As I walked into the tea shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown, I felt a sense of excitement. I sat down and ordered my favorite tea, tieguanyin. Tieguanyin is the variety of Chinese oolong tea that I drank a lot as a child in China. The waiter came by with my drink and I took my first sip, full of expectations. The sense of excitement I felt walking into the shop quickly turned into sorrow. Not only did it not taste the same, I did not feel the same fondness that I felt drinking the tea in China. Growing up, I would visit China every summer because for most of my childhood my dad lived in China, apart from me and my mom. My dad and I had a tradition of visiting tea shops and brewing our own tea at home basically everyday. While most of the adults …show more content…
Whenever I see tieguanyin tea on the menu of these shops, I order it just because it is afterall, my favorite tea. The tea is far from bad, but I don’t get the same the feeling of joy and comfort as I did in China. The author of “Indian Take Out”, Jhumpa Lahiri wrote about a similar experience she had about food from her home country. She felt closer to the spices her and her family purchased from India in contrast to the spices available at her local supermarket. She never explicitly explains why she feels that way, but from my experience, I can say that a big portion of eating is the experience. For the author, Lahiri, there was this excitement her and her family had while in India. She was able to eat foods that her parents grew up eating. There was also a sense of thrill as they smuggled spices over to the states. She lost all those feelings when her family stopped that tradition and resorted to buying traditional Indian foods from the supermarket. I understand why Lahiri left her last paragraph kind of ambiguous. When I first read her last paragraph, I questioned why she felt sad. I get it now. There are many reasons and a lot of it is hard to say. When I drink tea from tea shops in San Francisco, I feel empty. There’s a part of me that longs to be in the environment that I was in when I fell in love with this
In Philip J. Deloria’s Athletic chapter from his book “Indians in unexpected places” he talks about his grandfather’s connection to sports. He goes into further detail about how his grandfather’s place in sports is similar to other Native Americans. Native Americans used sports as a way to find their place in a new society. Sports was also used to strengthen the community. “Many Indian communities responded by drawing webs of kingship and unity ever tighter, trying to keep sport stars humble” (113). Athletics was now being used to bring all of the community, especially in times when it seemed divided. Sports also disproved the “Vanishing Indian” idea because society saw Native Americans playing in these sports and saw that they still existed.
...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.
It is during her stay at the White Family Home that she tries to grapple with cultural identity. In this regard, the novel articulates that Lucy was optimistic of living behind her cultural identity from her West Indies background; however, with time, Lucy generates nostalgic memories of her homeland. This portrays the hegemonic ideology of cultural identity. For example, she begins to remember the foods that she consumed while back home. Additionally, the cultural representation of cheating in marriage is replicated in Lucy’s new-found home.
“Like many immigrant offspring I felt intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new, approved of on either side of the hyphen” (Lahiri, My Two lives). Jhumpa Lahiri, a Pulitzer Prize winner, describes herself as Indian-American, where she feels she is neither an Indian nor an American. Lahiri feels alienated by struggling to live two lives by maintaining two distinct cultures. Lahiri’s most of the work is recognized in the USA rather than in India where she is descents from (the guardian.com). Lahiri’s character’s, themes, and imagery in her short stories and novels describes the cultural differences of being Indian American and how Indian’s maintain their identity when moved to a new world. Lahiri’s inability to feel accepted within her home, inability to be fully American, being an Indian-American, and the difference between families with same culture which is reflected in one of her short stories “Once in a Lifetime” through characterization and imagery.
On one side, menu items of Chinese restaurants change a lot when the Chinese immigrants came to the United States. For instance, authentic Chinese restaurants does not have General Tso’s Chicken and fortune cookies. The dish of General Tso’s Chicken is originally from America. Since the General Tso’s chicken has a same name with a famous Chinese statesman in the last century. Most people think it is authentic Chinese food. But actually, it is inauthentic Chinese food. There is a joke of this disk. That is even Zongtang Zuo does not eat General Tso’s chicken because of the dish of name is from Zongtang Zuo (“The Strange Tale”). The other is fortune cookies. People do not eat fortune cookies after they finish all dishes in China because there are cultural differences. In China, the Chinese restaurants has not a traditional culture which eats fortune cookies after finish eating all dishes. Also, the cold water does not exist at the dinner table in China. Hot water is almost always served (Xiaoyu Yan). But, the cold water absolutely appeared in the Chinese restaurants in the United States. Even the authentic menu items do not include either fortune cookies or General Tso’s Chicken. On the other side, Chow Mein is a traditional Chinese food. But, the chef changes the cooking process of Chow Mein in the United States. The reason is the owner of restaurant wants to adapt
She compares India to “a silk cocoon frozen in time where we are sheltered by family and friends” (Kothari). The metaphor gives the reader a descriptive image of a haven that Kothari’s parents experience when visiting their homeland. She describes the cocoon to represent something safe and familiar (Kothari). Kothari also uses symbolism to describe American students. When she speaks of the “tuna eaters,” she is representing the American children, creating a separation between herself as a non-tuna eater (Kothari). Kothari goes on further to show her differences from the American students by ironically stating: “The tuna smells fishy” (Kothari). She makes it clear that tuna is a foreign food for her, though it is the representative food of the American students (Kothari). Kothari employs rhetorical devices and strengthen the depiction of her struggles with her identity by using different symbolic and figurative techniques. For readers to understand Kothari’s purpose through these devices, her main points are effectively strengthened since there is a level of analysis added to her piece that forces reader to think
