American Culture By Achy Obejas Summary

1055 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The role of culture in the development of adolescents

In a world where people view cultural identification in black and white, simple categorization cannot apply to everyone. Immigration is one method that can result in a blend of two or more cultures, with immigrants simultaneously celebrating their home culture and incorporating novel traits into their lives. While many older immigrants attempt to preserve their native culture, youths often adopt new values and traditions throughout adolescence. The result of this mixture is transculturation, in which immigrants become a hybrid of cultures, reflecting aspects of both in their mentalities and actions. This essay will exhibit how Achy Obejas juxtaposes aspects of traditional Cuban values with American culture to demonstrate the transculturation …show more content…

As she matures in the United States and attends college, the narrator begins to dress in the fashion of the other students, leaving behind the styles she wore in Cuba. When she returns home in a fringe jacket and flowing jeans, her mother states that she “almost didn’t recognize [her];” meanwhile, the sweater the narrator wore on her voyage from Cuba is “somewhere in the closet of [her] bedroom,” kept as a memory (Obejas 121). Her mother’s surprised reaction to her fashion shows that although the narrator has continued growing and developing American styles, her parents have kept their identities essentially unchanged. The narrator’s American culture is now as much a part of her character as her Cuban heritage. However, her adoption of these practices does not invalidate nor overshadow her ties to Cuba, as she still possesses the green sweater, her symbol of her native country. While she may no longer dress as she did in Cuba, her past is always with her. After her father’s death, her mother gifts her a box of possessions “all wrapped up in [the] old green sweater,” causing the narrator to become “overwhelmed by the treasures within it” (Obejas 129-130). The green sweater has always remained with the narrator, just as her Cuban identity has never left her. She has embraced new ideologies, but she still values her past. Her Cuban upbringing has merely blended with American culture to form an identity that transcends national

Show More
Related

  • Arturo Islas' Migrant Souls: The Lonely Effects of Assimilation

    1197 Words  | 3 Pages

    Islas, Arturo. From Migrant Souls. American Mosaic: Multicultural Readings in Context. Eds. Gabriele Rico, Barbara Roche and Sandra Mano. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1995. 483-491.

    Read More

  • How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

    1624 Words  | 4 Pages

    Immigrants come to America, the revered City upon a Hill, with wide eyes and high hopes, eager to have their every dream and wild reverie fulfilled. Rarely, if ever, is this actually the case. A select few do achieve the stereotypical ‘rags to riches’ transformation – thus perpetuating the myth. The Garcia family from Julia Alvarez’s book How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, fall prey to this fairytale. They start off the tale well enough: the girls are treated like royalty, princesses of their Island home, but remained locked in their tower, also known as the walls of their family compound. The family is forced to flee their Dominican Republic paradise – which they affectionately refer to as simply, the Island – trading it instead for the cold, mean streets of American suburbs. After a brief acclimation period, during which the girls realize how much freedom is now available to them, they enthusiastically try to shed their Island roots and become true “American girls.” They throw themselves into the American lifestyle, but there is one slight snag in their plan: they, as a group, are unable to forget their Island heritage and upbringing, despite how hard they try to do so. The story of the Garcia girls is not a fairytale – not of the Disney variety anyway; it is the story of immigrants who do not make the miraculous transition from rags to riches, but from stifling social conventions to unabridged freedom too quickly, leaving them with nothing but confusion and unresolved questions of identity.

    Read More

  • A Partial Remembrance Of A Puerto Rican Childhood Summary

    895 Words  | 2 Pages

    #1.The thesis in “A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood” by Judith Ortiz Cofer is that because of the stories her grandmother told every afternoon when she was a child, her writing was heavily influenced and she learned what it was like to be a ‘Puerto Rican woman’. The thesis of the selection is stated in the first and last sentence of the second paragraph: “It was on these rockers that my mother, her sisters, and my grandmother sat on these afternoons of my childhood to tell their stories, teaching each other, and my cousin and me, what it was like to be a woman, more specifically, a Puerto Rican woman . . . And they told cuentos, the morality and cautionary tales told by the women in our family for generations: stories that became

    Read More

  • Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents By Julia Alvarez Essay

