In “Se Habla Espanol,” Tanya Barrientos elaborates on her personal experience growing up in the United States. In the first couple decades of her life, Barrientos distanced herself from her cultural roots fearing that she would be judge and belittle. It was essential for Barrientos to fit in with the American society. Barrientos formats the short story where she is speaking from firsthand experience.
Richard Rodriguez’s “ Aira: A Memoir of Bilingual Childhood” and Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” both exercise the three common rhetoric devices – pathos, ethos, and logos – to appeal to the audience and to make their arguments within the text more valid and comprehensive. Both authors write about their experiences and struggles with immigration and the assimilation into the public identity and society, but their reactions to these situations are similar and different in several forms and aspects, including how they were presented to the public identity, how they reacted to the public identity and assimilation into the society by facing their challenges, what their family connection was, and what credibility they have. While both authors did resist
The migrant experience is a contradiction itself where the desire to find a safer and better habitation is ultimately disowned with the absence of belonging and feeling at home. Peter Skrzynecki’s anthology titled ‘Immigrant Chronicle’ explores this idea, notably in the poems, ‘Migrant Hostel’ and ‘Feliks Skrzynecki’, in which he gives a further insight into the isolation and exclusion they encounter in their start of a new life. Yet it is through this challenge that migrants attempt to conquer their disconnection and learn to adapt to the mainstream of society in their own way. The distant association that migrants have with acceptance into a community can spark feelings of seclusion, humiliation and solitude.
Mericans written by Sandra Cisneros is a short story in which the internal struggles of being bilingual and bicultural are discussed and analyzed. Through the use imagery, point of view, symbolism, characterization, and character transformation the reader gleans the theme of the story. Furthermore, Sandra Cisneros addresses border identity, crossing the border, and knowing or not knowing that one’s home lies in two countries. The story uses narrative first person point of view and is told through the eyes of the protagonist Micaela. The successful execution of the entire story allows the reader to see the attitude changes from the main character throughout the story from beginning to end.
The father tried to teach his daughter the culture through rice cooking, but she fails to replicate the method; whereas the brother avoids the cultural lessons by integrating himself into the local culture. This heavily suggests the brother rejects speaking the language and the culture, compared to the daily exposure of the Canadian culture and speaking English. The story “Simple Recipes” masks itself as a family having internal conflicts on the dinner table. While analyzing the story, it suggests the difficulty of integrating the local and origin culture in multicultural immigrant families.
Immersing oneself in a new community can come with difficulties such as language barriers and balancing two different identities. Firoozeh may have decided to add a “simpler” name, but had to deal with the emotional turmoil that came with people not knowing her actual Iranian heritage. Firoozeh also had to help her mother adapt to American culture by translating because her mother could not speak English. Firoozeh’s father had to adapt to the language barriers because his version of English was incomprehensible to the average American. Every single member of Firoozeh’s family had to adapt to American culture by giving up parts of their original identity because they had to make a place for themselves in their newfound
He supports this argument by telling his own story of being forced to learn English by the bilingual education system. The experience he had learning English made him experience great embarrassment, sadness, and change. Rodriguez concludes his experience by discussing how English had changed his personal life at home: “We remained a loving family, but one greatly changed. No longer so close;no longer bound tight by the pleasing and troubling knowledge of our public separateness.” By learning English, Rodriguez’s family is finally able to integrate into society without language barriers.
Differences in Polish American Culture This chapter highlighted many of the negative attributes that are ascribed to Polish American individuals, describing them as unintelligent and low-class citizens. My family often referred to each other and other Poles and Pollacks. I was unaware of the negative connotation of the term until reading this chapter. My maternal family has never struggled with alcohol use, as the chapter emphasized (Folwarski & Smolinksi, 2005).
He focused much on his parent’s impact, how they came to connect with each other through language. The author emphasizes how life can lead you down a road where if you did not have language you would not have the same outcome. Language helps us as people on the path of finding who and where we are supposed to be. Fanny Vaisman, the mother of the author was from Kishinev. Which at the time belonged to Russia, than it incorporate with Romania following Soviet Union and lastly then became Republic Of Moldavia.
Immigrants that are new to the American society are often so used to their own culture that it is difficult for them to accept and adapt to the American culture. The language that is spoken, as well as the various holidays and traditions that Americans entertain themselves with, aren’t what most immigrants would deem a neccessity for their life to move on. Nonetheless, they still have to be accustomed to these things if they have any chance of suceeding in a land where knowledge is key. The story “My Favorite Chaperone” written by Jean Davies Okimoto, follows the life of a young girl who along with her brother Nurzhan, her mother known as mama, and her father whom she refers to as Papi have immigrated to the United States from Kazakhstan, through a dating magazine. Throughout the story each family member faces problems that causes them to realize just how different their life is know that they’ve immigrated..
A Step from Heaven accurately depicts several struggles that immigrants commonly face when coming to America. One of the first obstacles Young Ju must resolve is the language barrier – she knows absolutely no English and cannot communicate with her teacher or the other students. Although she learns quickly in school, her parents do not have the opportunity to learn much English at all. This situation is true for many immigrant children who are forced into the position of translator, which puts a lot of pressure on them because they must constantly help their parents navigate simple situations. Young Ju’s parents also must deal with the financial issue that many immigrants face.
The story of the professor Marjorie Agosin “Always living in Spanish” touched my heart. Every word of the narrator I can relate to myself, because nowadays my life is on the stage of adaptation to an English language. The author shows us how challenging her live was, when she had to leave Chile to move to United States. The violation of human rights in her country forced her family to migrate from “one dangerous place that was her home, only to arrive in dangerous place that was not”.
In Eva Hoffman’s memoir, Lost in Translation, Hoffman faces a life challenge; language. Eva explains how her transition from Poland to Vancouver, Canada, affected her in 1959. Hoffman was only thirteen when her family chose to leave Poland, because anti-Semitism was still affecting the Jewish population after World War II. She left behind everything that was familiar to her and started to become a new person. During her journey, she lost her true identity because she lacked the understanding of American language.
The film Lost in Translation follows two Americans visiting Tokyo during important transitional periods in their lives. Charlotte is a recent college graduate trying to figure out her career while also moving on from the honeymoon phase of her new marriage. Bob Harris is essentially going through a mid-life crisis as he sorts through life post-movie stardom and struggles to maintain a relationship with his overbearing wife. The two find each other in the hotel bar as a result of their inability to sleep and form a connection based on their mutual isolation in both their relationships and the city of Tokyo. The film touches on the importance of communication as well as what it is like to be a foreigner alone in a vastly different culture.
They feel and become left out when they are with their community’s group of friends. In addition, some older children who came to the United States have a hard time learning a new culture because it was a culture shock to them. There are two major things that become problems in their journey to adopt a new culture; barrier to language and living their lifestyle. While adapting new culture, they have a difficult journey because of the bully, discrimination, and racism that they encounter. Some of these situations that Chin refugees face can be related to how Faith faces her problems with cultures and
