“We are a nation of immigrants. We are the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the ones who wanted a better life” said former Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, at the 2012 Republican National Convention. Since its establishment, the United States has grown through immigration, lending to a multicultural society. However, immigration and its government policies have become of great public interest due to illegal immigration at the Mexican border and violent events in the Middle East. For this reason it seems sensible to investigate the lives of immigrants so that U.S. citizens may take a stance on this disputed topic. Regardless of their origins, whether they are from Latin America, Asia, or anywhere else, immigrants seem to encounter similar endeavors. In Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, the author depicts the immigration of Indian citizens to the United States. Noting various matters ranging from motives to the cultural identity crisis, Lahiri exposes the struggles and ramifications of American immigration. The collection elucidates the lives of first and second generation …show more content…
In her short stories, Lahiri presents the condition as a ramification of the degree to which characters adapt to society (Bhardwaj 12-13). This is to say that immigrants experience this crisis differently, depending on how much they have integrated into their new surroundings. Mrs. Sen cannot seem adapt to American culture as she continues to embrace her Indian upbringing. Her traditions cannot be fulfilled at her house or in her community as she yearns to return to India. However, she realizes that she should try to adjust and becomes a babysitter for a short while until she gets into a car accident. Because Sen barely accepts her environment, her challenge is embracing Western
In the book Interpreter of Maladies, by Juhmpa Lahiri, express the issues with females in Indian society. “Sexy” Talks about a lady name Miranda. She falls in love with a guy named Dev. Miranda felt very happy because Dev called her 'sexy '. They go out on many dates until Dev 's wife comes back from India. Miranda 's friend talks about how her cousin husband was cheating on her cousin with another woman. Miranda buys a dress a mistress wore wear, but Dev doesn 't notice. They become sex buddies on Sundays. Her friend 's cousin came to town, and asked Miranda to babysit the cousin 's child. The child saw Miranda mistress dress and asked her to put it on. The child called her 'sexy. ' He told her 'sexy ' means being in love with someone they
Moving from the unpleasant life in the old country to America is a glorious moment for an immigrant family that is highlighted and told by many personal accounts over the course of history. Many people write about the long boat ride, seeing The Statue of Liberty and the “golden” lined streets of New York City and how it brought them hope and comfort that they too could be successful in American and make it their home. Few authors tend to highlight the social and political developments that they encountered in the new world and how it affected people’s identity and the community that they lived in. Authors from the literature that we read in class highlight these developments in the world around them, more particularly the struggles of assimilating
Although I have read this book before, I still enjoy reading the stories of the hardship and challenges the immigrants overcame. Issues such as drugs and discrimination have been addressed in the book and the response the victims of such issues got from the concerned authorities in relation to their complaints. The book is based on narrations of real time events and the stereotypes that put the immigrants on the wrong side of the law almost all the time. Additionally, the need for reform can be seen from this novel where immigrants themselves echo their dissatisfaction with the current state of things in the US.
...d and left with little cultural influence of their ancestors (Hirschman 613). When the children inadvertently but naturally adapting to the world around them, such as Lahiri in Rhode Island, the two-part identity begins to raise an issue when she increasingly fits in more both the Indian and American culture. She explains she “felt an intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new”, in which she evidently doing well at both tasks (Lahiri 612). The expectations for her to maintain her Indian customs while also succeeding in learning in the American culture put her in a position in which she is “sandwiched between the country of [her] parents and the country of [her] birth”, stuck in limbo, unable to pick one identity over the other.
Sen’s, the character Mrs. Sen’s suffers from the separation of her culture and the isolation of a community. In the beginning of the story, Mrs. Sen’s experiences conflict between her and her husband because of her lack of interest in driving, “Why don’t you drive today? Mr. Sen asked when he appeared, rapping on the hood of the car with his knuckles. They always spoke to each other in English when Eliot was present. Not today. Another day. How do you expect to pass the test if you refuse to drive on a road with other cars? Eliot is here today. He is here every day. It’s for your own good. Eliot, tell Mrs. Sen it’s for her own good. She refused” (126). Mrs. Sen’s is stepping out of her comfort zone by driving alone. In India, she would not need to learn how to drive. This is something very different between Western and Eastern culture. Individualism has contrasts in India than western culture. In the short story, Mrs. Sen's tells Eliot that in India all anyone would have to do to get someone’s attention is shout and that in America, screaming would just bring complaints, “At home that is all you have to do. Not everybody has a telephone . But just raise your voice a bit, or express grief or joy of any kind, and the whole neighborhood and half of another has come to share the news, to help with arrangements” (116). Mrs. Sen’s feels as if she’s alone without her husband and feels anxiety being in a new culture and environment. But, Eliot also spends most of his time alone as his mother works and his father isn’t around his family anymore. Both Mrs. Sen and Eliot suffer from isolation from the rest of society but seem to find comfort in eachothers
We live in a country that was established by the European immigrants in the 18th century. In that time period they were not seen as immigrants but as pioneers who established the United States. Now in the present, the word immigrant has a negative connotation and are not welcomed in the United States. In the book, The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez, by Jimmy Breslin, we follow a young Mexican immigrant on his journey to the United States and see what he had to face with American society and labor. We travel with him from a small village named San Matίas in Mexico until his death in Williamsburg, New York. Not only did he suffer a brutal death, falling into cement, but also had to face discrimination in his neighborhood, by other Hispanic communities, and injustices at work. Immigrants do not only face exploitation in New York, but it has also been demonstrated that in the Midwest, Mexican immigrants face similar discrimination and labor abuse in the meat packing industry.
