Hanif Kureishi's 'My Son the Fanatic' and Amy Tan's 'Two Kinds': Modern Cultural Theme of Dual and Transitional Identity

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.

The personal narrative “Born in Amrika” (2003) by Mona M. Maisami speculates that children of Iranian originated parents struggle between culturally identifying themselves as American or Iranian. Maisami develops her main idea by narrating through the point of view of a young girl born in America interacting with her Iranian born cousin Nina. Throughout the story, Nina and her cousin encounter various differing cultural phenomena such as dress and meal rituals before realizing they can adapt to both cultures at the same time. This short story highlights these two different lifestyles in order to emphasize the way American citizens with overseas connections question their character because of their newly adopted home. In hopes to reach out to

In her essay “My Two Lives,” Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian American, explains the balance between the identities of the two countries inside her heart, as well as her psychological struggle between her bicultural identities. She describes herself as an Indian-American because she moved with her family from India to the United States when she was very young. However, confused with her identity through her growth, she feels that she doesn’t belong to either of the two countries because of its completely different cultures. When she is at home, she deals with her parents in an Indian way, which is strange compared to the American way that she come across outside. She says that she has a distinctive identity in spite of her Indian appearance

Over the course of history, South Asians have been mistreated and undermined within American society. This is especially evident after the terror attacks of 9/11 in which Americans shunned its South Asian Population, and reduced them to devastating stereotypes. This has created tension and hostility within the South Asian community, thus pressuring them to being more Americanized, and further creating a fixation towards becoming more white. The obsession with American culture has caused many to conform, leaving behind cultural and religious parts of their identities. It is necessary to explore the history behind the mistreatment of South Asians to understand why the change in identity such as those portrayed with Changez in The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Amir in Disgraced have occurred. These main characters of South Asian descent make it is clear that the American dream for immigrants creates a constant struggle between national and transnational identities as racism and hostility are being thrust upon them by American society.

This book depicts the national and cultural status of the immigrant mother, who is able to preserve the traditions of her Indian heritage that connect her to her homeland. Ensuring a successful future for her American-born children is coordinated with the privilege of being an American citizen. Ashima yearns for her homeland and her family that she left behind when

Sui Sin Far’s short story, “In the Land of the Free” touches on the reality of being a Chinese immigrant in late-19th century America. The story revolves around a Chinese couple. The husband is ready for his wife, Lae Choo, to arrive from China with their new son, later named Kim. However, due to policies on immigration, the American government was forced to take possession of the child due to a lack of paperwork. However, Far’s short-story has a deeper meaning than just focusing on unfair immigration policies. She takes advantage of the story’s ending to symbolize a rejection of immigrant culture, most especially Chinese immigrant culture, by taking advantage of Kim’s change in behaviors, appearance, and dialect.

Immigrants’ refusal to appreciate a fused culture promotes division. Mukherjee questions the idea of immigrants losing their culture for American ideals: “Parents express rage or despair at their U.S.-born children's forgetting of, or indifference to, some aspects of Indian culture,” to that Mukherjee asks, “Is it so terrible that our children are discovering or are inventing homelands for themselves?” (Mukherjee, 1997, para. 28). Many immigrants experience anger when their children no longer hold the ideals of their home country. This tension produced within the household hinders the unity within a resident country’s culture and encourages division within families. Using herself as an example, Mukherjee provides another instance of anger directed at her from her own subculture: “They direct their rage at me because, by becoming a U.S.

In the short story collection, Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, immigrants and memories have a very particular relationship because their memories surrounding a large part of their identities are derivative of diaspora. Somehow they are able to have this double consciousnesses, the memories and thoughts as immigrants, and the memories and thoughts as Americans. The time spent in their native country or in their host country cannot be replaced, even if the experiences immigrants encounter are negative. Even if the immigrant misses what they have lost migrating to another country, what is lost cannot come back. There is a constant battle between how much and how little memories do the Indian-American characters in the book have of being either Indian or American to be “Indian-American.”

In addition, disappointment is another reason Jayanti choses to let assimilation take over her self-identity. When she finally realizes that America is not as glamorous as she imagined, read about or saw in pictures, she feels disheartened. When she arrives, she looks forward in seeing, “neat red brick house with matching flowery drapes, the huge, perfectly mowed lawn green like it had been painted, the shiny concrete driveway on which sat two shiny motorcars”(73). However, she is greeted by a, “crowded [apartment] with faded, over stuffed sofas and rickety end tables that look like they’ve come from a larger place...the tiny room I am to occupy - it is the same size as my bathroom at home” (73,74).

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.

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

In the personal essay “My Mothers Tongue” (1990), Amy Tan, widely known author explains her insights on language and culture identity using details and memories from her own life experiences. Tan conceals that the language in which her mother used with her “was the language that helped shape the way [she] saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world” (1208) and in the process it made her who she is today as an author. Tan illuminates the euro centricity of the Master Narrative by retelling stories of her mother being treated poorly because of her “broken” or “limited” English. She recalls many past experiences where her mother suffered from bad service and treatment from restaurants, stockbrokers, and even hospitals. Using examples from her personal life Tan gets her point across about language and culture characteristics in order to show how Chinese culture is affected by the master narrative and also encourages others to include a variety of cultures in order to overcome bias opinions. Tan’s apparent audience can be ranged from the child of an immigrant to a doctor and offers an authentic and rich portrayal of Chinese history through her conflicting experience of her Chinese and American cultures.

Midnight’s Children (1981) is a novel linking India’s transition from British colonialism to independence to its protagonist, Saleem Sinai – a boy with telepathic powers who is able to organize the 1001 other children of special abilities born within an hour of Indian independence (which took place at midnight on the 15th of August, 1947, hence the title). It is considered a seminal example of both postcolonial literature and magical realism. In fact, it was used early on in postcolonial studies as a definitive piece of postcolonial literature – that is, Midnight’s Children helped postcolonial theorists create a definition of postcolonialism. Consequently, Midnight’s Children – at least the postcolonial interpretation of it – has long been

In “Men in the Sun” and “My Son the Fanatic”, both authors discuss the way in which a nostalgic relation to the past and the loss of one’s sense of self, as a result of being uprooted or displaced, lead to unsuccessful or poor assimilation to new communities. Ghassan Kanafani employs frequent flashbacks and shifts of narrative perspectives as formal mechanisms to reflect that people who either cling to or are troubled by their past always have great difficulty adjusting to a new way of life. Hanif Kureshi uses an extreme example with the reversal of roles played by father and son in an immigrant family. He argues that even when immigrants try to escape their past and start a new life, such attempts are often futile because of failure to

‘Foreign,’ written by Carol Ann Duffy, is a poem depicting the perspective of an immigrant worker who lives in unfamiliar surroundings and narrates their experiences. In this dramatic monologue, Duffy uses language and themes in effective ways that allow readers to interpret the different themes and ideas to highlight the persona’s sense of confusion, feelings, nostalgia, and many more. Through the use of literary devices, regular structure and varied tones throughout the poem, the author presents strong themes that can be related to the audience as well as to gain sympathy to the narrator.