Passage:
“The loudest duck gets shot” is a Chinese Proverb. “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down” is a Japanese one. Its Western correlative: “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Chua had told her story and been hammered down. Yet here she was, fresh from hammering, completely unbowed. 

Analysis:
This passage, found in the last paragraph of the text, serves to summarize the author’s overall intended message of “Paper Tigers”, by Wesley Wang. The author’s goal throughout the piece is to describe the disadvantage American-Asians have succeeding, and thriving, in workplace settings as well as social settings, due to their upbringing. While Asians have the intelligence to compete in American society, through conditioning and training they can also begin to fit into the American corporate world and society as a whole.  These few sentences show a clear contrast between the way an Asian-Americans may have been raised in compared to an average American. Through the proverbs included, the author catches the readers attention and summarizes Asian values and American values in a clear and concise manner. He makes a bold final statement, in the last sentence, in which the Asian American begins to overcome the conditions which have held them back. By showing a problem being overcome,a positive, motivational tone is stuck in the reader’s mind as the piece concludes.


Imitation:
“Always keep an open mind” is her mother’s favorite. “Learn to dance in the rain” was her younger sisters. Her personal favorite: “The grass is always greener on the other side”. She heard each one and had begun to dance her way through life. There she stood, dancing through the storm, without feeling a drop of rain. 

Passage:
“This was the first time I’d ever seen my mother and father together in the same room- he had abandoned us when I was nine months old. ‘You didn’t seem to smile a whole lot that afternoon,’ my cousin has since mentioned a number of times. The photographs bear this out.”

Analysis:
                This passage serves to describe the author’s relationship with his estranged father in a dramatic way, and the impact it had on his growing up among protests and movements. It foreshadows a reason as to why protests give him such an uncomfortable feeling, because his father was a large player in these events. This passage helps make an early emotional connection that a reader can think back to as the author goes through his experience with the protest. This passage is extremely bold, mainly due to the quotation said by the author’s cousin, in which he states he did not seem to smile much on his wedding day. That statement alone could describe the turmoil that the author’s father brought to him, considering he “didn’t seem to smile much” on a day which, we could be assumed, was supposed to be very happy. Beyond the content, I found the way the sentences were broken up to be attention grabbing. The use of the quotation evokes an emotional connection to the reader, and brings you directly into the author’s personal experience. The last, short sentence, along with the fragment used after the hyphen, give the piece a blunt, raw, emotional tone, which gives idea that the author is telling things as they really are.

Imitation:
This was the day that I knew everything had changed-she had felt the devastation herself already. "There’s nothing you can do about it now," my mother murmured in a way I had heard before. My face spoke my every thought.