Imtiaz Dharker

When Birdie and her sister are sent to Nkrumah, Birdie is taught to recognize and accept her “black” identity. However, her identity is problematized by her physical appearance, especially her “white” skin colour. Living in Boston, Birdie feels that she does not belong to the black community; in Nkrumah students don’t accept her for being a black girl, then she further feels isolated by her dad’s girlfriend, because she is not dark like Cole. “Others before had made me see the differences between my sister and myself – the texture of our hair, the tings of our kin, the shapes of our features. But Carmen was the one to make me feel that those things somehow mattered. To make me feel that the differences were deeper than skin,” (Senna, 1998, p.91). The students are not the only ones who make Birdie feel as if she doesn’t fit in; Carmen makes her feel as if inferior because of her lighter complexion.

Many writers explore the notion that cultural differences may inflict feelings of disconnection for their central characters. This is shown in the two texts ‘Neighbours’ and ‘Migrant Woman on a Melbourne Tram’, as both protagonists struggle to cope with their newly exposed environment. Despite this, we learn that it can be resolved through the acceptance of one another, yet others may remain to dissociate themselves from society.

An author’s personal experience gives authenticity to their text. Peter Skrzynecki, an Australian poet of Polish origin emigrated to Australia shortly before the end of World War II. His assimilation into his newfound homeland is portrayed in his emotive poetry, where he explores his disconnection and alienation. The way in which Skrzynecki writes about his personal experiences gives an authentic insight into the perspective of a migrant, allowing the audience to better understand the challenging emotions evoked by the migrant experience. These emotions are clearly seen in Skrzynecki’s poem St Patrick’s College, where he delves back through his experiences at school and highlights the disconnection and alienation he felt being a migrant. This disconnection is further expressed in Feliks Skrzynecki, where Skrzynecki alludes to his detachment from even his father. These feelings of disconnection and alienation shown by Skrzynecki in his poems, allows the audience to understand the effects of growing up as a migrant.

Belonging is a complex, multi-faceted concept encompassing a wide range of different aspects. The need to belong to family and culture is a universal human need which provides a sense of value and emotional stability, and in many respects forges one’s identity. Alienation and disconnection often creates feelings of isolation, depression and loss of identity. A struggle with cultural identity is evident in Peter Skrzynecki’s poems ‘Migrant Hostel’ and ‘Feliks Skrzynecki’, where he examines a division between his pre-war Polish heritage and his newfound Australian way of life. The movement away from his European cultural heritage towards a more Australian identity created disorientation for Skrzynecki, and these feelings of disconnection

On the other hand, personal experiences of a Puerto Rican woman are shown and she explains how people around her judge her behavior, her actions, and even the way she dresses.

Do you ever think about the way you speak and why? Well, Paul Robert does an excellent job explaining why people use the dialect they use in Speech Communities. He discusses that people change their use of language throughout their lives to conform to either society or to what kind of person they want to be, or to just conform to who they need to be at a particular moment, in which I agree. People’s choice of language, including myself, are affected by many of their surroundings, such as where they live and grow up at, their peers, and a person’s work place.

The film “American Tongues” documents a variety of English accents that are present across the United States and highlights a lot of the opinions people have about accents and people who speak these accents. A large majority of the people who express opinions about other peoples’ accents tend to express negative views, as they see their own accent as the superior one. The film focuses on showing the array of accents found in the U.S., but also how a lot of people who speak these “inferior” accents work to learn “Standard American English” to increase their chances of getting jobs and communicating in more official domains. Although the film was made in 1988, it expresses views still present in today’s society towards different accents, as people tend to continue judging others based not only on what they say, but also how they say it.

Every individual, no matter who they are, will all face challenges that result from their backgrounds and cultures. Born in Calcutta, India and later moving to the United States, Amin Ahmad was an individual who discovered this harsh truth first-hand. In his essay, “I Belong Here,” Ahmad reflects on his experience of being treated differently from those around him based off his cultural background. He analyzes the emotional barrier that forms between the journey of immigration and the continuous feeling of inferiority based solely on the desire to belong. The article is written to provide a different point of view; one focused on introducing to the world the challenges and emotions immigrants face after starting the journey towards a new life.