    1113 Words  | 3 Pages

    Upon returning to the Dominican Republic after many years, Yolanda decides to take a trip across the island––something her family views as ridiculous. “‘This is not the states’ . . . ‘A woman just doesn’t travel alone in this country.” (9) This quote highlights the sexism inherent in Dominican society. Yolanda’s family is asserting that women are not individuals capable of taking care of themselves. On another hand, Yolanda’s close friendship with Mundín causes tensions as their mothers confront them about crossing gender lines. “My mother disapproved. The outfit would only encourage my playing with Mundín and the boy cousins. It was high time I got over my tomboy phase and started acting like a young lady señorita. ‘But it is for girls,’ . . . ‘boys don’t wear skirts.’” (228) This is an example of how Dominican societal norms and gender roles have impacted the sisters. Yolanda and Mundín were the only boy-girl playmates out of all the García children, yet this was frowned upon by both of their parents as to not impede the seemingly inevitable growth of Yolanda’s femininity, and conversely, Mundín’s masculinity. Moreover, this shows how societally-prescribed gender roles were instilled in Yolanda at a young age. However, this is not the only way in which women’s freedoms are

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis Of Children In No Man's Land

    1368 Words  | 3 Pages

    The autobiography Journey of Hope Memoirs of a Mexican Girl and the documentary short “Children in No Man’s Land” has brought into light three important topics that are results of immigration. The first is the “American dream” and the notion of yearning to migrate abroad to seek dreams formed by misconceptions of the limited knowledge one has of their destination. The second is assimilation and the process of assimilating oneself to their new homeland. The third is a unique situation presented in both these works, which is estrangement from their family members. This paper attempts to critically analyze the unique journey of immigration for Rosalina, Maria de Jesus, and Rene. It argues that glorified images and dreams of what America could be like falsely creates a sense of hope. It focuses on the dual task of reviewing the process of assimilation based on each immigrant situation, and an examination of familial estrangement as

    Read More

  • Bread Givers By Anzia Yezierska

    1079 Words  | 3 Pages

    Moving from the unpleasant life in the old country to America is a glorious moment for an immigrant family that is highlighted and told by many personal accounts over the course of history. Many people write about the long boat ride, seeing The Statue of Liberty and the “golden” lined streets of New York City and how it brought them hope and comfort that they too could be successful in American and make it their home. Few authors tend to highlight the social and political developments that they encountered in the new world and how it affected people’s identity and the community that they lived in. Authors from the literature that we read in class highlight these developments in the world around them, more particularly the struggles of assimilating

    Read More

  • Double Consciousness In Du Bois's The Soul Of Black Folk

    855 Words  | 2 Pages

    When people migrate to America, they experience a cultural shock. Immigrants feel overwhelmed by the new language and culture. The struggle to adapt to the new environment forces them to try to fit into the American stereotype. In The Soul of Black Folk, Du Bois says that the way white Americans view African Americans creates a tension on African American social identity. This tension is also seen on immigrant’s social identity once they migrate to the United States. Immigrants struggle to reconcile two cultures with a multi-faceted perspective of self, which creates a double consciousness.

    Read More

  • Four Stages of Culture Shock Faced By Immigrants

    1688 Words  | 4 Pages

    Sometimes it is the result of losing their identity. In the article “The Phases of Culture Shock”, Pamela J. Brink and Judith Saunders describe four phases of culture shock. They are: Honeymoon Phase, Disenchantment Phase, Beginning Resolution Phase, and Effective Function Phase. These phases denote some of the stages that exemplify culture shock. The four phases are illustrated in the articles “New Immigrants: Portraits in Passage” by Thomas Bentz, “Immigrant America: A Portrait” by Alejandro Portes and Ruben G. Rumbaut, “When I Was Puerto Rican” by Esmeralda Santiago, “Today’s Immigrants, Their Stories” by Thomas Kessner and Betty Boyd Caroli, and lastly, “The New Americans: Immigrant Life in Southern California” by Ulli Steltzer, and are about the experiences of This essay will examine the four phases of culture shock and classify the experiences of these immigrants by the different phases of culture shock identified.

