America Is A Very Diverse World

Is it better to settle with what you already have and know or branch out and strive for comfort elsewhere? This is the ongoing debate between sisters Dee (Wangero) and Maggie in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and sisters Bharati and Mira in Bharati Mukherjee’s “Two Ways to Belong in America”. In “Everyday Use” Maggie is a soft spoken homebody who has never found interest in straying from her mother while Dee on the other hand has moved on in life and uses her past as an image to prove how far she has made it in life, she even changed her birth name to cut all ties with her past. In “Two Ways to Belong in America” Bharati and Mira are Indian immigrants who both came to America with intentions of keeping to their Indian heritage but over time Bharati faded from her culture while Mira kept true. While Maggie and Mira decided to stick to their roots, Dee and Bharati chose to immerse themselves in a new culture.

In her essay “My Two Lives,” Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian American, explains the balance between the identities of the two countries inside her heart, as well as her psychological struggle between her bicultural identities. She describes herself as an Indian-American because she moved with her family from India to the United States when she was very young. However, confused with her identity through her growth, she feels that she doesn’t belong to either of the two countries because of its completely different cultures. When she is at home, she deals with her parents in an Indian way, which is strange compared to the American way that she come across outside. She says that she has a distinctive identity in spite of her Indian appearance

This book depicts the national and cultural status of the immigrant mother, who is able to preserve the traditions of her Indian heritage that connect her to her homeland. Ensuring a successful future for her American-born children is coordinated with the privilege of being an American citizen. Ashima yearns for her homeland and her family that she left behind when

Sabaa Saleem is a Pakistani woman who is about to graduate college and is torn between the modern day American culture she 's grown up in and her cultural background. Sabaa moved to the U.S. after only living in Pakistan her first year of life. Ever since she came to America she has known that one day she 's going to have to live with a person for the rest of her life of her parents choosing. Sabaa has come to terms with this and thinks that although she lives in America and she can do whatever she wants after she is eighteen she feels that respecting her parents wishes is what she has to do. Most of this reasoning is because her dad has had

Immigrants’ refusal to appreciate a fused culture promotes division. Mukherjee questions the idea of immigrants losing their culture for American ideals: “Parents express rage or despair at their U.S.-born children's forgetting of, or indifference to, some aspects of Indian culture,” to that Mukherjee asks, “Is it so terrible that our children are discovering or are inventing homelands for themselves?” (Mukherjee, 1997, para. 28). Many immigrants experience anger when their children no longer hold the ideals of their home country. This tension produced within the household hinders the unity within a resident country’s culture and encourages division within families. Using herself as an example, Mukherjee provides another instance of anger directed at her from her own subculture: “They direct their rage at me because, by becoming a U.S.

Is it better to settle with what you already have and know or branch out and strive for comfort elsewhere? This is the ongoing debate between sisters, Dee (Wangero) and Maggie in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and sisters Bharati and Mira in Bharati Mukherjee’s “Two Ways to Belong in America”. In “Everyday Use” Maggie is a soft spoken homebody who has never found interest in straying from her mother while Dee on the other hand has moved on in life and uses her past as an image to prove how far she has made it in life, she even changed her birth name to cut all ties with her past. In “Two Ways to Belong in America” Bharati and Mira are Indian immigrants who both came to America with intentions of keeping their Indian heritage, but over time Bharati faded from her culture while Mira kept true. Although Maggie and Mira decided to stick to their roots, Dee and Bharati chose to immerse themselves in a new culture.

She explains her thesis by stating “Others who write stories of migration often talk of arrival at a new place as a loss of communal memory and the erosion of an original culture. I want to talk of arrival as a gain,” (360). The key points of the text include Mukherjee describing her transition between Calcutta and the United States, and what it means to be and American and how culture influences that aspect. The information in the text is significant; the people of America are a part of a melting pot, sometimes it is hard for them to find the distinction between American culture and their own. The information in Mukherjee’s story is clear and specific, unbiased, and is relevant to the purpose of the story. I believe Mukherjee has achieved her purpose of informing her audience about cultural differences; she presents certain strengths and weaknesses within the text.

