Migration of the human population began over a million years ago beginning in Africa and later across Asia and Europe. Since the beginning of human existence, migration has continued through both voluntary migration within one’s country or elsewhere and through involuntary migration, which includes the slave trade and human trafficking. The movement of labor to capital can simply illustrate modern migration, in its purest form. Because of the constant migration of humans across the globe, the assimilation of many cultures was forced. This in turn led to inherent problems such as cultural alienation and cultural fragmentation to exist within society. In each of the short stories, “One Out of Many” written by Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul and “The …show more content…
Naipaul tells the story through an Indian man by the name of Santosh, who is emigrating from Bombay to America with his “master”. Santosh’s actions and thoughts of American life and culture is demonstrated unequivocally throughout the work. Naipaul begins his exposition of cultural alienation through the analysis of class. The author allows the reader to observe Santosh’s discomfort while he is on the plane traveling to America. (Norton 1662) Through this observation, the reader notes Santosh’s loss of his traditional Indian caste identity and his subsequent acquirement of his new hybrid identity. Therefore, He was now simply considered an impoverished Indian immigrant. Thus, Naipaul incorporates the first element of cultural alienation, …show more content…
Lessing begins by allowing the reader to enter the mind of the narrator in its innocent childlike state. Thus, the reader is able to understand the cultural standpoint from which the narrator is speaking from as the story progresses. This childlike state also allows the reader to see the importance of race in their society. This is evidenced through the quote: “It was this instilled consciousness of danger, of something unpleasant, that made it easy to laugh out loud.” (Norton 1477) Children, often considered the pinnacle of innocence, also contributed to the rigid class and racial structure that is present within the society in the text. As the text progresses, the reader further observes the narrator and her struggle with the change in dynamics pertaining to class and race. This is perhaps most evident when she encounters Chief Mshlanga who hails from the village not far from her home. In the narrator’s encounter with the chief, the narrator completely sheds her synthetic privilege that she has created and immediately becomes curious with chief’s intentions and heritage that he has beheld for essentially his lifetime. This is important because, as a result of this, the narrator later in the text goes
Lawall, Sarah,et al. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2nd ed. Volume A (slipcased). Norton, 2001. W.W. Norton and Company Inc. New York, NY.
Bierhorst, John, et al. The Norton Anthology: World Literature. Vol I. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.,
Jhumpa Lahiri, the brilliant author of The Namesake, made a significant point about second-generation immigrants having dual-identities in America. In terms of dual-identity in The Namesake, a person is encountered with choosing between cultures, lifestyles, and decisions. Gogol Ganguli, a protagonist, faces the problem of dual-identity throughout the book. Furthermore, he was faced with the idea of becoming either a true American or Bengali. Gogol’s problematic dual-identity journey started from the day that he was born till the day he found a true balance between his dual-identity.
• AW’s work is deeply rooted in oral tradition; in the passing on of stories from generation to generation in the language of the people. To AW the language had a great importance. She uses the “Slave language”, which by others is seen as “not correct language”, but this is because of the effect she wants the reader to understand.
W.W.Norton and Company. The Norton Anthology World Literature. Ed. Peter Simon. new york: W.W. Norton and Company, 2013.
Charlemagne was once quoted having said “To have a second language is to have a second soul” (Kushner 29). In achieving full comprehension of another language, one also gains insight into the culture of foreign individuals. It is common knowledge that in the modern world, English is the dominant tongue. Yet, bilingualism, even multilingualism, is a sure sign of possessing the scarce knowledge of cultural diversity. As American society becomes more accepting of various cultures in its politics and education, foreign voices also appear more in American literature. The diversity of origins of the latest young writers is vast: In The New Yorker’s 2010 “Top 20 Under 40” list of new American writers, over one-third were not born in this country. Their homes cross the globe, from Latvia to Peru (“Top 20 Under 40”). The rise in popularity of stories of these bicultural writers can be attributed to the changing of attitudes in America. Our history and present is laden with the accounts of immigrants. Their perspectives are fresh and bursting with talent. Jhumpa Lahiri, a female Bengali author, gained prominence after she was listed in the 1999 edition of the “Top 20 Under 40”. That same year, her collection of short stories “Interpreter of Maladies” was published, and went on to sell millions of copies worldwide. Lahiri in particular is well known for, in the words of Aviya Kushner, “translating the immigrant experience for us, often lyrically…as the English-born child of immigrants, she can move smoothly between both worlds, marveling and assuring us that, yes, it will be all right” (Kushner 27). In many of her short stories, Lahiri focuses on that transition from a foreign culture-in her case, Indian-to American culture. More than oft...
