Compare And Contrast Jhumpa Lahiri And The Next Big Story

Comparisons of Authors When people migrate to the United States from foreign countries, they often bring their customs along with them, but their children have a harder time accommodating to their culture, since they now live in a different country which is more diverse . O’Brien was born and raised in a town called Smithtown in Long Island, while Lahiri was born in London but moved at the age of two, to Rhode Island. Both of the authors had immigrant parents, who came from foreign countries looking for a better life and opportunities. Comparing and contrasting the lives of two authors Jhumpa Lahiri, who wrote the article “My Two Lives” and Soledad O’Brien published her story called The Next Big Story, showed how Lahiri had a harder time to …show more content…

Both O’Brien and Lahiri differ strikingly because they both had dissimilar conflicts while growing up. O’Brien growing up in a white suburb white community was quite hard because she was constantly asked if she was black and to not get offended, or told she could not be black since she did not look like one. One of the first experienced O’Brien had about her identity was at a photographer’s shop, “The photographer says, “Forgive me if I’m offending you, but are you black?” For a moment. I’m speechless” (24). She had never gotten asked something liker that before or even experienced a situation like this one before because O’Brien is a very optimistic person and never questioned who she is, feeling something heavy on her shoulders which brought her down completely. A similar situation happened to her when she was shopping, “There was the store where someone explained that I couldn 't be black because black people were thieves and killers” (O’Brien 25). When O’Brien first heard this comment at the store, she felt annoyed and frustrated because it was a racist comment to say, since not every black person is what some people picture them as. …show more content…

From a young age, writing become a big part of who she is, since it was the only way she could express her feelings without really speaking. Lahiri expresses when she says, “My reading was my mirror, and my material; I saw no other part of myself” (4). She is describing how writing really made her feel like a different person, did not have to worry about the two cultures she had to switch around, follow a certain tradition of which to write, and could write express her thoughts without a problem. Her tools, desk, everything she used to do here writing became a part of who she was because she had never made any other connections with anything else. She is now showing what it meant, “When I became a writer my desk became home; there was no need for another” (Lahiri 6). While Lahiri had trouble identifying her identity, she did not know what was really her home. She struggled to find a place that she could be happy to call “home,” and was able to find that when she started to explore and expand her writing. When Lahiri said “I belonged to my work” (6), she was describing the passion she had found within the work she was achieving. Even though, her parents did not think she could make a living from her writing, which she did by publishing her book back in 1999. The different