The kitchen is congested with cumin, pepper, and bitter leaf. If you start chuckling, singing, or communicating in any way you will choke because spice particles compose most of the air now. This is my living room three times a week when my mom doesn’t go to work the night before. It is how my family functions. My family has enkindled me to live my life immersed in culture. From helping my mom cook our dinner of Jollof rice to attending fundraisers until early dawn to build primary schools in the motherland. I am grateful for my family, because of them I have cultivated my early interest in culture, and now I will maintain that interest with me well after my secondary education years. Although I can say I have attained a substantial element from my family, they have limited me in my life for too long. Often because of preformed notions or ideals my parents had, they would not permit me to explore a passion I held. Additionally, at times I could only pursue an interest meagerly because of my obligation to watch my siblings or accompany them at their activities. My parents also expec...
... was not present to see. Through poetics and story telling, authors give a more emotional feeling to important events that must be witnessed and remembered. Although resurrecting the past can be a struggle and cause emotional pain, it can also help to soothe people’s spirits. In The House on Mango Street, Ceremony, “Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,” and Zoot Suit each tell a unique story that offers a new perspective and understanding of a culture. Texts that offer a look into the multicultural world we all live in, enables us to reconfigure our understanding of diversity and allows us to revaluate the importance and the presence of race and culture in daily life. Through writing and storytelling, we can also extend our knowledge about parallel cultures by exposing ourselves to the differences and similarities between our own culture and that of other groups.
In conclusion, this book gave me a whole new view on life and how we can interact better with different people. The book emphasized that culture is key to understanding people. Sometimes it is hard to connect with others because they are indicated as different but in due time we can adjust. Every culture has their own traditions when it comes to what they eat, what to wear, dating, various ceremonies, holidays and more. Reading this book helped me become more accepting of who I am and where I come from.
Through her tasteful selection of contemporary Indian influenced prose pieces, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the unique journey of Indian families established in America. Focusing on the intergenerational aspect of traditional households, Lahiri conveys the emotional rollercoaster that accompanies a person who is branded as a foreigner. In America, there exists a common misconception that immigrants who arrive in this country fully assimilate or seek to assimilate as time progresses. The category I chose was "The Dot of true Happiness." The dot which signifies the bindi, a traditional red mark worn by Indian people, is the source of true happiness among these immigrants.
The narrator’s family considers socializing as a principal habit in Indian society. They have only one neighbor behind the fence, they are surrounded by a government office and a high
“Indian Education” by Sherman Alexie is narrative in which he captures the essence of being an Indian and which the story is told from his perspective and he expresses his personal sentiments of what he endures being an Indian attending school. Alexie maintains a clear narrative order by using headings which are classified by each grade starting from Kindergarten to Senior year. Alexie does not use clear and succinct transitions but he ends each narrative with a sarcastic or thought-provoking statement or thought and it refers or concludes that paragraph for what he is initially talking about in that heading. These food for thought statements that Alexie ends his paragraphs with gives us insight into Alexie’s style as a writer and has a symbolic meaning to the overall narrative and sentiment expressed by Alexie towards
Despite many people’s beliefs, all families have culture. Therefore, any traditions your family may have count. Whether those traditions be something like special family recipes passed down from generation to generation, or just going camping every summer, it does not matter. Within my family, a personal favorite tradition of mine is every year when my mom, my sister, and I, paint pumpkins for Halloween. In Laura Esquerel’s novel, Like Water for Chocolate, a major theme is that family has the potential to hold you down, and I cannot relate to Tita’s experiences with tradition and family issues based on my own with non-oppressive tradition and lack of family ties.
At the beginning of this essay, I want to introduce my family first. I think it can let you understand this story better. My family is an immigrant family, we move to here 4 years. We had faced plenty of challenge during this 4 years. We use our hands to get our life, we use our ability to collect the respect. That is not my personal experience, but I am really playing an important role for the whole story. That is a story concerned with my mother -- a middle age woman, a common Chinese housewife, a role model in my life. My mother has never said too much to tell me how to do or how to deal with the challenge. She is always using her own action to show me what I should do. In my memory, my mother is a tranquil woman. She always tries to solve the problem with her hands first. I am influenced by this feature deeply. This is not a story with tension. This is only a story about a woman how to set up a new home with her family in a new country. Even though she had faced plenty of obstacles on her road, she never says give up, in addition, she also encourages her family to move forward with her.
In “If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?” Geeta Kothari kicks off her writing with a memory embodying her mother and her as they pop open a fresh can of very potent fishy smelling tuna, which her mother buys to satisfy Kothari’s yearning for what she calls “American food” (922). Since Kothari’s family is part of the Indian culture, she is restricted from eating certain kinds of foods. For Kothari, this is a constant struggle throughout her childhood. She wants the freedom to eat what her classmates and cousins do. Deeper into her story she comments on how she marries a man who eats those same American foods she used to crave when younger, and is feeling concerned that her husband might choose another wife who eats similar foods. Finally, to accompany her concerns she has trouble recreating dishes from her own culture in her adulthood.
