The author recounts a story of the significance of heritage and how it came to be so important to her.
The main factors of this story that make it so significant all revolve around heritage - Language, country, ancestors and culture. Their importance are significant because they signify who we are. That is generally lost with modern social circles. For example, in an orthadox family, the children will stop going to church on Sunday mornings to sleep in or hang out with their friends. In Jewish families, the children will eat all meats and poultry simply not to look bad and in this story, Amy Choi decides, "there is no point to learning Chinese. We live in Australia, we go to Australian schools so we should only speak English." This quote is demonstrative of how she doesn't care about her heritage.
When we start doing that, we lose sight of who we are. In this story, Amy Choi starts to lose sight of who she is, but by an unexpected turn of events, she finds that, like in any culture, you need to know who you are. That is why this story is so significant and how all the stories from, Growing up Asian in Australia, represent a lot more than just lives of people growing up in Australia, it represents their struggles, their triumphs and their heritage - who they are and how they got to were they ended up. Heritage is important to acknowledge how hard our ancestors worked to get us better lives. We are all born unique, but we die copies. If we don't acknowledge that, if we don't take into account who we are, we're simply copies. That holds immense significance in all immigrant's lives and that is why this story is so important.
To conclude, heritage is vastly important to the lives of all immigrants and in a way others too. Just the same as Australia has Australia to remember their heritage, it's just as important for immigrants to remember what their ancestors sacrificed to get them out of a third world country and how important it is for immigrants to remember who they are.
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