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Essays about migrations
An essay about migration
Essays about migrations
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“Immigration is a crisis for our county. It is an open door for drugs, criminals, and potential terrorists to enter our country. It is straining our economy, adding costs to our judicial, healthcare, and education systems,”as proclaimed by American politician Timothy Murphy. As Congress continues to debate ways to address immigration, a common Immigrant’s perspective conveys focus on the realistic statistics of who actually contributes so much to the nation’s economy and culture. It’s regularly known that Immigrants leave their motherland in search for a better life elsewhere, yet an immigrant’s ability to be happy and successful in America largely depends on the opportunity to remain connected to the culture of their native country or embrace …show more content…
For example, Mukherjee’s use of “maintain” and “self-invention” are contradictory to each other, but in the context, “maintain” refers to her sister Mira, and “self-invention” is directed to Mukherjee herself. In Mira’s case, she is very attached to her Indian culture and stresses about not letting the American culture take that away from her. The author’s purpose was to highlight the tenacious mentality Mira has on her culture. In contrast, Mukherjee's use of “self-invention” regards to her loosening hold of her Indian culture; the exact opposite of Mira’s position. Another example of her contrasting diction is “clings” and “fluidity.” Mukherjee purposely chose “clings” in relation to Mira because it's implied that people don't cling onto something unless they feel they are losing it. Its evident through Mira’s constant denial of the American culture that she is still terrified of losing not only her Indian culture but in her eyes “herself” or her self identity. The author suggests that through these specific dictions, Mira gets the indication that with the new policy change she is forced to either give up her own self identity or create a new one to get citizen benefits. This implication of Mira believing she will lose her Indian culture also directly correlates to the “fluidity” Mukerjee feels about her new …show more content…
She starts the essay with a detailed description of her life that led up to her and Mira’s immigration, “ When we left India, we were almost identical in appearance and attitude. We dressed alike, in saris; we expressed identical views on politics, social issues, love, and marriage in the same calcutta convent-school accent.” This detail compares how similar the siblings were and prepares the audience to the split of paths and consequences that lead to two contrasting lives.This pattern of a personal story continues though more details such as their education to even their marriages, “ Instead, Mira married an Indian student in 1962” which sets up dispersity as Mukherjee states, “I married a fellow student, an American of Canadian parentage.” Her decision to narrate the events in both of their lives from their childhood to marriages is an example of how she gained a citizenship through her husband who just happened to be an American. In contrast, Mukherjee presents that Mira married an Indian student, which points to the idea that because Mira decided to marry into her culture, she gets backlash from Congress which causes only her to get her benefits taken away, but Mukherjee doesn't get affected. Mukherjee builds this reputation of how similar they both are only to imbalance it
America is a land filled with immigrants coming from different corners of the worlds, all in hopes of finding a better life in the country. However, No one had an easy transition from his or her home country to this foreign land. Not every race thrived the same way—some were luckier than others, while some have faced enormous obstacles in settling down and being part of the American society. Many people have suffered
Lahiri, a second-generation immigrant, endures the difficulty of living in the middle of her hyphenated label “Indian-American”, whereas she will never fully feel Indian nor fully American, her identity is the combination of her attributes, everything in between.
The United States of America has the largest foreign-born population in the world. With nearly thirteen percent of the total population being foreign-born, one may find it hard to imagine an immigrant-free country (U.S. Bureau of the Census). Immigration has been an integral part of the United States’ overall success and the country’s economy since it was established and without it, would have never been founded at all. Although there are some negative issues associated with immigration and many native-born Americans believe to be more of a problem than a solution, overall it actually has a positive effect. Immigrants in America, among other things, fill jobs where native-born Americans may not want to work or cannot work, they contribute to Social Services and Medicaid through taxes and they help provide the backbone of America, especially by working jobs that natives may have not even considered.
