One New Yorker and Three Pairs of Eyes

To call yourself a New Yorker, you can’t just be someone who lives in the state. Being a New Yorker means so much more than what part of the city you live in, what your job is, how much money you make, or what school you go to. All of the small details mean nothing. If they’re the right details, they can mean everything. Colum McCann in “My First New York” and Roxana Saberi in “From Tehran to the B Train” wrote about their experiences in New York and shared a common ground: positivity. However, my experience of New York is different completely different from theirs.

In Roxana Saberi’s “From Tehran to the B train,” her experience in New York is shown through stereotypes, bravery, and toughness. “The mugger flared his nostrils. ‘I just got outta prison. I got no money. Give me yours.’… ‘Well, I was in prison, too. In Iran.’” shows how brave she really was for standing up to him in the way that she did. Her bravery to him also showed that she proved the stereotype of women being these innocent beings that can’t defend themselves because they’re not as tough as men are by one-upping him while she was being mugged. In addition, it also shows how she kept positive because even though I wouldn’t have ever stood up for myself like that to a mugger, unless I had her experience of course, she didn’t panic, or call the cops to help her, or run away from the matter. If she had tried to run away, or called the cops, then her New York experience wouldn’t have been the same nor would she have gone against the stereotypes in the way that she did. Another quote from this reading that best demonstrates her toughness is where she says, “But I handled Tehran, with its traffic, morality police and Evin Prison. I can handle New York City too.” That cl...

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...deal, but they really mean so much. Colum McCann in “My First New York” and Roxana Saberi in “From Tehran to the B Train” wrote about their experiences in New York and what they took with them from it. They described their experiences using stereotypes, bravery, and negative reinforcement. My experience of being a New Yorker is wrapped around music and the idea of New York being more than just place I live in. These three New York experiences, all have a negative part to them: the mugging, the surface view of the city, and the daily struggles of just your average everyday life, but they also share something stronger and greater: positivity.

Works Cited

McCann, Colum. "My First New York." My First New York. New York: New York Media,

2010. 135-139. Print.

Roxana Saberi. "From Tehran to the B Train." New York Times. New York Times, 26 Dec. 2012.

Web. 01 Feb. 2014.