By Any Other Name

Santha not knowing her name also created some external conflict between her and the British students. The British students laughed at Santha for not knowing her name. This creates mental tension between them because Santha now thinks that the British students are just mean and simple-minded and in return the British students think that Santa is just a dumb Indian. Santha gets called a bad sport for not knowing how to play tag. Having a lack of knowledge of how a culture functions and experiencing it is certainly going to have bad results. Santha is only creating further distance from her and the British students. Having the sisters experience a different culture without have prior knowledge about it can leave them shaken and them forming personal opinions about

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

Ashima is Gogol’s mother, who moved to America for her husband Ashoke after they were arranged for marriage. Ashima misses her family and life back in Calcutta, she has trouble setting in to the American lifestyles. “On more than one occasion [Ashoke] has come home from the university to find her morose, in bed, rereading her parents’ letters.” Ashima feels lonely and homesick. Ashima tries to keep Bengali tradition by always wearing a sari and a bindi in her forehead, and always cooking an Indian dinner. “For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy — a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding.” (49) In America, Ashima is surrounded by people she does not know, and she does not quite feel that she fits in. There are new customs and a new way of doing

Forming a new identity in a foreign country is not an easy task. Immigrants usually face challenges to identify themselves. Identity formation is the development of one’s distinctive personality due to particular reasons such as new environment, new culture and conflicts. During the process, some characters from Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake either create or deny the bond with their own culture; some undergo conflicts among generations. Those processes reflect significantly in Ashima and Gogol throughout the book. The degree of assimilations determines to what extent the characters have formed the new identity in the new culture.

In “The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie tells the authors story, represented by the main character Junior. The main character is referred to by many names throughout the book. The author focuses on how extremely poor, and the strict line between the “whites” and the “indians”. Most struggle with finding their “identity”. A concept that Junior faces throughout the book. There is a lot of loss, and death throughout the book, yet it is categorized as a story full of joy and hope.

In Santha Rama Rau’s memoir “By Any Other Name”, social organization causes conflict for Santha and Premila in the Anglo-Indian school. In Santha’s school, the social organization is quickly depicted as soon as she enters her classroom as the English teacher treats the Indian students differently than the other students. “They were all sitting at the back of the room and I went to join them” (10). This event portrays how students of different cultural heritage are treated differently than students of the same descent as the English teacher. There is a deep cultural divide in the school with how different students are treated based on their differences, this is shown when Santha and Premila take their first test. “We had our test today, and

First, this novel showcases acts of caring for family and friends, during a rough time for all the Indians bringing them closer into one community. The protagonist Sabine displays acts of caring among her friends and family. For instance, near the end of the novel, Sabine helps her mother’s friend, Lalita, despite having a sour relationship with her. Sabine saves Lalita from being arrested by lying to a military officer, thus making Sabine a more confident and brave person. Sabine faces her fear of the military and gains the power she

In the US alone, there are more than 10,000 books challenged each year. Sherman Alexie’s novel, the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, has not only been challenged but successfully banned in many states. In this book, a poor Native American boy named Junior is living with his family on an Indian reservation, hoping for a better future. To achieve this, he must leave the reservation and betray his community. Junior transfers to Reardan High School and gives us personal insight on how Indians are really treated. Nevertheless, the story has been challenged and banned for what people believe to be its sexism, racism, bullying, vulgarness, explicit language, violence, and the use of drugs/ alcohol. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian should not be banned because it exposes young adults to the reality of bullying, racism, and stereotypes in an educational manner.

