Dirt For Dinner

For more than 300 years, immigrants from every corner of the globe have settled in America, creating the most diverse and heterogeneous nation on Earth. Though immigrants have given much to the country, their process of changing from their homeland to the new land has never been easy. To immigrate does not only mean to come and live in a country after leaving your own country, but it also means to deal with many new and unfamiliar situations, social backgrounds, cultures, and mainly with the acquisition and master of a new language. This often causes mixed emotions, frustration, awkward feelings, and other conflicts. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, the author

Zitkala-Sa’s autobiography informs her readers of the damaging and traumatizing effects of assimilation by utilizing her life experiences as a narrative, demonstrating how living under an oppressive and dominant culture was an internal struggle between society's expectations and her own cultural identity. Sa’s experience is especially unique considering her mixed heritage as well.

Imagining journeying across the globe to better your life, this concept sounds familiar to many immigrant Americans. They all come across the globe to improve the lives of their families and themselves. Many people who move across the world are foreign to the language and culture. In many instances, their children are representing them. The children elaborate what the parents cannot. In Mother Tongue by Amy Tang, she writes the struggles her mother had been through while living in America. While she knew the language, her accent made speaking difficult to understand. Many people wrote her off without even attempting to understand her needs. When you’re an immigrant it is heartbreaking, seeing your parents struggle with the language while you

Leaving one's own country and moving to another is one of the most difficult journeys anyone can make. In one's home country, he or she has a place, an identity that is

What does it feel like to be raised in an immigrant family? In the essay “Mother tongue” by Amy Tan, the author describes how her mother’s English influences her in her career and life that the “mother tongue” does not limit her as a writer, but shaped her and her perception on life instead. And her attitude to her mother’s English changes from the initial embarrassment to the final appreciation.

The 2003 film Elf (Berg, Kormarnicki, Robertson & Favreau, 2003), while seemingly inconsequential for intercultural communication studies, provides a relevant and interesting case study for problems in intercultural communication. On his journey of finding his birth family and his identity in America, Buddy the Elf encounters several challenges in intercultural communication as he experiences culture shock, difference and conflict between the Elf and American cultures. This paper will provide a brief synopsis of Elf’s plot and key characters, and will then explore several issues as they present themselves in the film. First, the issue of value orientations and how they present in both American and Elf cultures will be analyzed. Next, the process and implications of acculturation will be examined in Buddy’s case, including his complete assimilation to a new culture by virtue of adoption and how this impacts identity and communication. Finally, issues in nonverbal communication differences in the Elf and American cultures will be explored, followed by brief concluding remarks.

The clashing of cultures appears through the numerous attempts the Price children take to adapt to their new political and social environment, including adapting to the language, routine life and cultural traditions. Illustrating the differences of what Americans and the Congolese do during

The representation of anti-colonialist struggles and post-independence milieu stem from the creation of artificial Africas, that perpetuates prejudices, and stock narratives throughout dominate media and film. The Kitchen Toto follows the journey of Mwangi, the son of a preacher who is killed for opposing an independence movement. The film portrays African’s as malicious, corrupt, and in need of colonial saving by depicting the Mau Mau, the independence group who killed Mawangi’s father, in a negative light. They are shown in the night with machetes, forcing people to swear allegiance, and killing their countrymen without sufficient reasoning. A Good Man in Africa depicts Africans as malicious, corrupt, and in need of colonial help as well. During a presidential election, the favored candidate, Sam Adekunle is attempting to get the land back that Britain conned his father from. His tactics come off as corrupt, and malicious; in actuality, Britain is attempting to keep control the Kinjanja’s economy. This story is representative of neocolonialism, and reflects Nigeria’s struggle to profit from their oil reserves after they were declared free from Britain. Anti-colonialist struggles and post-independence milieu are presented as malicious, corrupt, and in need of colonial saving through narrative strategies in The Kitchen Toto, and A Good Man in Africa.

