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Stories about my personal narrative
Stories about my personal narrative
Reflection on writing personal narrative
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Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you moved to America from a different country? In both Of Beetles and Angels and Funny in Farsi you read about two different authors who moved to America from other countries using different perspectives, purposes, and strategies in their text. First, in Of Beetles and Angels, author Mawi Asgedom uses his parents’ advice after moving to America through reflection. And second, in Funny in Farsi, author Firoozeh Dumas comically deals with the constant interviewing through humor and sarcasm when she too moved to the “land of opportunity”. Within these two memoirs both authors use different strategies to convey their unique purposes and perspectives in their text.
In Of Beetles and Angels, Mawi
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Being his strategy, reflection also shows the purpose of Mawi’s passage for example it says, “Remembering where you come from means holding onto the vision that you are …show more content…
Rather than reflection, Dumas shares her story by taking a more humorous approach with sarcasm. She says, “They want to know about more important things such as camels.” In this quote Firoozeh explains how people cared less about the geographical parts of Iran and wanted to know about miniscule things such as camels, and uses sarcasm to get this point across. She also uses humor in the text to share her purpose which is to entertain the reader with her actions and reactions to her peers around her after moving from a distant country to America. Dumas says, “Often kids tried to be funny by chanting, ‘I ran to Iran, I ran to Iran.’ The correct pronunciation, I always informed them, is ‘Ee-rahn.’ ‘I ran’ is a sentence, I told them, as in ‘I ran away from my geography lesson’”. The author shows her purpose in this statement because she is insinuating that they are unintelligent, therefore entertain the reader with a story about her youth. As well as sharing her purpose with the reader she also shared her perspective that Americans knew very little of Iran because of the many questions that people asked her but that the people of America were kind and just wanted to know a little more about her origins. I know this because it says, “But almost every person who asked us questions asked with
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...
... was not present to see. Through poetics and story telling, authors give a more emotional feeling to important events that must be witnessed and remembered. Although resurrecting the past can be a struggle and cause emotional pain, it can also help to soothe people’s spirits. In The House on Mango Street, Ceremony, “Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,” and Zoot Suit each tell a unique story that offers a new perspective and understanding of a culture. Texts that offer a look into the multicultural world we all live in, enables us to reconfigure our understanding of diversity and allows us to revaluate the importance and the presence of race and culture in daily life. Through writing and storytelling, we can also extend our knowledge about parallel cultures by exposing ourselves to the differences and similarities between our own culture and that of other groups.
The role of humor and the use of graphics are similar in both a graphic memoir Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and a graphic novel American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. Persepolis is a graphic memoir of a young girl named Marjane that grew up in Iran when the Islamic revolution was occurring. Satrapi throughout her graphic memoir novel is able to interpret her own personal struggles growing up in a world of tragedies and fitting in society. American Born Chinese is a graphic novel that contains three stories. The main character of the first story is Monkey King. Monkey King is a monkey god with fascinating powers but his problem is certainly being a monkey. Jing Chang is the main character of the second story. Jing Chang is a boy that is new in school and is the only Asian in his class. The main character of the third story is Danny an all American boy. Danny appears to live a normal life but there is a problem which is his immensely stereotypical cousin Chin-Kee. Yang throughout his graphic novel is able to interpret struggles such as: fitting in, culture, and assimilation. In both Persepolis and American Born Chinese the authors illustrate the difficulty of assimilation because of their Iranian and Asian culture in this case. By analyzing the role of humor and the use of graphics one could argue that humor and graphics are well illustrated in both Persepolis and American Born Chinese, which are also used similarly. This is significant because without the role of humor or the use of graphics both of these books would not have been a success.
Reflecting on the process of writing my cultural autobiography, I must say that it has been quite a journey. It has helped me discover that I have been a multicultural person for as long as I can remember. I can clearly see the importance of my early cultural experiences. The positive impact that my relationship with my nanny, Rosa, had on my cultural outlook and eventual course of direction in life is remarkable, yet I had never made that connection before writing this paper. In turn, this makes me realize the potential influence that I may have on my students and it makes me want to do my best as a teacher to ensure that my lessons provide positive experiences for my students. If someday one of my students is asked to write a cultural autobiography, I hope that I
In “Funny in Farsi”, Dumas amuses the reader by narrating her experiences in America. For example, she uses humor. She talks about a boy who asks about having camels, and she tricks him and told him she had two camels.(151) That’s humorous because she didn’t have any camels and he got mad after finding that out. Additionally, she uses anecdotes. One short anecdote was that she tried to explain where Iran was, but she failed and got bad reactions from people when she explained like “Fish eggs? Gross,” and not knowing anything she would talk about.(149) Thats an anecdote because it’s a short story or memory she experienced. One other thing Dumas uses is figurative language. She uses this multiple times, referencing that she felt like she was in an Oprah show and being a celebrity being pursued by paparazzi.(149,151)
Margaret Atwood brilliantly shows how humans are creatures with customs that seem strange at first but in reality make perfect sense in “Homelanding”. Homelanding is a clever account of a human who is describing her species to an alien. This creative format allows for Atwood, the author, to reflect on humanities quirks and strange habits. She also reflects on life and death, comparing and contrasting the two. She then states that she would not want to meet the leader of a foreign planet, but she would instead want to experience the life of the people on the planet.
