it was easier to obtain a visa from Toronto than in Korea.  I grew up in Canada until I was six and immigrated to the United States when I was six and a half years old.  From then, I lived in Torrance all of my life.  The important things in my life are; my religion, my family, friends, education, and having good moral values.  I’ve always been influenced by the church and grew up with bible stories and morals.  I listened to those stories and never thought much about them.  In college, I was a bible study teacher and my interest in working with youth augmented.  I enjoyed talking with them and spending time with them, but didn't think of working with youth as a career.  My career goal at the time was to be a fashion/advertising designer. I high school, that is what everyone thought I was going to be.  But, God had a different plan for me.  I took a design class at an art school and couldn’t do the class.  It was very strange cause the simplest thing, like drawing a watch, I couldn’t do.  I was crushed cause if I couldn’t do that, what was I going to do?  After volunteering at church camps and working at the Korean Youth and Community Center in Korea town, I came to realize my passion was not in the arts, but for youth.  My goal now is to graduate form UCLA and graduate school and someday set up a non-profit organization for youth.  At this non-profit, I would set up programs for all youths and help them achieve their life goals and also provide a place where youths can come and learn not only academics, but also other life values. I would also like to have a Christian as well as non-Christian counseling center targeted to Asian American Youth because I feel even though there are a lot of counseling centers, there aren’t that many that are for Asian American Youths.  Now that I've shared my background information, I will now focus on three main points and they are; how my life intersects with history, why the discovery of the intersection of autobiography and history  “in many ways a terrible lesson; in many ways a magnificent one”?, and once I had discovered this intersection, what meaning does the discovery have for my life?

I feel my life intersects with history in a lot of ways, but one that has a huge impact is the whole immigration process. Immigration from Korea, or any other foreign country, was a big historical event.  My parents did not come in the three waves, but they did come.  I feel my life would have been different if I had grown up in Korea. I strongly feel I would have been an entirely different person if I lived in Korea.  I would have experienced entirely different experiences, made different decisions, and grew up with different people.  I feel my values, goals, and aspirations would be entirely different.  If there were two of me, one that grew up in Korea and the other, as myself and I met my other me form Korea, even though I would be meeting myself I would feel like I was meeting a stranger.  I know this because when I visited Korea, I felt out of place and couldn't identify with the Koreans in Korea, even though I am a Korean.  Another historical even that shaped my life is racism.  When I was growing up in Canada, I faced a lot of racism.  At the time, my family was literally the only Asians in the city where we lived.  Maybe I was too young, but I don't remember seeing any other people that looked like me and that confused me.  I remember my classmates would make fun of my Asian eyes and my other differences.  When I moved here to the United States, I thought the racism would disappear, but it didn't I also faced racism here but in a more vulgar matter.  Going through this experience challenged to not be like the people who mocked and denounced me for my race.  I leaned to not be racist when people were racist against me.  Since I’ve experienced this off hand and lived it, I feel I can identify with Asian American youths when they are facing problems like this.

The discovery of the intersection of autobiography and history “in many ways a terrible lesson; in many ways a magnificent one,” I feel is true and is so because when I look back to what my parents and other people had to go through during the time when immigration was painful and hard and racism was so prevalent in society it is disheartening.  When I think of my parents and their immigration to the U.S.  I feel sad for them because they left their homeland to go to a strange land where they didn’t know the language very well and had to start brand new.  I can only imagine how hard it must have been for them.  The people who immigrated from all over the world faced so much racism and I feel terrible for those who past away because of hate crimes and for those who have been scarred by verbal abuse.  Even though these are terrible periods for the people who lived it, there is also a silver lining to it.  It is also a magnificent lesson because these are the pioneers that paved the way for us today.  Asian Americans can live here freely and is a part of the United States.  The overcoming of great hardships and racial tension during the peak times is a great lesson to all of us.  Through perseverance and working together, we an overcome anything.

Once I’ve discovered this intersection, the meaning this discovery has in my life is very important to me.  The fact that my life in the present still intersects with history is pretty awesome.  I always think that I'm living in the “now,” but my experiences does intersect with history and it now makes my experiences much more meaningful.  I still can’t fathom what our ancestors went though, but I can now say I fully commend and appreciate what they did for us and now when I look back in my life, my experiences have a deeper meaning.  This discovery makes me think that in some aspect, I fit into history.

Doing this assignment made me think of how our experiences in the historical context and intersecting the two, makes our life more meaningful and also shows how the history and experiences shapes us today.  I learned a lot about immigration and racial tension in my history classes, but never took the time to really think I went though similar experiences and it also has shaped who I am today.  Linking history to your experiences makes your life seem much more meaningful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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