Bharati Mukherjee's 'Two Ways To Belong To America'

Cultural Heritage is something that everyone has, as well as something everyone is exposed to. Culture defines who you are and gives an explanation about where you come from. Everyone has many cultures that they are a part of. Whether you know it or not, culture plays a great role in shaping a person’s perspective of the world. Culture is always present, but people are always being exposed to new things.

Culture is something that many people don’t fully understand. They just assume that culture is your race or a description of what your beliefs are. Being a part of a culture doesn’t always mean you’ll agree with everything that that particular culture does. Bharati Mukherjee in “Two Ways to Belong to America” gives an example of this:

In one

family, from two sisters alike as peas in a pod, there could not have been a wider divergence of immigrant experience. America spoke to me—I married it— I embraced the demotion from expatriate aristocrat to immigrant nobody, surrendering those thousand years of “pure culture”, the saris, the delightfully accented English. She retained them all. Which of us is the freak? (Mukherjee 71)
Bharati was exposed to American culture and she chose to embrace it.

Yes, she still held onto her Indian culture, but she was able to live being a part of multiple cultures.

Many people believe that culture does determine your perspective of the world. Your culture influences your beliefs and views, which is an explanation for your actions. People don’t always share the same knowledge about the different types of cultures, so they may be culturally different. In “An Indian Father’s Plea” a man’s son wasn’t used to the way Americans did things, so he was considered a “slow learner” (Lake 75). Wind Wolf had the knowledge of his culture, but he wasn’t on the same level as those from the American culture.

Belonging to a culture doesn’t automatically make you similar to those who are also a part of the culture. Everyone is unique in their own way, and they don’t always see things the same. In “Everyday Use” there were three main characters who belonged to the same cultural group, but were completely different. Maggie didn’t let anything else influence her, she stayed true to her culture. Her sister Dee strayed away from it and began to partake in different things outside of her culture. Dee didn’t understand that quilting was a part of her culture. Dee wanted the quilts, and she was upset at the fact her sister would be getting them, “Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts” (Walker 64). Quilts were more than just blankets to Maggie, “this was the way she knew God to work” (Walker

65).
How you were brought up definitely determines your views on the world; however, you can still believe one thing and feel a completely different way about it.