An Excerpt From 'Two Ways To Belong In America'

An immigrant's life is impacted by many things when arriving to the United States. For example, when arriving to the United States they have trouble communicating with others or fitting into a new life that awaits for them. Alvarez uses imagery and symbolism to show that American Identity can be heavily impacted by the need to fit into society and adapting to a new culture while trying to stay true to one’s native culture. Author Background and Historical Context

Immigration affects families in many different ways. In the book “Enrique’s Journey” by Sonia Nazario, family is a core element. After Enrique’s mother leaves for the U.S., the whole concept of their family gets distorted. The walking out of Enrique’s father and the abandonment of his grandmother help to disband the family even more. Enrique also threatens to repeat the same mistakes his family made with his daughter when he considers leaving her behind in Honduras. Family is the central theme in Enrique’s Journey because of his relationship and resentment with his mother, the rejection of his father and grandmother, and Enrique’s decision to leave his daughter, Jasmin, behind.

According to Huntington, unlike previous immigrants, Hispanics wish to retain a dual culture. This presents them with the culture clash of two varying views on culture as well as education. There are several factors that have made this culture of immigrants assimilations’ so much different than the past immigrants that America has so fondly welcomed with open arms. These include contiguity, scale illegality regional concentration, persistence and historical presence.

Immigrating to America is a process in which many people all across the world entrust as their one way ticket to a better life. Whether they do so legally or illegally, coming to the United States ensures better opportunities, economically, politically, and so on, to people who would have otherwise been worse off in their countries of origin. Even so, the common understanding of being “better off” can be considered a misconstrued concept when it comes to living in the states. Many families that choose to immigrate to the U.S. fail to realize the cultural hardships that newcomers tend to face once on American soil. Anything from racial discrimination or bias at work, in neighborhoods, at school, etc., can all be challenges that people encounter when making a move to the U.S. Such challenges are described by Richard Rodriquez in his autobiography Hunger of Memory. In this passage, he explains how cultural differences between Mexican and American ways of life have shaped him into the person that he is today. He also chooses to highlights the problems that he faces growing up in a predominately white neighborhood, while attending a predominantly white institution. Much of his writing consists of the cultural differences and pressures he feels to assimilate to Western culture and how this process, in turn, changes him into the person that some may find to be unethical, but nonetheless, someone he is proud of.

Immigration takes a very important toll on families that cause them to separate, purposely or not. This idea is explored in Reyna Grande’s memoir, The Distance Between Us, where Reyna shares her experience of immigration to the U.S. and her journey to connect with her parents. The book starts out with Reyna and her siblings living with their mother after their father had just left them to earn better money in America. Later, they come to the U.S. with their father and learn about the different hardships faced in America versus Mexico. Throughout the book, the children are separated from their parents, physically and emotionally, because of immigration.

Higher expectations by first-generation immigrant parents also involve as intergenerational conflict in forming the American identity. In the article “Intergenerational

In the essay “Two Ways to Belong in America” by Bharati Mukherjee. The author talks about the problems immigrants face while they are in America. The author talks about her and her friend Mira’s struggles with Americas policies. This essay examines the audience of the text, the purpose for writing the story, and the subject of the book being read. By examining the audience, finding the purpose of the story, and researching and analyzing the author. The readers can have a deeper understanding of the book.

For millions of immigrants, America has been seen as the land of opportunity where anyone could become anything he or she wanted to be. A family that believes strongly in the American dream can be found in Amy Tan’s short story, “Two Kinds.” The story centers around the daughter of a Chinese immigrant who desperately wants her daughter to become successful. In the story, the author shows the difficult lives immigrants face when moving to a new culture. In this short story, the theme shows the protagonist’s conflict with her mother on the type of daughter her mother wants her to be. The author establishes the theme of how difficult mother-daughter relationships can be through characterization, setting, and symbolism.