Inspired by the contrast in clothing between flesh showing Melbourne women of the 1960’s and the black-clad, veiled women of Southern European migrants “Migrant Woman on a Melbourne Tram” through a variety of poetic techniques explores the concept of isolation, confusion and unfamiliarity experienced by a migrant. “Impossibly black” the woman finds herself in a tram struggling to navigate the streets of Melbourne with a scrap of paper in hand only with an address and destination that she cannot comprehend. The repetition of the word “impossibly” is the most noticeable verbal element that highlights the quality of the migrant standing out against the crowd therefore creating a contrast between two very different cultures. Disorientation experienced by someone who is suddenly placed in an unfamiliar way of life or a set of attitudes also known as a culture shock is an experience that is common to migrants. This is seen as the woman “hunches sweltering” to express a sense of discomfort and the lack of ease that the woman feels due to the culture shock that she cannot understand.

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.

Up until this point, she wears casual clothing such as sweaters, and jeans, and has friendly and warm facial expressions and body language, which blends in with Chris’ personality and style. Now in this scene, she sits on her bed with a very preppy white-collared shirt tucked into khaki pants with white shoes; her style transforms to become a more well-off and privileged look, and this creates dichotomy between her and Chris (which is a metaphor for issues with racial wage gap) as she now demonstrates her true role in her family. Her outfit is very elitist and equestrian, or white-collar worker, amplifying her look of power and wealth, which exploits the poverty that many black people endure making them inferior and prey in economic terms. Moreover, her looks could murder; her facial expressions are menacing. The camera is focused very closely on her face to exploit her true colors and she seems to have no more empathy or feeling. She has her hair slicked back into a ponytail, and her face is concentrated, cold, and calculating, as she is ready to get down to business, preying on her next black victim as she Googles “Top NCAA Prospects”, searching for a new victim. Her kind act has faded leaving a very predacious and snooty appearance that reveals the theme of white privilege and racial inequality that is lethal and lurking in our society. Her look of elitism additionally works

At time she states she feels that she simple doesn’t have a race and is merely herself. “I have no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored” (Hurston, vol. 2, pp. 360). At the end of the short story she uses a metaphor: “I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of

Many second generation minorities from immigrant parents are driven subconsciously to conform to new culture and social norms. For foreign born parents and native born children integrating the two cultures they inhabit brings about different obstacles and experiences. In Jhumpa’s “The Namesake” the protagonist Gogol is a native born American with foreign born parents. The difference with birth location plays an important role in assimilating to a new society in a new geography. The difficulty for parents is the fact that they’ve spent a decent amount of time accustomed to a new geography, language, culture and society which makes it difficult to feel comfortable when all of that changes. For Gogol the difficulty only lies with the cultural norms imposed by his parent’s and the culture and social norms that are constantly presented in the new society.

Reading about chapter 2 and Joe’s personal experience with her mother was very strange to me but I can somehow understand where I she was coming from. I was born in Ghana and I have an ascent and the moment I open my mouth the first thing people ask me is where you from? Why does it matter so much where I’m from, I still don’t know answer yet, but I think most people want to find a way to relate to me. Some people from Africa try to hide their identity and I don’t know why, I believe they do that because they want society to accept them and also they want to fit in they don’t want to be looked at as the outsider.

In the poem WWE by Fatimah Asghar, a light is shone on the tendencies of Americans to praise men and masculinity. More than that, Asghar provides insight to her own experiences with American culture as a Pakistani woman trying to find her way in this country. In the poem, Asghar expresses her pride for her country, while simultaneously discussing the assimilation of her aunt to American culture. In this way, she uses this poem as an outlet to express her experience of becoming American. Through the use of passionate diction, realistic imagery, couplet form, Asghar is able to paint a clear picture of the struggles of immigrants trying to assimilate to American culture, and the relationships between man and woman.