Sharon Tran, who graduated with the highest honors of any student, speaks at the May 27, 2010 Commencement Ceremony
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To say that Sharon and Frances Tran have much in common would be an understatement. The twins both majored in English and minored in Chinese. Each had to weigh full-scholarship offers for English PhD programs at prestigious universities.\u00a0 (Frances chose the CUNY Graduate Center and Sharon Picked UCLA.)\u00a0 And each recently had a paper accepted by the National Conference on Undergraduate Research\u2014for the second year in a row.\u00a0 They presented their papers at this year\u2019s conference, in April, at the University of Montana.<\/p>\n\u201cThey\u2019re exceptionally talented and motivated students,\u201d says Duncan Faherty, an associate professor in Queens\u2019s English department and the Trans\u2019 faculty advisor. \u201cTheir intellects complement each other. They push each other quite hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
The papers the sisters presented in Montana reflect the interest they share in how contemporary Asian-American authors deal with the changing meanings of kinship, identity, and nationality in a rapidly globalizing world.\u00a0 Both sisters wrote about how characters in a novel struggle to define who they are. (Frances chose The Love Wife<\/i> by Gish Jen, a Chinese-American; Sharon picked Native Speaker<\/i> by Chang-rae Lee, a Korean-American).<\/p>\n
The sisters say the issues Asian communities in America face are not unique. Indeed Asian-Americans and African-Americans have more in common than is often assumed, says Sharon. They \u201chave a shared history of racism and discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sisters\u2019 academic focus comes at least in part from their own history. Their parents and grandparents emigrated from Vietnam, and the sisters were raised by their grandparents in Astoria for their first years, until the family moved to Little Neck, Queens. They still speak Vietnamese at home.<\/p>\n
Their parents set high standards. They told the girls they \u201chave to constantly do better,\u201d says Frances. \u201cThe pressure only . . . came off after we were accepted in the Macaulay Honors College\u201d at Queens.<\/p>\n
The twins, whom people often have trouble telling apart, are each other\u2019s biggest backers. \u201cWe always read each other\u2019s papers and bounce ideas off one another,\u201d says Sharon. \u201cSometimes we even get a little competitive.\u201d<\/p>\n
When they are not studying, the sisters both like reading\u2014and writing\u2014manga<\/i>, Japanese-style comics, and watching anime,<\/i> as its animated form is called. They also play volleyball on the QC Quad. Both envisage careers as English professors.<\/p>\n
Favorite book:<\/strong><\/p>\nSharon: Southland<\/i>, by Nina Revoyr
Frances: Never Let Me Go<\/i> by Kazuo Ishiguro<\/p>\n
Favorite music:<\/strong><\/p>\nSharon: Chinese-American pop by such artists as Wang Leehom
Frances: Alternate rock and pop by such groups as Daughtry and Light House<\/p>\n
Interesting fact:<\/strong> The sisters spoke Vietnamese at home and only learned English when they started school.<\/p>\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Name: Sharon and Frances TranMajor: EnglishGraduation Year: 2010 “(from Sharon): We were very naughty kids in kindergarten; that was before we became nerdy.”- Sharon and Frances Tran Student Profiles Alumni Profiles Faculty Profiles Staff ProfilesSharon Tran, who graduated with the highest honors of any student, speaks at the May 27, 2010 Commencement CeremonyTo say that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"page_category":[],"wf_page_folders":[164,137],"class_list":["post-915","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"page_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/page_category?post=915"},{"taxonomy":"wf_page_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_page_folders?post=915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}