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How culture influences identity development
How culture influences identity development
How does language reflect on identity
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----------Unhie
Yangsook Choi’s ‘The Name Jar’ published in the year 2001 is multicultural children’s fiction which deals with the apprehensions of a newly arrived Korean girl Unhie in the United States who is nervous about her name which she thinks kids in her new school will not be able to pronounce or understand. On the first day of her school while giving an introduction she tells the class that she hasn’t picked up a name yet post which a large jar filled with different American English names comes to her desk which leaves her confused as to which name to finally pick for herself. Will she pick up a new American name or continue with her Korean name? The story is multifaceted in its maneuverings of identity politics, culture, multiculturalism
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the results were that identity formation came out to be what ‘other’ think about us or in what light are we perceived as people that influenced one’ own understanding of self and identity.so identity came to be understood as culturally rooted image which was sketched vis a vis the group they could identify themselves with. But Rajeev bhargave in his ‘multiculturalsim and…’ counters this logic of identity as “trivial” and “reductive” . he says “ if an object has to retain its identity,it must remain same with itself overtime. A thing with a plausible sense of identity must endure. However, it is impossible for anything to remain same with itself in all respects all the time. The demand that it do so imposes such stringent requirement that no object can meet it. It renders any object retaining its identity over time”. So a person can be identified to some group or culture in only some but not all
Written by Margaret K. Pai, the Dreams of Two Yi-min narrates the story of her Korean American family with the main focus on the life journeys of her father and mother, Do In Kwon and Hee Kyung Lee. Much like the majority of the pre-World War II immigrants, the author’s family is marked and characterized by the common perception of the “typical” Asian immigrant status in the early 20th century: low class, lack of English speaking ability, lack of transferable education and skills, and lack of knowledge on the host society’s mainstream networks and institutions (Zhou and Gatewood 120, Zhou 224). Despite living in a foreign land with countless barriers and lack of capital, Kwon lead his wife and children to assimilate culturally, economically, and structurally through his growing entrepreneurship. Lee, on the other hand, devoted herself not only to her husband’s business but also to the Korean American society. By investing her time in the Korean Methodist Church and the efforts of its associated societies, such as the Methodist Ladies Aid Society and the Youngnam Puin Hoe, Lee made a worthy contribution to the emergence and existence of Hawaii’s Korean American community.
The Girl with Seven Names is an incredible memoir filled with suspense, drama, and bravery from a young girl who couldn’t even keep her name but overcame every obstacle in her path. After escaping North Korea, crossing China, and finally reaching South Korea, Hyeonseo Lee tells us her passionate story about every experience leading up to her arrival in South Korea, hunger, cold, fear, threats, and other complicated events took place in Lee’s Journey to obtain the freedom she deserved. As a North Korean defector, Hyeonseo Lee delivers an ambitious and powerful story about her escape from North Korea and the struggles to adapt into a completely different society.
Adams Johnson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Orphan Master’s Son, amazingly depicts the disturbing lives of North Koreans and government horrors through its simplistic language with relatable characters. The Orphan Master’s Son takes place in North Korea and revolves around Jun Do, who is the son of an orphan master, but who receives the shame that Koreans place on orphans. Then he enters the military where he learns different fighting tactics and becomes a professional kidnapper for the North Koreans. For his reward, the government assigns Jun Do to a listening position on a fishing boat where he becomes a hero for fighting the Americans with a story that the fishing crew and he invented to keep from getting placed in a prison camp after to one of their crewmates defects. Jun Do then goes to Texas as a translator, where he learns about freedom and other cultures. When the mission fails the government sends him to a camp where Jun Do’s name and identity die.
Although the concept of identity is recurrent in our daily lives, it has interpreted in various ways.
Identity is 'how you view yourself and your life.'; (p. 12 Knots in a String.) Your identity helps you determine where you think you fit in, in your life. It is 'a rich complexity of images, ideas and associations.';(p. 12 Knots in a String.) It is given that as we go through our lives and encounter different experiences our identity of yourselves and where we belong may change. As this happens we may gain or relinquish new values and from this identity and image our influenced. 'A bad self-image and low self-esteem may form part of identity?but often the cause is not a loss of identity itself so much as a loss of belonging.'; Social psychologists suggest that identity is closely related to our culture. Native people today have been faced with this challenge against their identity as they are increasingly faced with a non-native society. I will prove that the play The Rez Sisters showed this loss of identity and loss of belonging. When a native person leaves the reservation to go and start a new life in a city they are forced to adapt to a lifestyle they are not accustomed to. They do not feel as though they fit in or belong to any particular culture. They are faced with extreme racism and stereotypes from other people in the nonreservational society.
Poetry is a form of literature that some view as obsolete in the modern world, but in the poem “To the Man Who Shouted ‘I Like Pork Fried Rice’ at Me on the Street”, Franny Choi dispels that belief. She uses poetry as a medium to convey her own personal experience with the stereotyping and fetishization of Asian American women, which is an issue that millions of Asian American women still face today. When considering Choi’s background as a Korean American woman and how that has shaped her identity and philosophy, we see how being an Asian American woman is intrinsically a core part of her work, which is why much of her work is about breaking the stereotypes that come with this identity.