Two hundred forty-one years. In that small amount of time America forged its self into a vast landscape of different cultures. A combination of numerous cultures mongrelized together to form “We the people” in America today. Due to all the mixing in the pot, an uncertainty about the countries identity arose. For all the beauty that the melting pot brought, it also created a darker side, as aspects of each cultures fought for superiority in the nation. This fight emerges throughout American history and as a new era of deporis rises, the issues are becoming more relevant. In American Dreamer by Bharati Mukherjee, she shares her own experiences as an immigrant and the fight she partook in to have her own American identity seen. Mukherjee’s fight mirrors hundreds of naturalized American citizens who are trying to realize their identity, however it also shines light on native-born Americas struggling as well. The need for a unified American identity produces a nationwide identity crisis.

It is expected that ultimately there will be a loss of ethnic distinctiveness for immigrants in the U.S., meaning the lack of attachment to the country of origin. (Golash-Boza, 2006) It is argued that all ethnic distinctiveness will no longer exist by the seventh or eighth generations. Before exploring the influence of foreign born vs. U.S. born parents on their children’s cultural assimilation; the different theories of assimilation will be explored. The idea of Assimilation came about in the early 20th century. (Golash-Boza, 2006) Assimilation is surrounded by two theories, the first that all immigrants will assimilate sooner or later and that the generational status of the individual is one of the main factors in determining the

“In 2009, 33 million people in the United States were second generation immigrants, representing 11% of the national population. The children of such immigrants in the U.S., also known as "second generation immigrants," experience a cultural conflict between that of their parents and that of mainstream U.S. society” (Wikipedia 1). Amy Tan the author of “Two Kinds”, and the young character in the story both are a second generation immigrants, who have struggled in their life with parents, about the culture they assimilating and their real culture.

Immigrating to a new country is difficult. One of the largest groups of immigrants that migrate to the United States are the Hispanics. There are approximately 11.7 million immigrants in the United States as of January 2010, and the amount continues to increase at a rapid rate (Warren, 2013). On average there are approximately 300,000 Hispanic immigrants entering the United States each year (Warren, 2013). Hispanics come from all Latin America including Mexico, the islands of the Caribbean, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, Central and South America (Warren, 2013). The United States has represented liberty and freedom to these individuals, and they often make critical decisions and take chances in the hope of a better future. Individuals often, leave their home country in hopes of a new beginning. The aim of this paper is to provide an extensive research on the current literature on immigration and acculturation among the Hispanic population.

The United States has been a host to a wide diaspora of people. Immigrants have had to transition from their familiar land to a new-fashioned foreign land that they must consider home. They bring with them the essence of their initial homeland such as customs, traditions and beliefs that inadvertently change the dynamics of culture within the United States. As a result the United States is an extremely culturally diverse nation. The continual changes or accretions that Americans encounter have always been a controversial topic depending on the experiences of individuals and communities that have immigrant populations. This essay will critically explore

Cristina Henriquez’, The Book of Unknown Americans, folows the story of a family of immigants adjusting to their new life in the United States of America. The Rivera family finds themselves living within a comunity of other immigrants from all over South America also hoping to find a better life in a new country. This book explores the hardships and injustices each character faces while in their home country as well as withina foreign one, the United States. Themes of community, identity, globalization, and migration are prevalent throughout the book, but one that stood out most was belonging. In each chacters viewpoint, Henriquez explores their feelings of the yearning they have to belong in a community so different than the one that they are used to.

For millions of immigrants, America has been seen as the land of opportunity where anyone could become anything he or she wanted to be. A family that believes strongly in the American dream can be found in Amy Tan’s short story, “Two Kinds.” The story centers around the daughter of a Chinese immigrant who desperately wants her daughter to become successful. In the story, the author shows the difficult lives immigrants face when moving to a new culture. In this short story, the theme shows the protagonist’s conflict with her mother on the type of daughter her mother wants her to be. The author establishes the theme of how difficult mother-daughter relationships can be through characterization, setting, and symbolism.