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Peter Marin’s article “Toward Something American: The Immigrant Soul” explains his views on American life versus American culture and how they differ. He explains that in the average American life it is simply the task of finding and calling the place they now reside in home. “Home is for us, as it is for all immigrants, something to be regained, created, discovered, or mourned-not where we are in time or space, but where we dream of being”. (84) In other words, a new immigrant coming to America and a descendent to new world immigrant still experience the same conflict of American life. In the

Mukherjee varies her sentence lengths to show a stark contrast between her and her sister’s immigrant experiences. For example, she uses the sentence, “I am moved that thousands of long-term residents are finally taking the oath of citizenship. She is not.” Mukherjee’s longer first sentence elicits emotion from the audience hoping to receive empathy early in the essay. While the short terse statement that follows intentionally causes the readers to spark an interest in her sister, Mira, wondering why her views are so different from Mukherjee’s. The use of such variation prepares the readers for the rest of the contrasts that will follow throughout the essay. Mukherjee further shows the differentiation of the siblings when she claims, “America spoke to me-I married it-I embraced the demotion from expatriate aristocrat to immigrant nobody, surrendering those thousands of years of ‘pure culture,’ the saris, the delightfully accented English. She retained them all.” The different sentence lengths

The United States has been the land of opportunity for immigrants. It is a place where immigrants from all over the world come to build a better dream and future for their families and leave from poverty, they come with nothing but determination. One thing that every immigrant brings with them is their culture. A person's culture is strongly tied to the country where they grew up. It is tied to their relationship with their family. Many people come to America from so many different places all over the world. For this reason, people call America a melting pot of cultures immigrants are striving for a better future even though when they migrate to the USA they don’t know the consequences they will face and struggle to be successful living in the United States.

A person has always been able to choose to what extent their cultural experiences affect their perspective. Amy Tan’s, “Two Kinds,” Bharati Mukherjee’s, “Two Ways to Belong in America,” and Robert Lake’s, “An Indian Father’s Plea,” all show how the main characters have chosen to let their experiences have an effect on their cultural identity. A person’s cultural experiences shape perception based on their own identifications and they may chose to assimilate to different cultures.

For immigrants in America, two radically different choices of culture exist. First, the immigrants can choose to stay loyal to their ancestral roots and deny mainstream culture. Instead of contributing to the melting pot of opinions present they isolate within themselves by refusing to learn both the English language and American culture as a whole. Because they cannot communicate with a majority of the population, they don’t maintain any amount of control over American ideals including both politically and socially. The second opportunity available would be to embrace this new found culture, no matter how foreign it is to them, and develop a sense of unity with America. If immigrants wish to break the currently controlled system of power and privilege in America and truly become a part of American customs, they must learn to assimilate culturally.

In “Immigrants” by Pat Mora, they are struggling to achieve acceptance and help their family have a better future. The parents are trying so hard to associate their children with “American traditions” and still are left wondering if they will be accepted in America. In my opinion nothing is worth loosing your actual culture or values. They are literally willing to do whatever it takes to transform heir children into American traditions. “Feed them mashed hot dogs and apple pie” (Line 2 Mora). Both Hot dogs and Apple pie are both American food and American culture. Wait there is more they are even considering changing the names of their children. Buying them blonde dolls and football cleats both have typical American

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.

During the great immigration period 1900-1920, there were many cultures that arrived on the shores of the United States, for example Italians, Portuguese, French, Spanish and Irish to name a few. These new immigrants were grateful to be here and for the opportunity to better their own lives and that of their future generations. In an attempt to assimilate most of these cultures initially practiced their old countries traditions in the privacy of their home. The reasoning behind this is, the current citizens (native) were in great opposition and feared these new immigrants. This fear from long established native born Americans was in part, from having lost

Every person, or group of persons, has an identity and a culture tied to them from the country in which they grew up. An identity is the image someone present to the rest of the world, and culture is the image which one has of his/herself. Countries are similar to a person; over its history of being influenced by other countries, it has formed an identity and culture for itself. It has been stated that the worst act performed by others on another is to take away their identity, and deny them of their culture. Immigrants in America experience the loss of cultural norms/ values, cultural practices/ traits, adjustment to a new culture and changes in identity and concept of self. It is important to note that most immigrants are from minority groups.

The authors’ main argument that is presented in the eight chapter of their book is one that is quite moving. They present that the chapter will consist and examine how particular cultural behaviors and practices are different from other ethnic groups as well as the native born individuals. Primarily, the authors argue that assimilation cannot be measured in order to prove that ethnic groups have assimilated to American society. The authors question and analyze three different aspects that there chapter is based upon, which are language, transnationalism, and religion. Under these certain areas that are scrutinized, the authors contribute to how these aspects can effect the second generation. In the language section they argue that if the second

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).

When adapting to a new culture, many find it hard to assimilate into their new world while still holding on to their past life. Finding yourself in a new place with a new language and unfamiliar faces is challenging for immigrants. Jhumpa Lahiri, an immigrant herself, sheds some light on the Indian culture in her book, Interpreter of Maladies. She conveys many challenges that immigrants face when moving away from their homeland in a myriad of short stories. These short stories introduce similar themes of immigration and adaptation through different experiences. Two of Lahiri’s short stories, “A Temporary Matter” and “Mrs. Sens”, do a great job in showing similar challenges of cultural differences in two different ways. They introduce characters

Today, she is considered to be one of the most popular contemporary immigrant or expatriate writers living in America.Using her inimitable style and intense first-hand experiences, she vividly describes the predicament of Indian women immigrants in the new world where cultures confluence in to a modern way of life filled with chaos and violence. For immigrant women, life in the new world means endless rebirths and redefinitions in thoughts, identities, personalities, cultures, attitudes and world view. Bharati Mukherjee’s novels brilliantly portray the trauma of immigrant women psyche in all its natural colours and minute details in the process of cultural transformation or transfiguration. When the immigrant protagonists are violently immersed into a mix of diverse and unrelated cultures, they experience a sense of awe, confusion, nostalgia, rootlessness and identity crisis.Because of her faithful portrayal of such an extremely complex experience of the process of immigration and the life of immigrant women, the works of Bharati Mukherjee are considered today as one of the authentic chroniclers of contemporary immigrant life in

Due to increasing urbanization, dislocation and migration, a person’s identity is caught up in many contradictions. While trying to locate oneself in-between their root and their new existence, the sense of belonging to a particular place often gets blurred. Modern and postmodern fiction bears a true reflection of this universal human condition in the present world. With the diasporic writers these issues find the most powerful, striking and convincing expression. Narrating the story of a Hindu middle-class Bengali couple that settles in the US, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake depicts the vexing issues of diasporic identities, predicament of assimilation

Bharati Mukherjee is Indian-born American Novelist and short story writer. She went to America for her higher studies, and then lived in Canada with her husband Clark Blaise for a few years. In 1980 she went back to America where she currently lives. She is one of the writer, who would rather be considered as being from her adopted homeland, rather than as an Indian Expatriate writer. Mukherjee’s fiction portrays expatriate characters and their experiences. Mukherjee‟s works focus on the phenomenon of migration, the status of new immigrants, and the feeling of alienation often experienced by expatriates as well as on Indian women and their struggle. Her own struggle with identity first as an exile from India, then an India, then as Indian expatriate in Canada, and finally as a immigrant in the united States has lead to her current contentment of being an immigrant in a country of immigrants. Bharathi Mukherjee is called as an