Compare And Contrast A Guilt Of A Country By Anna Quindlen

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What does it mean to be american? Being American means going through the hardships of moving here and living in america. The essay “A Quilt Of A Country” by Anna Quindlen and the short story American History by Judith Cofer both discuss what it is like trying to become liked and how life is in america. Both authors Judith Cofer and Anna Quindlen talk about becoming
American and what it is like to go through the hardships, however, the short story puts it in a single person perspective, while the essay puts it in a perspective of different events. Let's talk about the evidence that supports this.
To begin with, the essay “A Quilt Of A Country” shows people coming together in hard times.
An example of hardships Quindlen talks about

The people weren't always together and there was one reason. That reason is people thought they were better than each other and people were different than them. Previously Quindlen talks about her marriage. She says that when she and her husband were dating people didn’t like it because one was Irish and the other was italian. Quindlen talks about her marriage by saying
“I was a product of a mixed marriage, across barely bridgeable lines: an Italian girl, and an Irish boy. How quaint it seems now, how incendiary then” (Quindlen 3). This quote illustrates that people didn’t like each other back then because they were different and liked different things but that doesn’t mean you can;t love someone from a different ethnic group. People may be different but we learn to like each other over time. Therefore text A is mainly about people coming together in conflict and people being different but still working to come together.
Similarly, the short story “American History” talks about being American but in the eyes of
Elena and how she felt about not fitting in. An example of how life is in America is that

This quote shows how Elena and Eugene get treated at school and how Elena and Eugene feel about it. The way Eugene and Elena feel about being called names is very simple, they feel that people don’t like them because they are different and some things they say are true. An example of hardships in the story is that it says Elena has straight A’s but she can’t take honors classes because English was not the first language she spoke. The text says “Eugene was in honors classes for all his subjects, classes that were not open to me because English was not my first language, though I was a straight A student” (Judith 8). This quote implies that Elena works hard even though she can’t take the honors classes. This shows that no matter how smart you are people can still reject you but you should still push forward. Thus text B is mainly about hardships of living in America and how Elena overcomes the hardships.
In conclusion, being American is going through the hardships if you're an immigrant and living in America legally. In text A it says people come together in conflict. It also says that people work hard to come together in conflict even though they are different. In text B it says