My research question at them moment which I thought of it (with the help of Mrs. Taynton) is, to what extent does a person’s culture affect his or her place in society? How I came up with this is during Language Arts we were assigned to read specific books for this unit, culture, I chose The Serpent’s Children by Laurence Yep which gave me a boost for my research question. As I was reading the book I came across little segments where the main character, Cassia, is surrounded with culture and her place in society whether she wants to be accepted or not. This hinted me an idea for my research question.

My inquiry is that looking through this question I need to understand the depth of cultures around the world of how they show this idea of culture affecting people’s place in society; I chose Chinese culture, makes sense because the book is based on it. What I want to find for answering or providing support for my research question is that I need to think of different areas of my idea in order to fully understand the concept I thought of. I’ve done some brainstorming, a bit of researching, and putting down key words: family system, cultural background, roles in society, etc… But although it’s been half a week developing my research question so really I haven’t fully boosted of what I really need to accomplish in this unit but it’s a great start.

Now what I need to do is keep researching and putting connections to the book and the concepts so my research question can be concluded. At this time I haven’t quite know what to do with my research question yet and this is only an embarkment to the beginning to the rest of the unit which I fully haven’t went through it yet.

 

In Language Arts we are beginning to dig into culture in unit 1. As we go through it we began discussing about culture and aspects about it. We went to get books; I chose a book and what it has to do is that we are assigned to read it and understand author-writing styles of different cultural ideas that maybe affected by author. So I chose a book, The Serpent’s Children by Laurence Yep, and I find it interesting to read. Authors who are influenced by culture or history can give what the writer is thinking.

 

Laurence Yep, a Chinese-American writer born in San Francisco, California. He is an author for young children more than sixty books . His parents are migrants from China who moved to California. Although born in China town San Francisco, he grew up in a black neighbourhood. During elementary to middle school, Yep went to a bilingual school and didn’t come face to face to white American culture. He discovered writing science fiction in high school and wrote his first short story, Sweetwater. He went to the University of California and got his undergraduate degree in 1970 before getting a doctorate in English from the University of New York at in 1975.

 

The influences of writing that affects stories from the author is that Yep mixes his culture and the events that happened. He published Dragonwings a book that has flying machines, the Chinese immigrant background, and the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco . Yep’s work is deeply influenced and expressed by his Chinese American background, he sees regular life closely, and his willingness to do ample research in local libraries for his works.

 

With this it shows that the author’s writing is affected which gives an impression in that culture and history can give ideas to stories where it gives the reader the correlation between story and ideas.