...al norms to convey an escape from orthodoxy. Both vignettes use symbolism and diction to convey their message of escape. Both the narrator in “The Wish to Be a Red Indian” and the woman from “Rejection” wish for escape. However, woman also desires convention besides adventure and freedom, adding to the indecisive and contradictory tone of “Rejection.”
In America, it is a common misconception that all foreigners are similar; it is believed that they all have similar dreams and each of them end up chasing after the same jobs. However, this is not the case. Not only do immigrants from different countries hold different dreams, but those with a shared background even have varying hopes and dreams for the future. This is evidenced in Bharati Mukherjee’s essay, “Two Ways to Belong in America.” She utilizes several rhetorical strategies in order to show that immigrants have the ability to be assimilated into the American culture, but that they should not be deported if they choose not to conform to said culture.
The United States of America, being a country founded by immigrants, is known all over the world as the land of great opportunities. People from all walks of life travelled across the globe, taking a chance to find a better life for them and their family. Over the years, the population of immigrants has grown immensely, resulting in the currently controversial issue of illegal immigration. Illegal immigrants are the people who have overstayed the time granted on their US, visa or those who have broken the federal law by crossing the border illegally. Matt O’Brien stated in his article “The government thinks that 10.8 million illegal immigrants lived in the country in January 2009, down from a peak of nearly 12 million in 2007.”(Para, 2) While some argue that illegal immigrants burden the United States of America and its economy, others believe that they have become essential and are an important part of the US, economy.
Kothari employs a mixture of narrative and description in her work to garner the reader’s emotional investment. The essay is presented in seventeen vignettes of differing lengths, a unique presentation that makes the reader feel like they are reading directly from Kothari’s journal. The writer places emphasis on both her description of food and resulting reaction as she describes her experiences visiting India with her parents: “Someone hands me a plate of aloo tikki, fried potato patties filled with mashed channa dal and served with a sweet and a sour chutney. The channa, mixed with hot chilies and spices, burns my tongue and throat” (Kothari). She also uses precise descriptions of herself: “I have inherited brown eyes, black hair, a long nose with a crooked bridge, and soft teeth
Since the creation of the United States of America, immigrants from all backgrounds have sought refuge, a home and a life in this country of prosperity and opportunity. The opportunity of freedom to exercise natural rights is a large pull factor that causes many people to come to America. Others come because it is a country where one can prosper. Prosperity of people in a country, however, is a more challenging phenomenon to explain than opportunity. Immigrants seek economic, social and educational as well as cultural prosperity. The question of how to gain such prosperity is a difficult one to answer. Some immigrants come to America, cast off their past identity and attempt to find a new, less foreign one. By assimilating to American culture with this new identity, they start a long and treacherous journey to seek prosperity in a land vastly different from the one they once called home. Many will gain educational, economic and social prosperity, but never gain cultural prosperity. Assimilating to American culture so hastily, some immigrants are never able to explore and keep up with their cultural backgrounds. Their families grow up and became Americans, never cognizant of their given up ethnic identities. Those immigrants, however, who are able to gain cultural prosperity through the help of other immigrants of their respective background, become integrated into American society while keeping their ethnic identity. This is the sort of opportunity that the United States of America has provided new arrivals since its founding. Although many immigrants become overwhelmed with American culture and assimilate into it, those who contribute to a working ethnic society are able to dela...
