Buenrostro 1

Claudia Buenrostro Robles

English 115
Professor Lawson
9 December 2016
Rhetorical Analysis: Final Draft
Words: 931
Finding My Eye Identity
Finding My Eye Identity, written by Olivia Chung is an essay where the author
describes the ongoing issues she had with her mother in regards to her eyes. Within her essay the
author describes how popular it was for a womans eyes to look nice and round. In Chung's
essay, this woman mentions the persistence her mother had about getting an eye surgery done,
referred to as Sang Ka Pul. Getting Sang Ka Pul done meant that one was able to feel beautiful
and since Chungs eyes did not have a visible crease, Do you want to get Sang Ka Pul? (150)
was a question Chung heard continuously from her mother while growing up.
The author, Olivia Chung, is an Asian American undergraduate student who studied at the
University of Pennsylvania. Chung grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, where she descends
from a second generation Korean American family. The purpose of Chungs essay, is to describe
her situation while growing up. She mentions that while growing up everyone desired eyes that
had a visible crease. Chung provides her opinion while stating that she felt beautiful without
getting Sang Ka Pul. Within her text, she analyzes having a mother who constantly would ask her
if she wanted to get eye surgery done, in order to have a real eye crease (150). Within her
writing, Chung enables herself the ability to describe her true feelings towards the subject when
verbally she was not able to tell her mother how she felt every time she questioned her.

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Context we should be aware of when analyzing this text, is the location in which the
setting took place as well as its surroundings. When reading this, one needs to consider the
immense diversity in population that Maryland has. As mentioned, Chung is responding to her
mother in this essay, by mentioning what she truly wished to answer instead of a simple no,
every time her mother pressured her on to getting Sang Ka Pul. The text provides the insight that
it was published in order to provide evidence on how pop culture vastly influences certain
individuals to change their appearance or others appearance in order to fit into the American
lifestyle and be beautiful.
Chung is clearly against changing her physical appearance in order to fit into the
mainstream American lifestyle. The text is used to demonstrate to its audience that, people can
feel beautiful in regards to their appearance without having to change one bit about them. The
thesis in Chungs essay is that she does not want to do anything to change her identity because
she is fully accepting towards it. Your eyes are beautiful. My eyes are beautiful. Asian is
beautiful. (151) with this statement Chung fully is able to describe her feelings towards the
subject. She mentions that even though she did not verbally explain to her mother how she felt,
she was strongly against changing her appearance. The authors description of how she feels
supports her position on believing that physical changes are not necessary in order to make an
individual feel or look better.
I find the author's position to be fully persuasive throughout the text due to how Chung
always responded no to her mother every time she suggested getting Sang Ka Pul. I strongly
agree with the author and her claims because one should feel beautiful as he or she is, without
having to change anything about themselves. In addition, one should also feel free to look
different without feeling pressured to live or fit into the American lifestyle. In this case the author

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expressed herself within her text but my biggest suggestion to everyone, is to speak up, mark
your standpoint, be you without feeling intimidated, and gain the courage to describe how you
feel verbally.
What sounds evidently wrong and outrageous to me in this essay, is how Chungs mother
persistently continued to ask if she wanted to get the eye surgery done even when Chung had
previously said no a number of multiple times. I am uncertain in concerns to why Chungs
mother would be so persistent with wanting her daughter to change her appearance. From my
understanding, it is very unreasonable that a mother would not be satisfied with her own
daughter's appearance. A mother should love and appreciate the way their children are without
wanting or encouraging them to be the same as everyone else. Furthermore, it is substantially
problematic why a mother would not encourage her daughter to be proud of how she looked or
how she was perceived by others. Similar characteristics dont make beauty, uniqueness does.
From my perspective, this essay is very well written. The structure is well organized by
maintaining a strong and persistently tone throughout the text. By providing examples of other
used methods Chungs friends used to make their eyes look better, by using word choices like
no, and by using the author's personal feelings, Chung was able to support her thesis
throughout her essay. Furthermore, my views and thoughts on this topic, are that no human being
should change their physical appearance in order to look better, to satisfy others, or feel as if
they are fitting in. People should accept the traits that make them beautiful and unique. This
might connect to my essay topic in regards to how certain people will never be happy with the
way others look. This relates to the ideas expressed in the author's text as to how Chung felt
beautiful the way she was, and therefore accepted her traits and was proud of them.

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Works Cited
Chung, Olivia. Finding My EyeIdentity. Pop Perspectives: Readings to Critique Contemporary
Culture. Ed. Laura Gray Rosendale. San Francisco: McGraw Hill, 2008. 149151. Print.