Analyzing The Minority Groups’ Interactions In Hisaye Yamamoto’s Works From The Perspective Of Multiculturalism

Hisaye Yamamoto is the second generation writer of Japanese American and she is also the first Japanese American female writer who achieved international recognition after World War Ⅱ.Seventeen Syllables And Other Stories is her representative work.Yamamoto started writing as a teenager and during World WarⅡ she was interned in concentration camps(Poston,Arizona)and then she was relocated in the East of America after she left the camps.Many of her short stories pay more attention on the life of Japanese families who live hardly and toughly in America,oppressed by race and class.Her short stories collection,Seventeen Syllables And Other Stories,depict the communication,interaction and evaluation between Japanese immigrants and other immigrants in order to express the cultural differences and prejudices among various ethnic groups.Meantime,Yamamo employs obscure and brief words to show that although ethnic minorities live in the United States,they seldom communicate with white Americans,and their life circle is limited to their own ethnic groups and other ethnic minorities.However,Yamamoto tells the truth that ethnic minorities,as outsiders,are not accepted by the American society.Therefore,she voices her sympathy to those who are on the fringes of American society.From the perspective of multiculturalism,this paper analyzes Seventeen Syllables And Other Stories on behalf of revealing the interactions of multiculturalism in her novels.Multiculturalism challenges the mainstream American culture and demands respect for the traditional cultures of all ethnic minorities,equal rights for all ethnic minorities,giving equality to everyone regardless of race,religion,ethnicity and gender.Firstly,the thesis probs into the culture conflicts and differences among different minorities from internal conflicts and external conflicts and they discriminate and misunderstand each other.We can clearly find each culture marks and features from interactions between the first immigrant Japanese parents and their children,and the Japanese Americans with other ethnic minorities.Secondly,this paper discusses the interaction among the minority groups.By cultural interactions,these ethnic groups set about seeking all different kinds of ways and attitudes to communicate,tried their best to interact with each other peacefully and friendly.Besides,interactions between the whites and minorities is still fraught with hardships and frustrations.Finally,they found that the interactions among ethnic minorities cannot achieve true equality.Unless through the efforts of generations,those minorities break up differences of culture and racial discrimination,then it would achieve interactions of different groups under multiculturalism.