The poem “Minority” written by Imtiaz Dharker uses contrasts in imagery and a change in point of view in order to convey the “foreigner” (1) and the message to “you” (44). The opening line of the poem introduces its theme of separation and otherness. The poem begins “I was born a foreigner” (1) using the 1st person point of view to present a personal feeling that is internal. The first line of the poem leads to the fact that the speaker was born in a country different from their origin. After the first line the speaker in the poem seems to belong nowhere – “even in the place/planted with my relatives” (4-5) leading to believe that the speaker is “a foreigner everywhere” (3). The speaker’s choice of words makes us feel that no matter where the speaker goes she always seems to be separated. The speaker returns to the country of her parents and still continues to feel like a foreigner. The speaker in this situation feels displaced and victimized because she find themselves facing prejudice from the country she was born in as well as the country of her relatives and family. This stanza solely serves to single the speaker who can be concluded as the “foreigner” (1) out as a lone individual rather than a representation of an entire group. The speaker’s repetition of “foreigner” (3) throughout the poem emphasizes her isolation from her own family as well as “All kinds of places and groups” (9). 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 countries cuisine is a compliment of its culture so it is inte... ... middle of paper ... ...mes in the final stanza. The speaker states that as “you meet the stranger… down your street” (45-46) the readers will “realize you know the face” (46) and “recognize it as your own” (49). The speaker is implying that everyone is a foreigner in his or her own way. The speaker uses a direct approach in the last two stanzas because the speaker could be trying to share the experience of being a “foreigner” (3) or outcast with the readers. The speaker wants the readers of her poem to know what it feels like to be a “foreigner” (3). In the end the poem was written by someone who had some sort of relationship or bond with India based on the references of “neem” (18) and “ghee” (16). The poem could be referencing the historic British invasion on India and how the speaker felt like a “foreigner” (1) even if her own country because it was being ruled by a “foreign” (3) power.
The poem is written in the style of free verse. The poet chooses not to separate the poem into stanzas, but only by punctuation. There is no rhyme scheme or individual rhyme present in the poem. The poems structure creates a personal feel for the reader. The reader can personally experience what the narrator is feeling while she experiences stereotyping.
Have you ever felt like you didn’t belong somewhere? Do you know what it feels like to be told you don’t belong in the place of your birth? People experience this quite frequently, because they may not be the stereotypical American citizen, and are told and convinced they don’t belong in the only place they see as home. In Gloria Anzaldúa’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Anzaldúa gives the reader an inside look at the struggles of an American citizen who experiences this in their life, due to their heritage. She uses rhetorical appeals to help get her messages across on the subliminal level and show her perspective’s importance. These rhetorical appeals deal with the emotion, logic and credibility of the statements made by the author. Anzaldúa
In ‘Presents From My Aunts in Pakistan' and 'Half Caste', the poets Moniza Alvi and John Agard uses first person narrative to protest and express their feeling of not belonging to a place. It describes their feelings of being recognized as having no fixed nationality by demanding answers. Present for my aunts in Pakistan talks about receiving gifts from her Pakistani aunt and asking questions on whether she belongs in Pakistan or England. She thinks she does not fit in the Pakistan clothes her aunt sent her, but neither does she with denim. Half-Caste is about the speaker asking someone to explain what they mean for calling him Half-Caste. It describes some events that are utilized to question us. The speaker speaks in a demanding tone with
This poem captures the immigrant experience between the two worlds, leaving the homeland and towards the new world. The poet has deliberately structured the poem in five sections each with a number of stanzas to divide the different stages of the physical voyage. Section one describes the refugees, two briefly deals with their reason for the exodus, three emphasises their former oppression, fourth section is about the healing effect of the voyage and the concluding section deals with the awakening of hope. This restructuring allows the poet to focus on the emotional and physical impact of the journey.
Whenever a stranger enters an unfamiliar society, a clash between the outsider’s practices and society’s guidelines undoubtedly occurs. Whether the resulting conflict minimally or powerfully affects the people involved depends on the situation, but usually the results are monumental. In the short stories “The Blue Hotel,” “The Displaced Person,” and “Bernice Bobs her Hair,” and the novel In Dubious Battle, society’s fear of the stranger has severe negative consequences for the newcomer, as the community’s rules prevail over the outsiders in the end.
As Josselson (2012) argues, it is simpler for the people to fix multicultural or multiracial individuals into a single cultural or racial identity, although realistically, most people find it difficult to categorize oneself in a single-margin. This is apparent in the reading White Teeth and Tar Baby, where the character’s identity is influenced by a socially embedded habitus of values, expectations and self-understanding, or lack there-of. In order to understand the challenges of racial and cultural identity in these novels, I will first look at characters Son and Jadine from Tar Baby and Samad and his twin sons, Millat and Magid from White Teeth.
