Family

2 Pages 599 Words

Throughout my lifetime, the opinion that I own that defines a typical family unit has varied greatly. As you grow and mature you learn that the structure and characteristics of your family are very different from that of the family unit in other cultures, lifestyles and regions. In the time that we live in today it is not unusual to have a gay brother sister or even father living in the house across the street. As many cultures and families accept this alternative lifestyle, many do not and oppose with strong cultural reasoning behind them. In fear of breaking cultural traditions and norms many gay family members are frowned upon, shunned or just plain left out of the loop of family circles. Their can only be hope that the family members who find themselves in difficult situations as these can look to love and embrace the choice that their family member has made. In The Wedding Banquet, “Commitments” and “A Chinese Banquet”, examples of each one of these is shown through a cultural looking glass and how that affects the given situation.
In all three situations, the issue of marriage raised conflict between the speaker and the family members. In The Wedding Banquet, Wai Tung was under the pressure from his parents to follow traditional Chinese culture and marry a woman and eventually have children. He was also under pressure from Wei Wei to marry, specifically her, so that she could gain residency in The U.S. In dealing with this situation we see that Wai Tung creates a false marriage to pacify his parents to succumb to wishes of following their cultural beliefs.
In “Commitments” we see that the speaker in this piece show the expectations of marriage in his family and how he doest include those plans in his personal life plan. Hemphill writes “my arms are empty, or around the shoulders of unsuspecting aunts, expecting to throw rice at me someday”. Through this we can see the speaker’s awareness of how he is given...