Mira is the sister that likes celebrates her culture of being Indian. For example, Bharati talked about how her sister felt about being american, she said “She is happier to live in America as an expatriate Indian than as an immigrant American”. She expresses that her sister wouldn’t want to change her culture or who she is. Bharati on the other hand, likes the American way of life better than her Indian culture. In other words, she wants to be more apart of her new culture, she said “I need to feel like a part of the community I have adopted (as I tried to feel in Canada as well)”. This reinforces how she and Mira have different views on how to integrate into America. This relates to the feeling of being introduced to a new culture. How you can still be apart of your original culture, or how you can just become really into this new culture. It expresses how cultural morals would affect just about anything in your
There are some cultures that are similar in terms of geographical region and as more in similarities than differences. For example, by historical influence, Latin American countries share culture between them and also with Spain, as well as Europeans who share certain cultural, tastes in food, manners and customs, because some countries had influences of past kingdoms and conquests. It can be said that no culture is like the Chinese culture, neither in language, customs, or personality; the Chinese culture is so unique that is a whole world to know. Chinese cuisine is adapted to the climate and the characteristics of the geographical area, meaning that Chinese food cannot be eaten the same or in the same way as in other countries. In fact, it is said that the tasting of traditional Chinese recipes in their home is a
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
The two sisters always take Indian food for lunch. “Premila and I were the only ones who had Indian food.” (Rau) “ She also told Mother, in an aside, that we should take sandwiches to school the next day.” (Rau) Premila and Santha felt like they stood out from everyone else so they asked their mother to make something else.
The author of the story was born in 1967 in London, and soon after she moved to Rhode Island in the United States. Although Lahiri was born in England and raised in the United States and her parent’s still carried an Indian cultural background and held their believes, as her father and mother were a librarian and teacher. Author’s Indian heritage is a strong basis of her stories, stories where she questions the identity and the plot of the different cultural displaced. Lahiri always interactive with her parents in Bengali every time which shows she respected her parents and culture. As the author was growing up she never felt that she was a full American, as her parents deep ties with India as they often visited the country.
In “If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?” Geeta Kothari kicks off her writing with a memory embodying her mother and her as they pop open a fresh can of very potent fishy smelling tuna, which her mother buys to satisfy Kothari’s yearning for what she calls “American food” (922). Since Kothari’s family is part of the Indian culture, she is restricted from eating certain kinds of foods. For Kothari, this is a constant struggle throughout her childhood. She wants the freedom to eat what her classmates and cousins do. Deeper into her story she comments on how she marries a man who eats those same American foods she used to crave when younger, and is feeling concerned that her husband might choose another wife who eats similar foods. Finally, to accompany her concerns she has trouble recreating dishes from her own culture in her adulthood.
A defining trait of every country, whether it be Italy or India, is the type of cuisine that they serve. One of the best ways to gain an understanding of a country’s culture is through their food. While some people would deem other aspects of a culture as more important, it is a feature easiest to explain and relate to. A distinguishing fact is that food is both physical and mental in that its creation takes dedication and effort; food is able to create emotions given the proper setting. As cooking traditions evolved throughout the years, to fit people’s ever changing tastes, so does the culture. They are parallel to each other in that as one aspect of culture changes, so does the food and vice versa. Two of the most popular types of foods in society today are American food, and Chinese food. The typical features of how food is prepared and made, the tastes preferred, the utensils, and the beliefs about the food's properties are all reflections of the American and Chinese cultures.
The speaker tells us “I don’t fit” (13) where she is comparing herself to “food cooked in milk of coconut/where you expected ghee or cream” (15-16) or an “unexpected aftertaste/ of cardamom or neem” (17-18). The use of taste to describe a feeling of being foreign is evocative because a country's cuisine is a compliment of its culture, so it is interesting that Dharker uses flavors from her own multicultural background.... ... middle of paper ... ...
Today, India is the second most populous country in the world. The culture of India is also among the oldest to survive, reaching back to nearly 5,000 years. India received their inde-pendence from Britain on August 15th, 1947, thus allowing them to become the most populous democracy in the world. There are many aspects as to what makes India unique, one principle in particular is their food. Indian cooking is vivid, exquisite, and simply delicious. It depends on a wide variety of spices, herbs, and grains for its specific taste. The different types of food which India carry include basic spices, traditional foods, and tasty snacks. It is notable that India has been one of the world’s main dealer of spices for at least 3,600 years.