...de effects of ‘nontraditional’ immigration, the government officially turned against its immigrant communities…” In this line, Mukherjee is showing that she had also been a victim of the new immigration laws, and that was the reason she had conformed to the country, in order to feel a sense of belonging. In this instance, exemplification is used to develop her argument in an effective manner that causes the audience to feel a sense of guilt and even listen to her argument.
How and why does the Model Minority Myth continue to be believed and perpetuated in today’s American society? How do Asian Americans navigate living under the Myth and what are the consequences and effects of those navigations, especially regarding self-identity and mental health? How does the Myth affect the different ethnicities that are grouped under the umbrella term of “Asian”? The Myth was started in the late 1960’s with multiple newspaper articles published about the success of Asian Americans and how that success could be attributed to Asian cultural values. Due to this success, Asian Americans were generalized as a successful minority that did not face discrimination or racism since the Myth was characterized as positive and not hurtful. The Myth has continued to exist and be prevalent today, even with the scholarly understanding that it is indeed a myth. In my paper, I will claim that in order to navigate living under
The poem “Steps” by Naomi Shihab Nye, is a piece about Arabic immigrants and the effect of their differing levels of assimilation. Nye describes how the immigrants absorb the new culture. In the New World, America, different people can adapt in a myriad of ways. According to the author, some non-natives may assimilate to the American culture more than others, but overall, if someone forgets their original culture and does not teach the next generations, the culture will die.
...own unless they are remembered, until they are brought back into waking life and understood by the individual as memories, separated from the present. “Thus they lead one to cultural travel, to reminisce the culture of origin, the displaced space and time. They help soothe the pains of loneliness, thereby giving succor to survive in an alien land. Secondly, to survive in the foreign land the expatriates create an ambience there by establishing their own ghetto, celebrating their festivals, dining together or holding community feasts, sharing cultural markers, frequenting to the house of their colour and little socializing with the dominant group. Thus they create an ‘alternative world’ in their present world. These expatriates ignore the subtle desire to merge among the majority, oppose the willingness of their children to a just to and accept the dominate culture.
the reader how to view the foreign [and the female]” (Favor). There are too many parallels between the
Have you ever wondered how your ethnicity can impact the way you interact with people? What about the conversation you might have with people? Do you have a voice in our society that allows you to speak for yourself or a group of people? In the poem “Sure You Can Ask Me a Personal Question” by Diane Burns, the author focused on showing the importance poetic devices have through allusions, repetition, and imagery. Through poetic devices, author of “Sure You Can Ask Me a Personal Question” shows how stereotypes from societies and her ethnicity affects her life. Diane Burns uses three poetic devices to communicate her tone throughout the poem.
Other influential experiments in social influence include majority and minority influence. In majority influence, individuals compare personal responses with the sources, without considering their own judgement; this then leads them to comply with the viewpoint of the majority of those around them. This can also be known as group pressure and is similar to Herd behaviour (Doms and Avermaet, 1979; Latané & Wolf, 1981). However, in minority influence the individual attempts to validify an opposing response, meaning that as they do so, they consider their judgement and unlike in majority influence they instinctively convert to the viewpoint of the minority (Doms and Avermaet, 1979; Moscovici, 1980). Martin et al. (2006) later examined the effects of majority and minority influence and concluded that, when attitudes are changed by minority influences they are more likely to have a consistent behavioural intention, compared to if the attitudes were changed by majority influence. Suggesting minority influence produces behaviour that is easier to predict than majority influence.
In the Third and Final Continent, Jhumpa Lahiri uses her own experiences of being from an immigrant family to illustrate to her readers how heritage, cultural influences and adaptation play a major role in finding your true identity. The Third and Final Continent is the ninth narration in a collection of stories called the Interpreter of Maladies. In this story, it discusses themes such as marriage, family, society, language and identity. In this story, we focus on an East Asian man of Bengali descent who wants to have a better future for himself so he leaves India and travels to London, England to pursue a higher education. His pursuit for higher education takes place on three different continents. In India, he feels safe in his home country and welcomed, but when he travels abroad he starts to have fear and anxiety. Through his narrations, we learn how he adapts to the European and American and through these experiences he learns to assimilate and to adapt to the new culture he travels to.
Many will ask what role does identity and culture play in the society? As a matter of fact, culture is that one factor that speaks to us about our origin. According to Lahiri “For my parent, home was not our house at Rhode Island, but Calcutta, where they were raised. I was aware that the things they lived for, the Nazrul songs they listened to on the real to real, the family they missed, the cloths my mother wore that were not available in any store in any mall” (pg 612). On this quote, Lahiri tries to explain the way of living her parents left behind before moving to America in search for better lives, her parents found themselves in a strange new environment that necessarily doesn’t collaborate with their past cultural values, but they coped with it and the sense of origin from which they were raised still follows