It’s pretty clear that film and literature are very different mediums and when you try to make one into the other, such as an adaptation, you’re going to have some things that are lost in translation and seen in a different light. When an original work is made into a movie, I think they’re kind of at a disadvantage because they only have a few hours to get the whole story across while also keeping the viewer intrigued by what is taking place on the screen right in front of their eyes. Movies are able to contain special effects, visuals, and music though which can impact a viewer and make a scene stay in their mind longer which is a plus side to being able to view something. Literature on the other hand, has a greater advantage. They can keep the reader entertained for a considerably long time and you’re able to get more information about people and events such as what a character is thinking or what is happening behind the scenes during a specific event. I understand that people are going to have different opinions when it comes to whether a book or film adaptation of a work is the best and it is not always going to be the same for each and every piece of work. One thing I think though, is that The Namesake in both the film and the movie, they’re both accurate and concise in the way that they relate to one another.
Outcome of Mispronouncing a Student's Name Many names have different meanings in their culture. “The Lasting Impact of Mispronouncing Students’ Names” by Clare Mclaughlin begins with the author discussing Yee Wan, a student, who moved to the United States from Mainland China. After enrolling in her school's bilingual programs, she was faced with the decision to keep her name or change it to something more Americanized, so teachers wouldn’t mispronounce it. I can relate well to this because coming from Nigeria to America, I have had my name mispronounced a lot. Having my given name mispronounced is a micro- aggression, so I let the teachers call me by my nickname so that they won't mispronounce it.
Culture and identity are two very strange ideas. They are received at a very young age, yet they are very hard to give to someone else. They will affect you for the rest or your life, yet for the most part you are born into them. However, they soon become very important to us and we cannot, no matter what we do, live without them. They are a part of us, and a vital aspect of society. However, it took me a very long time to recognize that I had an identity and a little while after that before I knew what it was.
Over the course of the novel, The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri, Gogol is constantly moving, and by the time he is in his late twenties, he has already lived in five different homes, while his mother, Ashima has lived in only five houses her entire life. Each time Gogol moves, he travels farther away from his childhood home on Pemberton Road, symbolizing his search for identity and his desire to further himself from his family and Bengali culture. Alternatively, Ashima’s change of homes happens in order to become closer to family, representing her kinship with Bengali culture. Ashima has always had difficulty with doing things on her own, but by the end of the story she ultimately decides to travel around both India and the States without a real home as a result of the evolution of her independence and the breaking of her boundaries; in contrast, Gogol finally realizes that he has always stayed close to home, despite his yearning for escape, and settles into his newly discovered identity - the one that he possessed all along.
which their pride and learning can be further nurtured.” For example, Sun-hee found out that kanji Linda Sue Park is a writer who was born on March 25, 1960 Urbana Illinois, Then in 2002 ms.park wrote, “When My Name Was Keoko”. Importantly, The book is set in Korea during World War II, when Japan conquered Korea and was trying to destroy Korean culture. Ather wanted to write a book that taught people this lesson: the hard ships of their lives. On page 73, “Our duty to Abuji is important” I say. “It's a part of our culture. But if the Japanese have there way, someday there won't be any such thing as our culture.” Abuji is there father. Therefore, Sun-hee thought it was important to maintain your culture but also she had to survive in the Japanese colonist ways. It was hard for her to live contrasting lives. On page 137, “I know it will come sooner
As stated by Rockquemore (1998), identity is defined as a self-understanding that positions and describes a person; in social terms it establishes the what and the where for a person. This not only places individuals in a position where they can understand themselves and others but also where they can assess themselves relative to others. Thus, an individual can’t have a fulfilled identity without others who authenticate that identity. This bec...
What is identity? Identity is an unbound formation which is created by racial construction and gender construction within an individual’s society even though it is often seen as a controlled piece of oneself. In Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum’s piece, “The Complexity of Identity: ‘Who Am I?’, Tatum asserts that identity is formed by “individual characteristics, family dynamics, historical factors, and social and political contexts” (Tatum 105). Tatum’s piece, “The Complexity of Identity: ‘Who Am I?’” creates a better understanding of how major obstacles such as racism and sexism shape our self identity.
...can go through an entire lifetime and not really know how to define their own identity. In many cases people suffer through a great crisis to discover who they really are. If someone doesn?t know the meaning of their own identity, how can society apply a definition to the word? It leaves people to ponder whether or not there are some feelings and parts of life that simply cannot be explained. When defining the word identity scholars and common men alike must agree to disagree. It is a word so diverse in context that it is seemingly impossible to take it down to a simplified definition. There are some things in life that just aren?t meant to be completely understood, and one?s identity is among these things. Not until a person has a lived out their live could they sit down and tell you how their adventure has shaped them into the person they became in the end.
Do our names give us meaning or do we give meaning to our names? From the moment we are born our parents are the ones to give us our name without knowing our personality, only hoping it fits who we grow up to be. In Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake, the protagonist is struggling with a conflict within himself whether to accept his Bengali culture or to embrace a new way. The American way. Being the son of two Bengali parents Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli were in a rush to name their newborn child after never having received the name sent by the protagonist’s grandmother. In this moment, at the rush of the hour the child was named Gogol, taking the name of an author of the book that saved the life of his father after having been in a horrible