The Difficulties Of Living In A Different Culture Presented in Tom Leonard's Unrelated Incidents and John Agard's Half-Caste
In the two poems 'Unrelated Incidents' by Tom Leonard and 'Half-Caste'
by John Agard the obvious connection is the language is written
phonetically to emphasise the dialect and contrast in culture to the
real English language. In order to convey their opinions on the
prejudices they face they take an almost humorous approach to ridicule
their opposers.
Both the poets' use of punctuation means that when spoken aloud there
is an aggressive tone as in 'Unrelated Incidents' there are no capital
letters, this emphasises the 'wrongness' of his dialect. He pokes fun
at the way people would presume that news given by someone who doesn't
speak with a 'voice of authority' is lying, it is clearly wrong and he
shuns this assumption:
'n thi reason I talk wia BBC accent iz coz yi widny wahnt mi ti talk
aboot thi trooth wia voice lik wanna yoo scruff.'
As the poem progresses the language becomes more and more
dialect-like, this is to make it seem as though the poet is
translating the 'BBC accent' into his own way of speaking. The words
run together to convey the characteristics of colloquial language.
Te poet ends the poem with 'belt up.' It seems that either he is
disinterested with anyone who labels him because of their accent or
he's directly telling them to shut up. The poet is proud of his
heritage and this is an exhibition of this as his boldness and
aggressiveness builds up.
Tom Leonard uses the word 'scruff' which suggests a lack of
credibility and an unsavoury type of person, this idea of prejudice is
also shown in John Agard's poem 'Half-Caste'. He is highlighting the
stupidity of those who use the derogatory term as if the person is
only half and therefore isn't a whole person. In the same way that
Leonard uses humour Agard suggests that simple things such as a piano
are half-caste because of the different coloured keys.
John Smith, the troubled Indian adopted by whites appears at first to be the main character, but in some respects he is what Alfred Hitchcock called a McGuffin. The story is built around him, but he is not truly the main character and he is not the heart of the story. His struggle, while pointing out one aspect of the American Indian experience, is not the central point. John Smith’s experiences as an Indian adopted by whites have left him too addled and sad, from the first moment to the last, to serve as the story’s true focus.
In Jasper Jones, racial power has been reflected through the representation of certain groups and individuals of the 1960s and the conflicts that occurred. At the time in which the text was set being the 1960s, racial prejudice was evident in Australia, especially in rural areas that maintained a parochial and xenophobic society. Aboriginal people were not recognised as citizens of Australia and in some cases, not even as people. They were mistreated and typically seen as uneducated drunkards and criminals. Offspring of white colonists and Aboriginal people were regarded as ‘half-caste’ and were also not acknowledged as Australians. In the same context, there was a growing hatred and resentment towards Vietnamese immigrants due to the impac...
Charles W. Chesnutt, a well-educated mulatto man, lived his life on ‘the color line.’ Chesnutt’s skin was very light and was sometimes mistaken for a white man. Chesnutt chose to identify himself as a black man, but in his works, his characters move back and forth across the color line and struggle with the world they exist in. The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line was published one year before The House Behind the Cedars and included the short story, “A Matter of Principle,” where Chesnutt clearly begins to explore what options are available to a mulatto man and his family, which will later evolve in Cedars. Chesnutt incorporates his philosophy of literary naturalism to show John Walden, Rena, and Mr. Clayton in relation to their surroundings and as governed by their instincts, passions, heredity and environment.
Society is quick to identify problems in the lives of others, but always fails to recognize its own shortcomings. From the past to the present, this has been an issue that continues to plague mankind. In John Oskison’s, “The Problem of Old Harjo”, Miss Evans, a Caucasian missionary in the Indian
If we look closely at the words racial and tension, we can see that it
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2007. Print.
The family soon moved to a farm near Dallas. Her father, George Coleman, moved to Indian Territory, Oklahoma, in 1901, where he had rights, based on having three Indian grandparents. His wife, Susan, with five of their children still at home, refused to go with him. She supported the children by picking cotton and taking in laundry and ironing.
Growing up on a reservation where failing was welcomed and even somewhat encouraged, Alexie was pressured to conform to the stereotype and be just another average Indian. Instead, he refused to listen to anyone telling him how to act, and pursued his own interests in reading and writing at a young age. He looks back on his childhood, explaining about himself, “If he'd been anything but an Indian boy living on the reservation, he might have been called a prodigy. But he is an Indian boy living on the reservation and is simply an oddity” (17). Alexie compares the life and treatment of an Indian to life as a more privileged child. This side-by-side comparison furthers his point that
The core of the book lies in Johnson’s detailed accounts of just how hard it is to live your life being of mixed heritage. In his early stages of life, he
In Thomas King’s novel, The Inconvenient Indian, the story of North America’s history is discussed from his original viewpoint and perspective. In his first chapter, “Forgetting Columbus,” he voices his opinion about how he feel towards the way white people have told America’s history and portraying it as an adventurous tale of triumph, strength and freedom. King hunts down the evidence needed to reveal more facts on the controversial relationship between the whites and natives and how it has affected the culture of Americans. Mainly untangling the confusion between the idea of Native Americans being savages and whites constantly reigning in glory. He exposes the truth about how Native Americans were treated and how their actual stories were
Adjusting to another culture is a difficult concept, especially for children in their school classrooms. In Sherman Alexie’s, “Indian Education,” he discusses the different stages of a Native Americans childhood compared to his white counterparts. He is describing the schooling of a child, Victor, in an American Indian reservation, grade by grade. He uses a few different examples of satire and irony, in which could be viewed in completely different ways, expressing different feelings to the reader. Racism and bullying are both present throughout this essay between Indians and Americans. The Indian Americans have the stereotype of being unsuccessful and always being those that are left behind. Through Alexie’s negativity and humor in his essay, it is evident that he faces many issues and is very frustrated growing up as an American Indian. Growing up, Alexie faces discrimination from white people, who he portrays as evil in every way, to show that his childhood was filled with anger, fear, and sorrow.
Stensland, Anna Lee. “Indian Boyhood by Charles A. Eastman’” The English Journal 66, no. 3 (1977): 59.
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.
Bhabha, Homi K. Interview by J. Rutherford. Identity, Community, Culture, Difference. 1990. J. Rutherford. London, Lawrence and Wishart: 207-221
The Wheel of Surya, by Jamila Gavin examines and presents a variety of different forms of discrimination within the novel. She explores this in various ways by comparing the differences between India and England whilst many types of discrimination occur, such as racism, sexism and a lot of disrespect against culture, gender, religion and tradition. Gavin also emphasizes the fact that back in the 1900’s (when the partition of India took place) the Indian Culture was not usually accepted in England which increased the amount of criticism and discrimination against unfamiliar religions. The way Gavin uses discrimination effectively in the Novel will be shown and discussed in this Essay.