A typical childhood consists of a child having two parents; a mother and a father, or two fathers, or two mothers, whatever the situations maybe. My childhood wasn’t typical, my childhood consist of one single parent, my mother, with the occasional glimpse of my father, but that was rare. My mother played a significant role in my education and how I communicate with others. You see my mother immigrant from Cuba to America and was unable to speak a word of english but she came anyway with her Heart open and her mind ready to learn. Thanks to reruns of ‘ I Love Lucy’ and Oprah; my mother was able to learn english but it was “broken” as Amy Tan would put it. Amy Tan’s essay “ Mother Tongue” discusses the many difficulties that she and her mother have face with her mother's “broken” english; which seem all to similar to my mother and me. It was like we were one in the same. Tan points out the prejudices and culture racism that immigrants are forced to endure without showing aggression or even acknowledging the reader of it. Tan is able to criticize our culture standards and expresses how we have double standards for English speakers.

Belonging is shaped by the experiences he or she encounters with others, and within the two poems ‘Migrant Hostel’ and ’10 Mary Street’ by Peter Skrzynecki, and the film ‘Looking For Alibrandi’ directed by Kate Woods, the characters’ personas are moulded by their endurances of alienation and barriers from mainstream society due to their personal and cultural differences.

Unconsciously, we all speak different languages; we categorize the way we speak by the environment and people at which we are speaking too. Whenever a character enters an unfamiliar environment, they experiment with language to find themselves and understand reality. For immigrants, language is a means to retain one’s identity; however, as they become more assimilated in their new communities their language no longer reflects that of their identity but of their new cultural surroundings. When an immigrant, immigrates to a new country they become marginalized, they’re alienated from common cultural practices, social ritual, and scripted behavior. It’s not without intercultural communication and negotiation

Research by Sarah L. Holloway and Gill Valentines (2000) places an immense focus on characterizing children as competent beings, observing childhood as socially constructed by adult society. This is quite fruitful when uncovering the level of maturity children must develop upon entering a foreign country. Carmela describes adequately throughout the first interview that regardless of her age, it was necessary to begin working, providing for her family, and establishing herself. Studies about immigrants and migrants done by Deborah Boehm (2011) act as a crucial foundation for the intent of this research. Boehm (2011) focuses primarily on the transnational experience of her participants, emphasizing a notion of

In a freezing class, two brilliant minds unlocked the fiery passion that is their talent one an artist the other a writer. Bringing to light a history long forgotten creating abstract thoughts arbitrary to our own. Komi Olaf the artist and Okey Ndibe the writer not only enlightening the class but also the world with each brush stroke and each word. Every creation stemming from the hands of these masters tell of issues at the heart of Africa from colonialism to existential dilemmas. Thru spoken word, hip-hop, art, music, poems and literature issues close at heart to the artists and to Africa are portrayed. This paper will focus on the art exhibit by Komi Olaf and Foreign Gods inc by Okey Ndibe as spoken by them during their discussion in the class on October 13th. Where the talks focused on the key course objectives being stereotypes, post-colonialism, youth culture, and resistance.

As a student studying Intercultural Communications, films can be a great resource. Often showing interaction between people from different cultures, the advantage of films is that they can highlight, focus, entertain and inspire us in ways that help us become more thoughtful about the people and cultures that we encounter. (Quast, B.) This is a film analysis of the cultural clashes and communication challenges that exists due to cultural differences between the mothers and their daughters.

In the film, Born into Brothels (2004), British filmmakers Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman setout to present a perspective from the children of sex workers living in Red Light District of Sonagachi, Calcutta. This film, however incidental, demonstrate single narratives on the basis of morality, sexuality, and preconceived notions about the third world. Their attempt at filming an impartial ethnographic film that spoke of the true nature of life as a child in the Red Light District of Calcutta failed from their Western gaze and lack of insight about the community of Sonagachi to contextualize how the Red Light District and the poverty surrounding are a result of globalization. Acknowledging the “before” that Briski and Kauffman could never understand about the Red Light District because of their limited Western understanding about the third world, would’ve resulted in a more inclusive look into the subjective perspectives of the children. Instead, using footage and still pictures of the dirty allies, children covered in what seems to be oil, naked children chained like animals in a zoo, etc, as an aesthetic (lens) used to reproduce hegemonic narratives about the third world and objectively reflect reality. Additionally, these shots separate the people of the Red Light District from Westerners and establishes and “us” and a “them”, them being objects and not full established subjects.