The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Volume 2. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2013.
“Mrs. Sen” from Jhumpa Lahiri’s, 1999 short story collection “Interpreter of Maladies” deals with the experience of the Indian immigrant to America. Mrs. Sen is constructed around her experiences of immigration and the cultural differences between Indian and America. Additionally, this story discusses the issues of identity, cultural displacement and the difficulties of those who are physically and psychologically displaced. In his book “The Postcolonial Short Story,” Paul Russell states that it Lahiri’s stories focuses more on dislocation rather than location and thus this dislocation has become a dominant trait and theme in her stories (np).
Damrosch, David and David L. Pike. The Longman Anthology of World Literature Second Edition. Pearson Education, Inc., 2009.
Lawall, Sarah N., and Maynard Mack. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Second ed. Vol. B. New York: Norton, 2002. Print.
It is also associated with the works of members of the Indian Diaspora. Indian Diaspora writers contributed significantly in the field of literature. All in all , recently , Indian women writers who have chosen to live outside India - like Kiran Desai , Bharati Mukherjee ,Uma Parmeshwaran, Arundhati Roy, Tanuja Desai, Meera Alexander, Meera Syal, Jhumpa Lahri, Farahan Sheikh, Ravinder Randhawa have launched the Indian literatures in English into fresh and emergent territories. All these women writers’ experiences are edged as they have to suffer double marginalisation- one as a women and another as an immigrant. They deal with the problematic of gender, issues of immigrant identity, racial conflicts and cultural confrontation. The impressive progress of the South Asian diasporic writers left an indelible impact on
Migration, the movement of people from one area to another, results in the introduction of new ideas and styles of living. Often times, these new ideas conflict with a person’s previous ideas causing dilemma; the person’s dilemma leads to the hybridization of two ideas or cultures. “Bharat Changes His Image”, by Yasmine Gooneratne, should remain in the Migrations unit because the characters struggle to find a balance between Sri Lankan and Australian cultures while establishing themselves in their new home. Their actions and struggles parallel the unit’s essential questions and enduring understandings.
Her message on the different reasons why immigrants come to new countries and cultures is highly perceived in her story. Her use of rhetorical devices helps success her in her story. The usage of ethos, storytelling, word choice and structure played a major role in aiding her beliefs and illustrating them to her audience. Ethos helped her compare her and her sister’s beliefs on their culture and lifestyle in India and America. Storytelling made it possible for readers to connect with her thoughts and stay entertained throughout the paper. Her word choice and structure also helped the outline of the story and made her beliefs sound more
Marginalization of the people of this region could be seen in vogue in the historical writings as well as the theoretical framework of the intellectuals. Popular intellectuals of the academic circle such as Eric Wolf’s ‘people without history’, E.P Thompson’s ‘ unsung voices of history’, Genovese’s ‘ objects and subjects of history’, Ranajit Guha’s ‘Subaltern’, Lacan’s ‘ others’, Sharia’s ‘ hybrid histories’ and many other intellectuals continuously questions the validity of the existing orthodox historical discourses of the marginalized down through the ages. The mainstream society carries on a continuous, harsh and systematic attack on the social system of the Northeast, their culture, their tribal identity and their way of life. The debts of mainstream India to the efforts and struggles of the tribes of this region during the colonial regime and even in the pre- colonial days should be acknowledged by re- writing the history of our country. The history of their struggles is not only documented in their scripts but also in their folktales, dances and songs that passed on from one generation to the other. In sh...
Puchner, Martin. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Vol. A. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2012. Print.