Claudia Kolker’s book “The Immigrant Advantage” (Oct 2011) is a book that touched on the advantages of immigrants coming to the U.S. bringing along their customs, religions, teachings, and traditions. Kolker wants to inform readers that there are good things that come from immigrants like food, fashion, vocabulary, and customs. Kolker points out in her book that there is many ways that immigrants benefit to succeed from others in everyday life. For Example, “The Vietnamese Money Club” (Kolker 19) it is said that to start a money club you need people that you trust from 3-6 people at the least. They all need to pitch in a certain amount of money aside and who turn it is first they get all the money.
The book of the unknown Americans turns out to be a love story with a bit of a twist. It involves at lot of different families and people that migrated to the United States of America. One Latino family, the Rivera’s, from Mexico move to the United States of America to give their daughter a better life. Their life in Mexico was nice and simple, they had a great piece of property and Arturo ran his own construction company. They needed to move to America because their daughter who is only 15 years old had an accident at her dad’s job.
Lee also explores the idea of assimilation and its positive and negative aspects for immigrants. Through her humorous and lighthearted writing style, Lee illustrates how food can bridge cultural divides and create a sense of belonging. She uses the example of eating turkey as a symbol of American identity that helps immigrants feel
'' Every immigrant has enriched and strengthened the fabric of American life" a quote from John F. Kennedy. This is one of the perfect examples that explains what occurs when immigrants come over from a war-ridden, economically poor country. They immigrate and while settling, improved their own cultures into ours, although can change for them drastically or not at all.
Migration makes it difficult for individuals to adjust to their new American home, but this initial disadvantage is a blessing in disguise because it provides
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.
The period of time after the Civil War and before World War I was a period of tremendous change in America. Although immigration is a major tenet of the United States, due to the changing economy, improvements in transportation, a shifting of the American people to the city, and deepening class divisions, industrialization was the most powerful force shaping the country between 1865 and 1914, followed by urbanization, and finally immigration. The most noticeable effects of industrialization are changes to the economy, alterations in the distribution of wealth, and the rise of organized labor. Overall, the growth of industry raised the standard of living for most people.
Immigration into the “land of opportunity” was everything but a smooth, trouble-free journey for those escaping the terror, poverty and political persecution in their crumbling countries. The wave of immigrants was at its peak during the breakouts of economic depressions (Document A). The new flow of immigration doubled the American population, especially in major cities. Chasing after the American Dream, many Europeans were attracted by the employment openings and new chances they could obtain in America. However, despite their life being better than before, these immigrants still faced many obstacles and cultural conflicts trying to fit in and thrive in American culture.
Lessons from the Culture Every year we see family emigrate to other countries, and they face many challenges. The stories “Sweet, Sour, and Resentful”, by Firoozeh Dumas, and from “Fish Cheeks”, by Amy Tan, share similar cultures and really interesting stories. Also, both families from the essay share several challenges that they are face when they move to the United States of America. The two families share many similarities; however, they differ in to keeping their culture, showing openness, and teaching a lesson from their culture to others.
They would also learn by going through the process of acculturation. Immigrants would adapt to their new surroundings by learning everything they can to survive and do well in their new nation. Immigrants would learn English and send their children to school to learn English and all about American culture. “Immigrants learned how to use American institutions such as schools, factories, and the political system.” (online book, page 588)
Intimate Colonialism is when the government tried to set up a policy that would encourage Indian Service staff members to intermarry with Native Americans. During the late 19th century, immigration was rising and the big thing in this era was assimilation. Assimilation is integrating people to be accustomed to the United States culture, behavior, value and norms. Though Native Americans have lived in America longer than anyone, the federal government thought that instead of ostracizing them for wanting to value their traditional culture, they created an assimilation policy for Native Americans. “The government’s assimilation policy sought to destroy Native nations’ cultural and political identities by replacing them with Anglo – American norms of behavior (108).”
Immigrants brought their culture, including their gastronomy, and recipes, from their homeland as a way to preserve and express their heritage and pass it on to their children. Moreover,
For many new immigrants coming to America, it is difficult to adjust into the new society. Many come to America without the basic knowledge of English, the new immigrants do not have the ability assimilate to American society because of the lack of possible communication between the immigrant and an native. Non-English speaking immigrants that come to America face harsh challenges when trying to assimilate to U.S. society because immigrants are often segregated into ethnic communities away from natives, Americans do not know basics of words of other well known languages, and the lack of government funding education programs. Assimilation into a new society is difficult enough, but when the society pushes any new immigrants to separate part
For African Americans migrating from the southern United States to the North and the West Coast, they almost all shared similar experiences. They were worn-down by the Jim Crow south and the restrictions placed upon them and were seeking new opportunities to better themselves and the future generations that would come after them. Although sharing this similar experience and background, each individual went through their own unique form of assimilation. The first form of assimilation noted was cultural pluralism of the many southern immigrants who held on to their traditions even when they flew in the face of the norm.
In the film Coming to America describing the two cultures in the film are the African and American cultures from Africa and Queens New York. The African and American cultures in the movie are different in some ways but similar in other ways by the way the characters in the movie are all family oriented with the respect they show their parents and the way the parents only want what is best for their children. Then there are subcultures in the film that go a little further with style of living. The culture in Africa is that people are to wait on the royal family for everything they do, but in America, the family cares for themselves without the help of servants. The rites of passage are a cultural norm in Africa for the Royal family by having arranged marriages.