The Anthology, “American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect” by Paul John Eakin offers a collection of essays that focus on a major period in the history of American literature. The essays focus on diversity, identity and the varieties in the literature of American Autobiographies.
In the passage Two Ways to Belong in America by Bharati Mukherjee, what is being expressed are two drastically distinguished perspectives containing two sisters who migrated from their homeland in India to the “land of opportunity,” best known as the United States of America. Both sisters, Mira and Bharati find it challenging when their two, very different,
Mukherjee compares her experiences in Indian culture, Canadian culture, and finally American culture in her quest to describe “American.” In India, she was a part of a primarily “…Hindu, Bengali-speaking, a...
The diasporic characters face a sense of alienation of exile. The absence of the sense of belonging, the lingering awareness of ‘‘clutching at a world that does not belong to them’’ leaves them isolated and willing to create ‘‘home’’, a ‘‘community’’ in their own way. The protagonists are not averse to the idea of acculturation accompanied by a sense of loss and heart-breaks but they also want to ‘‘adapt and adopt.’’ The nine-short stories in the anthology deals with characters that are, or feel displaced from home. If we try to classify them, we find that the characters are first-generation and second- generation Indian settlers in the US (‘Mrs. Sen,’ ‘The Third and Final Continent,’ ‘When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine’), Indians in the native country (‘Interpreter of Maladies,’ ‘A Real Darwan’) and finally an American (‘Sexy’). In almost all the stories there is a longing for the native land, the life led in India before their migration to the US. Even the second-generation settlers are not free from the connection they have with the country of the birth of their parents. Politically and nationally they are Americans but the ‘added baggage’ of their parent’s memories of their country is something that they have to contend with. The first-generation settlers fear that the children may forget the traditions and culture of their parents and become completely Americanized. Thus they have
My life had been always full of interesting ironies. Before I became eight , I had prohibit the contact with trees, dust and bugs. Today I practice urban exploration as well as running and hiking as hobby. But the most relevant irony would come three years ago when I moved to the United States. I was an ESL (English as Second Language ) student and english kept me awake at night as a painful reminder that this was not my country neither my culture. I hated English with the heart since it symbolized my isolation and prompt my misery.
Bharati Mukherjee’s story, “Two Ways to Belong in America”, is about two sisters from India who later came to America in search of different ambitions. Growing up they were very similar in their looks and their beliefs, but they have contrasting views on immigration and citizenship. Both girls had been living in the United States for 35 years and only one sister had her citizenship. Bharati decided not to follow Indian traditional values and she married outside of her culture. She had no desire to continue worshipping her culture from her childhood, so she became a United States citizen. Her ideal life goal was to stay in America and transform her life. Mira, on the other hand, married an Indian student and they both earned labor certifications that was crucial for a green card. She wanted to move back to India after retirement because that is where her heart belonged. The author’s tone fluctuates throughout the story. At the beginning of the story her tone is pitiful but then it becomes sympathizing and understanding. She makes it known that she highly disagrees with her sister’s viewpoints but she is still considerate and explains her sister’s thought process. While comparing the two perspectives, the author uses many
Throughout this autobiography I want to go through everything in my life that has changed me because of a cultural influence. I will tell my journey through growing up and trying to get a grip on and understand my heritage and make it to present day where I experience culturally different individuals daily.
Diasporic literature reflects challenges, aspirations and anxieties of a person who migrates to a new land. The first generation of all immigrants always suffers from a broad sense of nostalgia, and the first generation immigrants tend to cling strenuously together in order to preserve their cultural, religious and linguistic identity. Preserving their identity is one of their chief concerns. (Anand viii)
Even before leaving for America, Mali had expressed his desire to become a writer and Jagan was eager to render all his support towards Mali’s writing career. But at the same time Jagan also has misgivings about his son’s experiences of life and his equipment to become a writer. In the opinion of Jagan, muses, languages, the experiences of life, the ideal to help humanity, are some of the basic conditions of creative writing. This traditional and yet realistic approach is sharply antagonistic to what Mali visualizes – writing stories by mixing various components like the preparation of a drug. For Mali, writing has relevance only in the terms of materialistic gains. Jagan is also ‘furious’ as much as his calm nature can allow him to be, at Mali’s idea of going to America to learn the technique of story-telling. inspiration from