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Fragments
Last night as I lay in bed thinking about my English final, I decided, as I often do, to procrastinate falling asleep by watching Netflix. This may not seem noteworthy to this essay, and under other circumstances it certainly would not be, but last night I happened to watch an episode of Aziz Ansari’s original Netflix show Master of None. The show is about a first generation, 30-something year old Indian-American man named Dev, played by Aziz Ansari, who experiences the daily trials and tribulations of being an Indian man in modern day New York. Luckily for me, it just so happens to be that the episode I watched last night directly correlates to the topic and poem that I am writing about right now. In the episode, titled Religion, Dev is coerced by his devout, first generation Muslim-Indian parents to not eat pork in front of his visiting aunt and uncle. Dev begrudgingly agrees, but, being a comedy show, this agreement
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Dev’s parents come from India and bring with them their Muslim faith which they try to pass on to their son. In the first scene in the episode, Dev is shown in a white friends house presumably after a sleepover eating bacon for the first time, given to him by a mother totally oblivious of his parents’ religion. Here already the heritage his parents worked to preserve from their homeland is being obscured by American influences. Later in the show when Dev’s parents feel like they have failed him as parents, they mean that they have failed to transfer their experiences and culture gained from their life in India to their son. Dev has been Americanized to the point where he eats pork and hasn’t gone near a mosque in years, and to his parents this is like seeing India being swallowed up by the vice of America, never to reemerge. However, Dev decides that he should, if not to adopt, learn to understand part of his heritage by reading through his mother’s
The “F Word” is an essay about an Iranian girl’s struggle with finding who she is, in a foreign land known as the U.S. It acknowledges her inner struggle with an outward showing character of herself that she holds, her name. During the essay the reader learns about how the girl fights her inner feeling of wanting to fit in and her deep rooted Iranian culture that she was brought up to support. Firoozeh Dumas, the girl in the book, and also the author of the essay, uses various rhetorical tactics to aid her audience in grasping the fact that being an immigrant in the U.S. can be a difficult life. To demonstrate her true feelings to the audience as an immigrant in the U.S., she uses similes, parallelism, and even her tone of humor.
I am the child of a white man and a Navajo (Diné) woman. Gogol’s parents have tried to force their cultural values upon him since birth, but I would have been lucky if my family had tried to celebrate my A 'wee Chi 'deedloh, my first laugh ceremony. Gogol lives in a world where his family seems to have to do everything possible to scrape together the means to practice their Bengali culture. This suggests that to be the child of first-generation immigrants is to substitute many traditions and ceremonies into more Americanized, less culturally-authentic renditions of themselves, for the only way to be truly authentic is to practice the culture in the land of origin or, in Gogol’s case, India.
Madeleine Thien’s “Simple Recipes” is a story of an immigrant family and their struggles to assimilate to a new culture. The story follows a father and daughter who prepare Malaysian food, with Malaysian customs in their Canadian home. While the father and daughter work at home, the mother and son do otherwise outside the home, assimilating themselves into Canadian culture. The story culminates in a violent beating to the son by his father with a bamboo stick, an Asian tool. The violent episode served as an attempt by the father to beat the culture back into him: “The bamboo drops silently. It rips the skin on my brothers back” (333) Violence plays a key role in the family dynamic and effects each and every character presented in the story
Have you ever wondered how your ethnicity can impact the way you interact with people? What about the conversation you might have with people? Do you have a voice in our society that allows you to speak for yourself or a group of people? In the poem “Sure You Can Ask Me a Personal Question” by Diane Burns, the author focused on showing the importance poetic devices have through allusions, repetition, and imagery. Through poetic devices, author of “Sure You Can Ask Me a Personal Question” shows how stereotypes from societies and her ethnicity affects her life. Diane Burns uses three poetic devices to communicate her tone throughout the poem.
“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
Growing up on a reservation where failing was welcomed and even somewhat encouraged, Alexie was pressured to conform to the stereotype and be just another average Indian. Instead, he refused to listen to anyone telling him how to act, and pursued his own interests in reading and writing at a young age. He looks back on his childhood, explaining about himself, “If he'd been anything but an Indian boy living on the reservation, he might have been called a prodigy. But he is an Indian boy living on the reservation and is simply an oddity” (17). Alexie compares the life and treatment of an Indian to life as a more privileged child. This side-by-side comparison furthers his point that
Indian Killer by Sherman Alexie is a work of humor, an investigation of community identity and family love, as well as a discussion of race and hate. Marie’s speech to the hapless Dr. Mat...