Albeit the politics of immigration target cultures of the highest population at a given time, these laws and politics can often affect immigrants of other cultures in a different way virtually having an inversion positive result. The lives of the immigrant Latina women seeking opportunity and education in California compared to the immigrant Iranian women seeking liberation from traditional oppressive life of Iran proves an impeccable example of this. The politics on the immigration of Latina women have i...
Sen’s” when Mrs. Sen has trouble adjusting in America. Mrs. Sen’s family thinks everything is easy in the U.S.A. but Mrs. Sen. would do anything to go home. An example of this is “ They think I press buttons and the house is clean. They think I live in a palace,” (pg ?) Mrs. Sen’s family doesn't understand the internal struggle of Mrs. Sen. They think the U.S. is a luxury when in reality the luxury is back home. Mrs. Sen. was not willing to drive, or take the plastic off the furniture. She thinks that they will go back to India and be home. Mrs. Sen gradually starts to drift away from herself. She stopped driving and taking out her curved blade. Mrs. Sen did not want to move on with her life. Mrs. Sen’s culture is making her feel lonely because no one seems to understand her except Eliot. She feels isolated from the world and her husband. Mr. Sen, because of his job, is able to adjust to the new land. Mrs. Sen’s may have isolated herself completely when the crash happened. Her way of life is something she never thought would change which is why she talks about her stories all the time of weddings and family that are in Calcutta. She talks about the stories with Elliot because she misses her home. Mrs. Sen is an outsider to the real world she's living in, and she doesn't feel like she
Portes, Alejandro, and Ruben G. Rumbaut. Immigrant America: A Portrait. N.p.: University of California Press, 2006.
I am not a child of immigrants, but maintaining one’s culture is a universal struggle in a land far from one’s ethnic origins. Lahiri suggests that without cultural connections such as family and friends, one’s culture can simply vanish if they are not in the land of ethnic origin. I have found this to be true within my own
Ranjini, V., and N. Ramakrishna. "Immigrant Experience In Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter Of Maladies And The Namesake." Poetcrit 21.1 (2008): 64-74. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 5 May 2012
“The family looked Indian but dressed as foreigners did, the children in stiff, brightly colored clothing and caps with translucent visors.” (Lahiri 147) In the beginning of the story we can see in this quote that Lahiri shows a theme, the difficulty of communication, where it shows a contrast between Indians and Indian Americans. Mr. Kapasi, after checking out Mrs. Das hopes that they will find something in common and will pursue his romance; yet, later on he does find that American gap that leads to disappointment.
Many authors have captured the experiences that immigrants face when migrating to a new country. In her works The Namesake and Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri highlights the struggles of assimilation that immigrants from South Asian countries, particularly India, face when migrating to America. Lahiri focuses on the differing experiences between immigrant parents and their American-born children. Lahiri's works serve to educate Americans and provide immigrants with literature that they can relate to.
Bharati Mukherjee’s story, “Two Ways to Belong in America”, is about two sisters from India who later came to America in search of different ambitions. Growing up they were very similar in their looks and their beliefs, but they have contrasting views on immigration and citizenship. Both girls had been living in the United States for 35 years and only one sister had her citizenship. Bharati decided not to follow Indian traditional values and she married outside of her culture. She had no desire to continue worshipping her culture from her childhood, so she became a United States citizen. Her ideal life goal was to stay in America and transform her life. Mira, on the other hand, married an Indian student and they both earned labor certifications that was crucial for a green card. She wanted to move back to India after retirement because that is where her heart belonged. The author’s tone fluctuates throughout the story. At the beginning of the story her tone is pitiful but then it becomes sympathizing and understanding. She makes it known that she highly disagrees with her sister’s viewpoints but she is still considerate and explains her sister’s thought process. While comparing the two perspectives, the author uses many
Lahiri examines her characters’ struggles, anxieties, and biases to explain the details of immigrant psych and behaviour. Jhumpa Lahiri through her work states that the distinction between human cultures is man-made. The characteristic of her writing is “plain” language and her characters. Often Indian immigrants to America must find a way between the cultural values of their homeland and their adopted home. Jhumpa Lahiri has the abilitie to pass on the most seasoned social clashes in the most prompt mold and to accomplish the voices of a wide range of characters are among the one of a kind qualities that have caught the consideration of a wide crowd. She was conceived in London, and after that moved to Rhode Island as a youthful kid with her Bengali guardians. It is especially engaging that Jhumpa Lahiri is the child of Indian immigrants and that she also crosses from England, her birth place, to the U.S.A. and became an American citizen. In The Namesake, Lahiri’s experiences of growing up as a child of immigrants resemble that of her protagonist, Gogol Ganguly. Immigration became blessing in disguise as that makes her a Diaspora writer. In her novel, The Namesake, Lahiri deals with the frightful experience of Ashoke and Ashima, the Indian immigrants and their offsprings, Gogol and Sonia, the second generation, conceived and raised in America. This novel manages space, time, dialect, and societies for drawing out the substance of Indian diaspora. Lahiri has specified three landmasses - Asia, Europe and North America in her novel. She plans to build up the topic of the novel, diasporic dilemma, through the fundamental characters-Ashoke, Ashima, and Gogol. For Ashoke, diasporic strain isn't profound. It is exceptionally obvious in Ashima and Gogol. Sonia is