Last night as I lay in bed thinking about my English final, I decided, as I often do, to procrastinate falling asleep by watching Netflix. This may not seem noteworthy to this essay, and under other circumstances it certainly would not be, but last night I happened to watch an episode of Aziz Ansari’s original Netflix show Master of None. The show is about a first generation, 30-something year old Indian-American man named Dev, played by Aziz Ansari, who experiences the daily trials and tribulations of being an Indian man in modern day New York. Luckily for me, it just so happens to be that the episode I watched last night directly correlates to the topic and poem that I am writing about right now. In the episode, titled Religion, Dev is coerced by his devout, first generation Muslim-Indian parents to not eat pork in front of his visiting aunt and uncle. Dev begrudgingly agrees, but, being a comedy show, this agreement
Kothari employs a mixture of narrative and description in her work to garner the reader’s emotional investment. The essay is presented in seventeen vignettes of differing lengths, a unique presentation that makes the reader feel like they are reading directly from Kothari’s journal. The writer places emphasis on both her description of food and resulting reaction as she describes her experiences visiting India with her parents: “Someone hands me a plate of aloo tikki, fried potato patties filled with mashed channa dal and served with a sweet and a sour chutney. The channa, mixed with hot chilies and spices, burns my tongue and throat” (Kothari). She also uses precise descriptions of herself: “I have inherited brown eyes, black hair, a long nose with a crooked bridge, and soft teeth
It is often said that the toughest part of being a kid is fitting in. The United States is a diverse country with many cultures; consequently, it can be overwhelming for adolescents to feel accepted for who they are and where they come from. Amy Tan is an American writer with traditional Chinese parents. She focuses her writing on mother-daughter relationships. Specifically, Tan’s article, “Fish Cheeks,” published in Seventeen Magazine, describes her struggle as a 14-year-old girl in America trying to establish her identity and fit in. Tan is in love with the minister’s son, Robert. For Christmas, Tan prays for Robert and a slim new American nose. Tan’s parents invite the minister and his family over for Christmas Eve dinner. Under those circumstances, Tan is overwhelmed with fear of what Robert will think of her family’s shabby Chinese Christmas. Tan’s mother prepares a strange Chinese menu consisting of prawns, fish, tofu, and squid. Tan is ashamed of her family because she thinks they are loud and lack American manners. After dinner, Tan’s mother tells her to be proud of who she is and where she comes from. Nevertheless, it took many years for Tan to appreciate her mother’s lesson. For Christmas Eve that year, Tan’s mother made all of her favorite foods. Amy Tan writes this article using different literary devices suggesting that family plays a fundamental role in forming one’s identity.
The average person wants one thing more than anything else, and that thing is to belong. Usha, a young girl from Calcutta, is no different. Already trying the find her place in the world, Usha must now assimilate into cultural society within the United States. Usha’s uncle, Pranab Kaku, came from Calcutta as well having first come to America, his experiences start off worse than Usha’s, which causes him to join the family in an act of social grouping. With the Old World trying to pull them back and the New World just out of reach, both must overcome tradition and develop their own personal values.
The denotation of the word hero is "a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities". To some, that person may be George Washington, Batman, or even Peter Griffin. My hero, though, is my grandfather, D.S. Patel. My grandfather, from my mother's side of the family, is a wise, nice, caring sixty-year old man. Vocationally, he works as a civil engineer for the state of Indiana. How can a sixty-year old civil engineer be a hero? Let's find out how strangers see him as a hero, and how I see him as a hero.
After writing about my history and the themes I selected, I have learned a lot about who I am in society. I have realized that I am an average girl that has not experienced much of life. During this analysis I have come to realize I have not had much contact with other family types or other cultures.
I lived in India for 15 years, since birth. I am not surprised that I was brought up in a rigid country. I was born in Patiala, a city of Punjab which is usually known for its antiqueness. Though I was born in Patiala, my upbringing was done in another town close to my birth city. My town was small but had a miscellany of people. One could find every kind of person in there. The first few years were not that hard; I used to go to school and then come back home. I enjoyed my life’s first few years but as it known that a coin has two sides my life was not totally a “Party all night”. I always had a bad gall bladder; it remained filled with urine all the time. My being shy always serves a great disadvantage for me. I had a hard time asking my teachers to use restrooms in case of urination. A teacher is not an omniscient who would know when I have to go to loosen myself. It would not be a surprise if I say I did it in my skirt all the time. Yes, I used to do that often and usually become a trouble maker for my teacher and the child care ladies who had to clean me. “She is a kid.” That us...