    Read More

  • Joy Castro On Being Educated Analysis

    469 Words  | 1 Pages

    In both “Hungry” and “On Being Educated,” Joy Castro uses “academic” prose through her use of emotional, descriptive, and explanatory words and sentences. It is through her experience and lense that she is able to connect such little things to such major historical occurrences and creations. When telling a story, Castro does not leave it at one short explanation, but she furthers the conversation. Instead of simply stating that when she moved in with her birth father she ate lots of food and bought lots of clothes, Castro chooses to say that she was “devouring tuna, wheat bread, peanut butter, putting on weight, putting on the clothes [her father and his wife] bought for [her] in bulk at the outlet store, since [she’d] run away with nothing”

    Read More

  • Trapped by Two Cultures in Beets, Made You Mine, America, and Sangre 24

    712 Words  | 2 Pages

    Something that has always fascinated me is the confrontation with a completely different culture. We do not have to travel far to realize that people really lead different lives in other countries and that the saying "Home sweet home" often applies to most of us. What if we suddenly had to leave our homes and settle somewhere else, somewhere where other values and beliefs where common and where people spoke a different language? Would we still try to hang on to the 'old home' by speaking our mother tongue, practising our own religion and culture or would we give in to the new and exciting country and forget our past? And what would it be like for our children, and their children? In Identity Lessons - Contemporary Writing About Learning to Be American I found many different stories telling us what it is like to be "trapped" between two cultures. In this short essay I aim to show that belonging to two cultures can be very confusing.

    Read More

  • Yolanda Garcia Identity

    634 Words  | 2 Pages

    Yolanda’s upbringing was strictly Catholic and Dominican, and to be suddenly thrust into a new world with new cultures and beliefs leaves Yolanda confused. For the most part, Yolanda cherishes her culture and religion. But when surrounded by Americans who do things differently than her, and feel confident in the way they do things, Yolanda wishes she could be like them: “For the hundredth time, I cursed my immigrant origins. If only I too had been born in Connecticut or Virginia, I too would understand the jokes everyone was making” (Alvarez 94). Yolanda wants to be an American and to understand their ways. Being different from everyone takes a toll on Yolanda’s sense of identity. She is riddled with conflict between who she is and who she wishes she could be. She sees herself as being worse or worth less than the Americans, and has to face this on an everyday

    Read More

  • Exiled Memoirs And Raining Backwards: A Comparative Analysis

    1755 Words  | 4 Pages

    Although both texts seem to follow a “Desi-Chain” of events, the ways in which memories are used in each text differs greatly challenging conceptions that all Cuban exile experiences are the same. Pablo Medina’s Exiled Memoirs articulates a serious tone, narrating stories about his childhood, family and the struggle of being a Cuban

    Read More

  • Pilar: An Outsider

    1071 Words  | 3 Pages

    Two of the cuts are scratched but I buy them anyway… When I thank [the clerk] in Spanish, he’s surprised and wants to chat. We talk about Celia Cruz and how she hasn’t changed a hair or a vocal note in forty years” (GARCIA, 197- 198). This moving away from her usual taste in music and towards Cuban music, is a step in the bridging of her two halves. Furthermore she once again is able to talk to another person in her native language with ease.

    Read More

  • Aleida Rodriguez

    879 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the 1960s, a wave of Cuban immigrants moved into the United States to escape their ruthless dictator, Fidel Castro. Aleida Rodriguez and her siblings were some of those immigrants. In her reflection, she looks at photographs of her childhood while she reflects upon the impact of emigration within her family during the sixties. In the excerpt from “my Mother in Two Photographs, Among Other Things,” author Aleida Rodriguez reveals the cultural rifts caused by relocation.

    Read More

  • Claims by Judith Ortiz

    951 Words  | 2 Pages

    Judith Ortiz Cofer is a Puerto Rican whose writing often examines the conflict and the beauty of cultures mixing together, as people immigrate to America. Though she exhibits a strong connection to her Latin heritage, she often seems to also resent that part of her life. There are many standards and expectations in the Puerto Rican society which Cofer writes to subvert, viewing them negatively. As a Puerto Rican woman, Cofer often disagrees with the limits and expectations placed on a woman in Puerto Rican society, and this attitude is the subject of much of her work. In “Claims,” the speaker describes “Grandmother.” Cofer uses this poem to illustrate a family and describe an individual, as well as telling the reader about parts of Puerto Rican culture, such as its views on women’s roles and on sexuality.

    Read More

More about American Culture By Achy Obejas Summary

Open Document