Ifemelu Moving To America

Immigration affects families in many different ways. In the book “Enrique’s Journey” by Sonia Nazario, family is a core element. After Enrique’s mother leaves for the U.S., the whole concept of their family gets distorted. The walking out of Enrique’s father and the abandonment of his grandmother help to disband the family even more. Enrique also threatens to repeat the same mistakes his family made with his daughter when he considers leaving her behind in Honduras. Family is the central theme in Enrique’s Journey because of his relationship and resentment with his mother, the rejection of his father and grandmother, and Enrique’s decision to leave his daughter, Jasmin, behind.

One’s commitment of immigrating to a new country for a better life indicates that oneself is ready to risk the life given to them by facing many hardships along the way. In the novel Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario, Enrique does exactly that, risking his own life at the age of seventeen in order to reunite with his mother who left him when he was five in order to obtain a better job in the US and give Enrique and his older sister everything she thought they deserved. Nazario utilizes an emotional appeal and metaphors to inform readers of the arduous situations migrants experience on their long and tiring journey in search of a family member and a better future.

Since Amin Ahmad immigrated into the United States from India, he has real life experience that contributes to his claims. He is able to connect specific occurrences he faced with immigrants like himself, and their comparable situations. He explains that, “my passport tells the story of my immigrant life: my student and work visas; all the entry and exit stamps as I traveled between India and the United States” (Ahmad 38). His passport is a constant reminder of the journey he has traveled and the experiences that define him as a person. Ahmad demonstrates a perspective of immigration that is unique to many. Not only has he made the steps towards leaving his country, he has successfully created a life for himself. He has lived in the United States for a long period of time and even has an American fiancé. With this unique situation, he can connect with a vast amount of different people, both citizens and immigrants.

The “American dream”, a national ethos of the United States, is sought after by many struggling immigrants who go through much risk in order to make a better living in the U.S. A long debated issue over illegal immigration into the U.S revolves around Mexican/Latino immigrants. With Honduras having little to no medical care and harsh living environments, many of its citizens seek to find jobs to support their families. Enrique’s Journey, bye Sonia Nazario sheds a new light on immigration in the U.S with the account of one particular Honduran boy who is trying to immigrate to the U.S. From the view of privileged individuals, these immigrants may be seen as a problem, with a simple solution; do not let them into the U.S. However, this problem has a much more complex lining.

    For thousands of years people have left their home country in search of a land of milk and honey. Immigrants today still equate the country they are immigrating to with the Promised Land or the land of milk and honey. While many times this Promised Land dream comes true, other times the reality is much different than the dream. Immigration is not always a perfect journey. There are many reasons why families immigrate and there are perception differences about immigration and the New World that create difficulties and often separate generations in the immigrating family. Anzia Yezierska creates an immigration story based on a Jewish family that is less than ideal. Yezierska’s text is a

“She’ll come back and be a real Americanah like Bisi” (Adichie 65). The title of the book is Americanah. It is a made up word that stands for the African people who go to America and come back changed. This Americanah idea just adds to the theme of African people want to be more American.

Immigration has been a topic for heated discussions for many years. However, no one has really ever looked into what immigration actually is or how hard it is for the people trying to immigrate. In the common reader we are given an insight to what immigration is, and the risks that follow.

In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel, Americanah, a young woman named Ifemelu migrates from her home country of Nigeria to the United States on a student visa. Upon her arrival in America, she is immediately overwhelmed by the stark differences between her glorified idea of America compared to the actuality of America: “She stared at buildings and cars and signboards, all of them matte, disappointingly matte; in the landscape of her imagination, the mundane things in America were covered in a high-shine gloss” (127). This quote exemplifies Ifemelu’s delusion of grandeur in America. Even more so, Ifemelu states early on in the novel that “Nigeria became where she was supposed to be, the only place she could sink her roots without the constant

“They knew there was a possibility the agent had sold them out to the militants, and so they knew there was a possibility this was the final afternoon of their lives”(Hamid 102); leaving your country might be the hardest decision that someone has to make. In Mohsin Hamid’s novel Exit West he puts his main characters in a dangerous situation of trusting a total stranger to get them into another county with a chance of them being sold out and killed. This decision to migrate includes leaving your family and friends, starting your life over, and possibly endangering the lives of your family along with yourself. Hamid follows a young couple migrating out of their home town for safety and a better life. The challenges presented in the novel can be applied to real life migration. Hamid represents the difficulties of traveling from country to country through his magical doors, includes learning how to find your way in new places, and presents the idea of countries not wanting migrants. Exit West reveals the migration issues in today's world to prove that migrants deserve the same basic liberties as everyone else, because it effects everyone else and takes a lot of will power to travel to an unfamiliar place.