In “My Two Lives”, Jhumpa Lahiri tells of her complicated upbringing in Rhode Island with her Calcutta born-and-raised parents, in which she continually sought a balance between both her Indian and American sides. She explains how she differs from her parents due to immigration, the existent connections to India, and her development as a writer of Indian-American stories. “The Freedom of the Inbetween” written by Sally Dalton-Brown explores the state of limbo, or “being between cultures”, which can make second-generation immigrants feel liberated, or vice versa, trapped within the two (333). This work also discusses how Lahiri writes about her life experiences through her own characters in her books. Charles Hirschman’s “Immigration and the American Century” states that immigrants are shaped by the combination of an adaptation to American...
It’s ironic on how Usha's parents that have lived in America for many years and Pranab only some live their lives so differently even though they originated from the same place. Pranab is more open-minded of the American culture and their way of life, and while attending school he easily accepts the modern way of living of an American rather than that of a Bengali. He gradually breaks away from the Indian culture by cutting contact with his roots as well as cutting contact with his own parents. The fact that he marries outside his culture, having a customary American wedding and having children without educating them on the Bengali culture allows one to perceive that this is the work of the devil. That America is a location where one abandons their customs, values and beliefs without any heartache or grief. Pranab was more eager to let proceed of all his upbringings to be wealthy ...
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
King’s essay and video enlightened me on Indian stereotyping, a stereotyping that I did not know existed, even though I have been subjected to it my entire life. I have been subjected to this stereotype because of people like Curtis and May, who created the stereotype of Indians through pictures and writings. These stereotypes continued on throughout the years and can be seen in cartoons, movies, and pictures; but because of King’s essay and video I now have an understanding of the Indian stereotype. Since I now have an understanding of this stereotype I can educate people by showing them King’s video, so they as well can understand the
Asian American Literature Asian Americans seem to be fighting an unwinnable battle when it comes to the content of their writing. Writers are criticized by whites for speaking out against discrimination, and by their fellow Asian Americans for contributing to the stereotypes through their silence. I believe that Asian Americans should include politics in their writing as they so choose, but should not feel obligated to do so, as Frank Chin suggests. For those Asian Americans who make known their discontent with the injustice and discrimination that they feel, in the white culture, this translates to attacking American superiority and initiating insecurities. For Mura, a writer who dared to question why an Asian American was not allowed to audition for an Asian American role, his punishment was “the ostracism and demonization that ensued”.
...hat choices, suffering and the value of truth can change anyone’s life and could alter their life for better or worse. It doesn’t matter what religion you practice these types of events are in everyone’s life. Reading the book and writing the essay has opened my eyes to realize there are many actions that can affect someone’s life. I enjoyed the book and learning about the Hindu religion.
According to Beck (2005), Indian’s in India had the culture surrounding them to teach their children about who they are, and the significance of Indian culture. Because the children were engrossed into their culture and the significance of the Indian culture, it kept on getting passed on to the next generation (91). To compare this to the modern world, it is like a ring or a special piece of memory that is pass through the family. Meanwhile, the stories of the Indian culture told by the parents are the same as the ring passed through the family because it is significant to that family, or person. Only that family is able to realize how special it is, and they are the only people to keep a value on those priceless jewelry or moments. However, the normal of passing on the Indian culture stopped in the United States because of the changes in the parenting styles. As parents started to change their styles, the children knew they had the advantages. At a young age, who would stay and pay attention to a history lesson that is useless in the worldly life? Many Indian parents started to realize this of how the children in the United States did not care about their culture. In a study done by Beck, it showed about how only about 50% of the children born in the United States had any to some knowledge on their culture, and about another 5-10% have little to no idea of their culture (91). Of
The novel Night by Elie Wiesel, cartoon Tweets on Religious Intolerance by Angelo Lopez and Snake by DH Lawrence all display different forms of intolerance that is present in our society. Religious and racial intolerance is demonstrated via a number of literary and visual techniques such as figurative language and composition. Through the use of these techniques, the composers have each been able to present a new aspect of intolerance and teach the reader about inhumanities and cruelty that are imposed on the people around us.