Assimilation And Assimilation

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Tan Jiayi (20) 414: ASSIGNMENT 1 (30m)

Discuss how effective the two poems are in showing a sense of cultural understanding and/or assimilation.

Both poems show the unfamiliarity and uneasiness of the persona in their new and different cultural environments, but ‘Returning’ by Wender deals more with cultural understanding in a short period of time while 'Assimilation' by Gloria is more focused on assimilation with permanence shown through imagery and language.

For 'Returning', the persona finds herself in the unfamiliar environment of Sri Lanka, the place where her husband grew up in, when she visited Sri Lanka with her husband. The persona's unease and discomfort is shown when she has to don the traditional cultural clothes of her husband's Sri Lankan culture. It is seen from 'a sari halves my stride, I'm hobbled', where the awkward way she walks when she has to wear her sari reveals how she is not used to wearing one so her movement is impeded by this unfamiliar piece of clothing she does not usually wear.

Similarly in 'Assimilation' by Gloria, the Filipino boy felt uneasy and nervous on his first day of school, and was so ashamed by his food for lunch that he hid it from everyone and threw his food away, as shown in 'Ashamed to be more different than what my face had already betrayed, the rice, I hid it from my schoolmates.', even though he was hungry. If he was familiar with the cultural environment, he would have been able to eat his food comfortably without fear of being judged by his schoolmates. From then on he was scared to eat whatever he had always eaten at lunch before and chose to follow what his fellow school mates ate so as to bridge the cultural gap between his American school mates and him, so he could belon...

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...ht across, there is no powerful and clear imagery to cement the sense of cultural assimilation as well so I am not able to feel the poem clearly enough, and thus 'Returning' is less impactful for me as a reader.

Furthermore, what I found interesting was the specific highlight of the color red in 'Assimilation'. For example, the benches that the white kids lined on in the playground were painted red, and so were the food in the boy's lunch, such as 'sliced red peppers, and a redder sauce with beef'. These things being of the same color seems to symbolize the Filipino boy's desires to assimilate from his own Filipino culture and fit in with his American schoolmates, since they have the same color (red), meaning that they would also be of the same culture once the Filipino boy is able to assimilate, thus the Filipino boy would be able to feel a sense of belonging.

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