As a child, we’re presented with ample information that is all relatively new to us. The knowledge acquired in childhood is given to us by our parents and relatives. This allows us to grow, but the influence of our family is what shapes our culture and beliefs. Although our parents believe this is the best culture to follow, we often find ourselves questioning it. This creates complexity within the acceptance of being part of one’s culture. Shyam Selvadurai and Marjane Satrapi, use this theme within their respective novels, Funny Boy and Persepolis to demonstrate the transcendence from innocence to experience. Both main characters are introduced as children that go through an evolution to reach adulthood. Culture challenges the characters

We soon find out, because of the stereotype that Indians cheat, Premila and the rest of the Indians were placed in the back of the classroom. Here, Premila made a choice. She wasn’t going to follow what others thought of as her culture. She too was going to make her own way. Just like Amy and

Women in India are looked as housewives, who have to please her family especially her husband, therefore education is rarely an option for girls in India. Neeraj who is fifteen years old lives in India with her father, mother, sister and other relatives. She does many chores, as well as grazing goats, and farming. Just like in Afghanistan, the boys never do house work, so while she helps her mother with the house work her brothers play outside. Neeraj dreams of becoming a teacher, and building a school for her students. Since she has to help with the house work, she attends school at night, by the time she gets back her family members have already gone to bed. To make things worse for Neeraj, a drought occurred in the year of 2006; her parents took her out of school, so that she could find green pasture. While she was gone she did not study, making her fall behind in school. When she returned four months later, she worked hard to get caught up again but it was hard. Since, many parents began enrolling their kids in public schools during the day, the night school was closed down. Neeraj’s teacher did his best to help her get into the public school, but because Neeraj had forgotten so much information, she was placed in second grade. All the younger kids made fun of her since she was so big, and did not know anything. Neeraj ended up dropping out of school; her teacher says that “is up to her family to decide what it will be like for Neeraj.” Neeraj’s parents plan to marry her to a young educated man. With this in mind, Neeraj is not planning on returning to school, instead she is waiting to be married, and to form a family of her own. Therefore, if Neeraj does not marry an educated wealthy man, she will not live a prosperous life. Moving on, there is one last kid, whose name is Ken, who as well has great dreams of completing

In conclusion, the connections between “The School Days of an Indian Girl” and Du Bois’s double consciousness is strong. The young girl develops a lack of self-image because she is torn between two worlds. However, she is forced to conform to one identity throughout the story. Opposed to Du Bois’s belief that one can become both an African American and an American over time. Even with this subtle difference the story and the theory, both, have the same concept within

The novel Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee is an incredible story about the transformation and life experiences of a Panjabi girl from India. The life of Jyoti is told from her point of view when she is twenty-four years old, and pregnant with the baby of Bud Ripplemeyer, a crippled banker who is more than twice Jyoti’s age. During the span of two months in Iowa, Jyoti narrates her biographical experiences in Punjab and in America as she strives to become independent. Jasmine illustrates that when one’s relationships go through changes, it will impact one’s identity.

The immigrant experience affects families in a unique manner wherein ethnicity, and therefore, identity becomes something continuously negotiated. Jhumpa Lahiri’s contemporary novel, “The Namesake,” beautifully illustrates the complexities of generational culture clashes and the process of self-individualization over the course of this experience. Lahiri challenges the often-one-dimensional approach to ethnic identity by allowing readers an intimate and omnipresent look into the internal struggles of the Gangulis, a first-and-second-generation Bengali family, following their relocation to America. The novel incorporates a heavy presence of reading, and the abundant representation of books and documents throughout it are vital to its

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth is comprised of eight short stories about different Indian families’ struggles in America, many of them going through the immigrant experience. The conflicts are with friends and family, and also with themselves, as each of them attempt to find their own identity along with fitting in with the rest of society. One of the causes of these struggles that because the families in the stories are mixed in terms of generation. Many of the adults in the stories were first generation immigrants from India, while many of the children were raised in the United States, which is the second generation. This led to blending of culture and at the same time, clashes between the immigrant mentality of living and the American mentality of living. In Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri demonstrates to the reader the important influence of environment, specifically culture and how it impacts parental teachings, on the personality and development of an individuals’ identity, and how the actions and development of characters can affect one’s family and friends; the impact of environment and culture is shown especially by the characters and stories “Hell-Heaven” and “Hema and Kaushik”.