In the texts “Legal Alien”, “Two Ways to Belong in America”, and “Every Day Use” a person’s culture is shown to affect the way they view others and the world until they have social interactions with a different culture. In “Two Ways to Belong in America,” a personal essay by Baharti Mukherjee, there are two Indian sisters, Baharti and Mira, their culture guides their choices before the come to America. Once they intermingle with American culture the choices they make become their own. “Like well-raised sisters we never said what was really on our minds…” (Mukherjee 90).

Most of the stories provide us with details about the experiences of first and second generation Indian immigrants in the United States, even though the characters vary greatly, they have corresponding troubles in their lives; “Lahiri constructs a conversation among her pieces” (Brada-Williams 453).

Lastly, in “Two Ways to Belong in America” a cultural story by Bharati Mukherjee. Two sisters that moved to America from India, the older sister wants to move back to India while the other sister is accepting American culture. “I’ll become an American citizen for now, then change back into an Indian when I’m ready to go home. I feel some kind of irrational attachment to India that I don’t to America” (Mukherjee 90).

When Ashima and Ashoke move to America, they have two children, Nikhil and Sonia, who are both quite immersed in American culture. While their children are like this, they try to hold onto their own Indian cultural traditions. Because of that, the family can be divided many times. In particular, Nikhil doesn’t always respect his family’s culture which proves to be very challenging for Ashima and Ashoke because they remain attached to that culture when they move and want him to grow up a certain way. Although the audience can not blame them for feeling this way, it is easy to sympathize with Nikhil as well. Many children of immigrants embrace their heritage, but that is not the case at all with Nikhil. He hides it from people, embarrassed by it, for most of the story. Of course that upsets Ashima and Ashoke and makes them want to push their son into accepting the Indian culture as his own.

Two Ways to Belong in America by Bharati Mukherjee is a personal essay about two immigrant sisters named Bharati and Mira, moving to the United States to work for around 35 years. Despite differences in personalities and perspectives, the two sisters love each other and get along quite well. Both share the same birthplace and culture background, however one admires wearing jeans, the other clings onto her sari. As it is mentioned in the essay in paragraph 4 and 6, Mira decided to stay true to here culture and marry an Indian student, and Bharati stepped further from traditions and married an American, “Mira married an Indian student in 1962” and “I married a fellow student, an

Mukherjee on the other hand marries a Canadian, has moved at least twenty times, and is currently an U.S. citizen and could not imagine ever living in India again. A question that arises in her essay is, “Which one of us is the freak? Someone who retains the food, the clothes, the accent of expatriation, or her T-shirted, blue jeaned sister?” (219). She questions who is considered the “freak” or “normal” one, but cannot define what it means to be either. Those two words can be interpreted in many different ways because it depends on each person’s view of what a “freak” or “normal” person is. In addition to comparing the lifestyles of the sisters, Mukherjee also evaluates the intentions of their stay in the United States. Her sister moved here knowing that she planned on moving back to India, whereas Mukherjee did not. She moved here with the intentions of becoming a permanent resident and succeeded by earning her American citizenship. Although they both moved here at the same time, their intentions of staying differed, but does not prove that one is better than the other.

In the story “Two Ways To Belong In America” by Bharati there are two sisters that view the world differently. For example, “We would endure our two years in America, secure our degrees, then return to India to marry the grooms of our father’s choosing.” What the author means about this quote is that both sisters would go back to India to marry someone from their father’s choosing. Bharati marries someone outside of her culture, she married an American Canadian, and adopts to his culture. Secondly, “After 36 years as a legal immigrant in this country, she clings passionately to her indian citizenship and hopes to go home when

America is known for being a melting pot of cultures throughout the world that came together in our society in a quest for freedoms that may not have existed in other countries of the world. Migration into America has occurred throughout its existence as a country, but movements from specific parts of the world have come in waves over time. As those groups came into America, they have brought their own ideas, religions, social customs and way of living with them. As America has become more multicultural, the views on the use of certain stereotypes, racial language and references to characteristics of a certain group of people have changed. This raises interesting discussion points that people should have so that we can understand each