Cultural Influences In Everyday Use By Amy Tan

Day 2: How does your culture contribute to the way that you interact with your social world? Culture is one of the primary reasons we act the way we do. There are many types of cultures like professional, national, religious, family, and educational. Your family culture is the number one type of culture that affects you in your adult life. It shapes the foods you enjoy, the activities you like to participate in, and specific belief systems you take part in. Additionally,

Culture incorporates many different aspects of life such as religion, food, language, ethnicity, and many more. All of these aspects influence the way a person lives and acts. Although culture provides a positive influence by bestowing self worth, it could also negatively affect someone’s life. Culture affects a person in many ways by creating internal and external conflict, which influences the way others view them and therefore affects their actions and how they feel about themselves.

Culture is a large part of every person’s life, it is what makes each person unique. Within culture there are many aspects such as food, music, clothing, tradition, and many more. Since culture makes up such a large part of our day to day lives, it is almost always responsible shaping and informing our view on the world.

Together with the beliefs comes heritage which is defined as traditions passed on for years, family items and etc. In “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, describes about a poor family who have a different perspective about the word “heritage”. “You just will not understand. The point is these quilts, these quilts”. This quote connects to the title of the story because Dee thinks that Maggie and her mother will use the quilt every day. Dee has a whole different perspective of the quilts. She views the quilts as a small reminder of her heritage, that is dying. For her mother and her sister, the quilts symbolizes a bond to their cultural identity and their connection to the quilts. Because Dee has failed to understand the true meaning to their “ heritage” and she is convinced that Maggie has proven that she understands the value of the quotes symbolize in the true meaning of a person’s heritage.

How one’s culture affect the way we view the world and others are in many different ways, for example Heritage, Family structure, Symbolism,and Judgment are just a few out of many ways culture affect our point of view of the world and others. Furthermore what culture is, is a huge mix of parts that make up someone and who they are. In the Novel “ Two Kinds,” from The Joy Luck Club, by Hayden Herrera, the Short Story “ Everyday Use,” by Alice Walker, the Personal Essay “ Two Ways to Belong in America,” by Bharati Mukherjee, and in the Essay “An Indian Father’s Plea,” by Robert Lake conveys how this is true.

“Culture is sometimes described as a lens through which we view the world, meaning that one’s culture influences their perceptions and interactions in everyday life” (Davis, 2006). Every culture has different beliefs and customs

In the story “Two Kinds”, author Amy Tan, who is a Chinese-American, describes the conflicts in the relationship of a mother and daughter living in California. The protagonist in this story Jing-mei Woo’s mother is born and raised in China, and immigrates to the United States to escape from the Chinese Civil War. For many years she maintained complete Chinese traditional values, and has been abided by it deliberately. This kind of traditional Chinese culture has also affected her daughter profoundly. However, Jing-mei is born and raised in the United States. Despite she has a Chinese mother; she is unfamiliar and uncomfortable with Chinese

Does a person’s culture change the way they see the world or people? The way we were born and the way every culture has their own behaviors, traditions or the education we receive from our culture. Sometimes even the influence our parents has onto us is the way we see the world; everybody has a different culture as well as different thoughts. Culture has a really big impact on everybody from the way they see the world to the way they interpret we are all different.

For example in “An Indian father’s Plea”, Lake writes about how Wind-Wolf’s father can’t tolerate Wind-Wolf being a slow learner, “I can’t understand that you have already labeled him as a slow learner (Lake 95)”. The teacher already labeled Wind-Wolf as a slow learner because of his culture. Another example is when Wind-Wolf’s friend’s mom said, “It is OK if you have to play with him at school, but we don’t allow these kinds of people into our house (Lake 98)”. Culture affected Wind-Wolf because he was different that the white kid. His culture made him feel different than the rest of the kids at his school. Some people may say that culture doesn’t affect how one views another, but as shown in “An Indian Father’s Plea” culture does affect how one views

Your culture has a huge influence on how you perceive the world. Our culture gives us a sense of who we are and where we stand in society. In Chapter 3: The Trouble We’re In, by Allan Johnson, he explains that our experiences that we claim to be real are actually cultural creations and that we see it to be a norm even if we haven 't actually experienced them (p.21). An example that Johnson gave in the first reading was the idea of a black woman in Africa, she doesn’t consider herself black because she hasn’t experienced it, she identifies herself as African and a woman, but if she were to go to America, she would be identified as black because that’s what is practiced in American culture the example shows us that although we don’t really experience things first hand we 're taught to relate to it because of our culture. In the Chapter 9: Getting off the hook, Johnson talks about the idea of one race being better than the other and that is instilled into us through our culture. He explains this by talking about two guys, one black and one white and how they were both treated in social environments. This also shows the power we give others when we allow these cultural norms to influence us. These influences help shape who we become and play a huge part on our social interactions with one another.

A person's culture changes how people view each other by making everyone that’s different seam strange and different compared to them. In all the stories the characters view changes how they see the world around them. to Begin in the story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, the narrator's pride in her heritage changes how she views her daughter Dee. first off, she does not look like the way her daughter wants her to be. her daughter wants her to be “a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like uncooked barley pancake, my hair glistens in the hot bright lights”(59).

For example, in the short story, “Everyday Use”, by Alice Walker, one of the main characters, Dee, chose to neglect her immediate family’s culture. Dee, ambitious for a higher social status, was one of the only characters to receive an education. Her mother describes Dee by stating, “She used to read to us without pity, forcing words...other folks’ habits...she washed us in a river of make-believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn’t necessarily need to know. Pressed us to her with the serious ways she read, to shove us away at just the moment, like dimwits, we seemed about to understand” (60). This quote shows how Dee changed after receiving an education. The difference between her attitudes is clear. The beliefs and behaviours Dee was taught in her past community were not valued in her new environment. Dee’s drastic change demonstrates how little her initial culture affected her current life. Nonetheless, an individual's family culture can have the same leading potential on one’s perspective of the world. For example, Maggie, Dee’s sister uses her family culture and values to define family heritage differently. There’s a dispute between which daughter should get the family quilt. When it’s suggested that Dee would not receive the quilts, Dee and Mama discuss how Maggie would use the quilts, “‘She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use’...

Culture in definition is: “the beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time” (Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary). Thus, based on these certain beliefs, customs, traditions, and arts, a person’s thoughts, ideas, and views can be greatly affected since they lived with a lifestyle based around a specific culture. Therefore, it can be coherent that the culture of a person is paramount to one’s views of the world and of others as seen throughout many texts such as, “An Indian Father’s Pleas” by Robert Lake and “Where Worlds Collide” by Pico Iyer. To begin with, the effect of culture on one’s views of the world and of others can be seen throughout the essay, “And Indian Father’s Plea” by Robert Lake (Medicine

Everyone sees others in the world in different ways, why? Culture has a significant impact on how individuals view the world and others. The three stories Indian Fathers Plea, Two Kinds, and By Any Other Name, prove culture has the largest impact. Some may argue that experience has a considerable impact, but overall culture is still more prominent.

The people on this earth were born to adapt and show with nature and spread their unique culture with one another. In the short story, “Everyday Use,” Alice Walker illustrates each character with unique personalities. Walker as an activist of the movement, wrote this story eventually to prove the differences between cultural boundaries. We can also see those cultural boundaries affecting the family’s relationship. Changing your name and adapting into a new culture doesn’t necessarily make you the origin towards that culture. As we tie the author and Dee together, we can also see a huge difference between these two people.