Every year people from different parts of the world leaving their homes and immigrate to the United States. These people are willing to sell themselves in order to find a better life or to have money to send back home, or to make sure their children are raised in a better county. Some of them came seeking personal freedom or relief from political and religious persecution. Each one of these brave persons has a big reason to leave a Homeland, family, friends, work and all elements of a human’s life without even a possibility to come back one day. According to recent changes in the immigration law of the U.S., not everyone, who is ready to leave a Homeland is allowed to join

Immigration makes up of the United States. The life of an immigrant faces many struggles. Coming to the United States is a very difficult time for immigrant, especially when English is not their first language. In Oscar Handlin’s essay, Uprooted and Trapped: The One-Way Route to Modernity and Mark Wyman’s Coming and Going: Round Trip to America, both these essays describes the life of immigrants living in America and how they are able to make a decent amount of money to support their families. Handlin’s essay Uprooted and Trapped: The One - Way Route to Modernity explains how unskilled immigrants came to adapt to the American life working in factories to make a living. In the essay, Coming and Going: Round Trip to America, this essay describes the reality of many immigrants migrating to the United States in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. Many were living and adjusting to being transnational families. Both these essays show how the influx of immigration and industrialization contributed to the making of the United States. With the support from documents 3 and 7, Thomas O’ Donnell, Immigrant Thomas O’Donnell Laments the Worker’s Plight, 1883 and A Slovenian Boy Remembers Tales of the Golden Country, 1909, these documents will explain the life of an immigrant worker in the United States. Although, the United States was portrayed as the country for a better life and a new beginning, in reality, the United

The changing environments throughout the ages have caused the movement of thousands of families out of their homelands. Whether forced to make such decisions or doing so by their own desires, all immigrants have had to survive the physical and psychological challenges encountered along the way. To speak about the experiences of all these different people using the same ideas and examples would be quite inaccurate. They all, however, had to live through similar situations and deal with similar problems. Many of them succeeded and found the better future they were looking for. Many others found only hardship and experienced the destruction of their hopes and dreams. All of them were transformed.

For thousands of years, waves of immigrants continue joining the developed countries in the world, bringing with them the unique cultures, languages, and ideas. Over time, those unique values might be faded away with each generation because of the new culture exposition. The second-generation immigrants experience a cultural conflict between that of their parents and that of host society. Most of them are unable to preserve and empower their origin cultures. Many differences between the first-generation and the second-generation immigrants arise. Through the analysis of the mother in “Death of a Young Son by Drowning” and the Das family in “Interpreter of Maladies”, I would like to demonstrate the differences between the first-generation immigrants, who travel from other countries, and the second-generation immigrants, who were born and raised on the immigrated land. These differences include the purpose of being in the foreign land, the connections to their homelands, society’s view, and the culture differences.

“I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind to whatever nation they might belong” this quote is by George Washington, but A Country is for all is another quote by Jorge Ramos. Everyone of any culture should be aloud in every country they want. There shouldn't be a law that doesn't let people out of a country to find a great new start for them. In this essay we will be talking about immigrants in the late days, border crossing, and families being separated.

In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Americanah, Is about a woman who is from Nigeria where she moves to America and decides to move back to Nigeria after many years of being in America. Claim statement being Ifemelu’s move back to Nigeria after many years of experience in America has changed her cultural identity. The beginning of the chapter at the moment Ifemelu arrived back in her homeland of America in Nigeria. “At first Lagos assaulted her; the sun-dazed haste, the yellow buses full of squashed limbs, the sweating hikers racing cars, the advertisements on hulking billboards (others scrawled on walls-PLUMBER CALL 080177777) and the heaps of rubbish that rose on the roadsides like a taunt.”