With Indian parents and being raised in America from the age of two, Lahiri states in her essay that in her earlier years “Indian-American” was how she was described as, however, she hardly felt as if she could identify with “either side of the hyphen” (97,98). In other words, having these two cultures present in her life that supposedly made up who she was ended up making her feel that because she fell into both categories she could not fully relate to either culture, causing her to feel alienated. She goes on to say, “As a child I sought perfection and so denied myself the claim to any identity” (98). This thinking is a prime supporter of the correlation between culture and identity because it was culture that affected Lahiri’s claim of identity, even if that claiming was no identity at all. Through the examination of Lahiri’s early life, it is evident that there is a correspondence between identity and
In the story “Mrs. Sen’s”, Lahini presents the struggles of assimilating into a new country and portrays how lonely and restricted immigrants can feel. She is able to do this through her use of the character, Mrs. Sen, a woman who is originally from India. Throughout the story we see how difficult it is for Mrs. Sen to assimilate to the lifestyle in America. Her days, usually consist of staying in an apartment while her husband teaches at a nearby university. Mrs. Sen’s Indian lifestyle still seems very prominent, all her furniture is still wrapped in plastic, the shoes are all lined in a bookcase by the front door, she refuses to purchase fish from the supermarket and she uses and abnormal blade to do her cooking. All of this illustrating
The complex journey of immigration and the hardships immigrants undergo are common themes in Bharati Mukherjee's writings. The author, an immigrant herself, tries to show the darker side of immigration, especially for Hindu women, that is not often portrayed in other immigrant narratives. In the novel, Jasmine Mukhedee uses three types of immigrants to show how different the hardships of adhering to life in an adopted country can be. Her main immigrant characters fall mainly into three categories: the refugee, the hyphenated immigrant, and the chameleon. The refugee immigrant type is seen in Jasmine's father, Pitaji and in the Proffessodi and his wife, Nirmala. The character Du is representative of the hyphenated immigrant, and the chameleon immigrant type is that of the main character of the novel, Jasmine. By discussing the various types of immigrants the author has portrayed in the novel and the importance of names for each type, with an emphasis on the main character, Jasmine, the immigrant experience will be seen not as a generic journey that is similar for all people, but is instead a profoundly personal affair that is affected by that person's past life experiences and beliefs. The first type of immigrant, the refugee, is characterized by a longing for the homeland. Mukherjee explains the difference between an immigrant writer and an immigrant/refugee writer by showing the contrasts between herself and another Indian writer, V.S. Naipaul:
Bharati’s depiction of Jasmine throughout the novel traversing different alien nations is superb. She highlights Jasmine’s alienation from her culture due to her constantly shifting identities. She longs for the safe confine of her original home in India. Security, peace and rootedness of an individual are replaced by feelings of anxiety, pain and fear in a sordid and exiled place .Temporarily Jasmine does acquire a foreign identity but it is fake. Her past : “ is fully alive like a seed in the soil, awaiting the season of warmth and growth to bring it to germination”(1998,156). Jasmine is therefore the most congruent exploration of Bharati into the dilemma of belonging and longing.
Bharathi Mukherjee’s Wife and Jsamine chronicle the journeys of two young women to the US for different reasons, under dissimilar circumstances. Both of them pass through torturous physical ,mental and emotional agony affecting their whole being to such an extent that they are driven to violence, Jasmine starts her life in the US with a murder, Dimple rounds up her stay there is a striking semblance in spite of the wide difference between their temperaments and
The social and cultural change in the post-independent India has made women conscious of the need to define themselves, their place in society and their surroundings. Women have become independent. They are the major voice in India. The women depicted in the emerging literature in India are modern and independent. There are changing faces. The female characters in such emerging writings are at great pains to free themselves from stultifying, traditional constraints. The female quest for identity has been a pet theme for many Indian English writers. The quest, search, uprootedness, rootlessness, struggle for ‘I’, struggle for existence are the major issues in these writings. They indicate the arrival of a ‘new Indian woman’. These women are
It is also associated with the works of members of the Indian Diaspora. Indian Diaspora writers contributed significantly in the field of literature. All in all , recently , Indian women writers who have chosen to live outside India - like Kiran Desai , Bharati Mukherjee ,Uma Parmeshwaran, Arundhati Roy, Tanuja Desai, Meera Alexander, Meera Syal, Jhumpa Lahri, Farahan Sheikh, Ravinder Randhawa have launched the Indian literatures in English into fresh and emergent territories. All these women writers’ experiences are edged as they have to suffer double marginalisation- one as a women and another as an immigrant. They deal with the problematic of gender, issues of immigrant identity, racial conflicts and cultural confrontation. The impressive progress of the South Asian diasporic writers left an indelible impact on