Interpreting Maladies: The Necessity of Being Rooted and Being the Root

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

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.

A person has always been able to choose to what extent their cultural experiences affect their perspective. Amy Tan’s, “Two Kinds,” Bharati Mukherjee’s, “Two Ways to Belong in America,” and Robert Lake’s, “An Indian Father’s Plea,” all show how the main characters have chosen to let their experiences have an effect on their cultural identity. A person’s cultural experiences shape perception based on their own identifications and they may chose to assimilate to different cultures.

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.

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 firsthand. 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 analyses 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.

She explains her thesis by stating “Others who write stories of migration often talk of arrival at a new place as a loss of communal memory and the erosion of an original culture. I want to talk of arrival as a gain,” (360). The key points of the text include Mukherjee describing her transition between Calcutta and the United States, and what it means to be and American and how culture influences that aspect. The information in the text is significant; the people of America are a part of a melting pot, sometimes it is hard for them to find the distinction between American culture and their own. The information in Mukherjee’s story is clear and specific, unbiased, and is relevant to the purpose of the story. I believe Mukherjee has achieved her purpose of informing her audience about cultural differences; she presents certain strengths and weaknesses within the text.

To begin it is helpful to understand that the word “migrant” is a rather contested concept, one that changes over time, and varies depending on the criteria used to assign it.(Raghuram & Erel, 2014, p.133)

The plot in the short story “Hindus” demonstrates how a certain sequence of events can help people better understand themselves. Leela meets many different and unique people on her journey throughout

The Indigenous communities have operated in an organic family structure where there is a sense of community and everyone is contributing, however with the new family. Andrea Smith`s article is a good illustration on what social structures affect individuals to migrate. In some cases, individuals leave their country in the pursuit the ‘American Dream’, while others are forced to. My family circumstances of leaving their country to migrate are a good example of what Smith would describe the process of Orientalism. Orientalism is when individuals are displaced from their homeland and migrate somewhere else. When such individuals come to a new country they are viewed as the ‘other’ by dominant groups. They are often perceived as evil and a threat which justifies wars and capitalism. Similarly, my parents had to migrate because of a civil war that took place in their homeland. They are often judged because of the colour of their skin and religious beliefs and not viewed as equal to the rest of society. Although we have the right to practice our religion freely and have the right to have freedom of speech, we are still oppressed and discriminated against

denied the company of her own parents after moving to America, her children independence, their need to stay away from her, is something she will never comprehend" (Lahiri,166). The act of cultral contrast amongst parents and offspring of the Diaspora people group can't be ceased by both of them since they both are born and raised in various cultures and in social orders.

In our world, cultural identity is the glue that holds us all together; it provides a feeling of importance and understanding that we all need in our daily lives. But this support and positive attitude that often comes with identity can be reversed by people who use these cultural identities to generalize and oppress groups of people as shown in these two pieces of literature. “Immigrants”, by Pat Mora, is a poem that tells the story of multicultural parents that bring their children to the U.S. in the hopes that they will become proper Americans so they will be accepted.. The other piece, “By Any Other Name”, is a memoir by Santha Rama Rau and also follows a similar story about two sisters being oppressed while attending school in British-controlled India. Both “By Any Other Name” and “Immigrants” reflect each other by portraying children growing up in a prejudiced environment, but also have their differences in the unique situations that led the subjects here.

‘America is the land of immigrants’- this was the first thing I ever heard about the supreme global power of the 21st century, and my definition of the US has been expanding since then- what class of people are considered immigrants, what lives do they live after migrating, what impacts does this process of migration has on their social and family lives? Being an immigrant myself, I had the opportunity to gain many first hand experiences and find answers to many of these questions. However, as an advantage of being a second generation migrant, my transition was a lot easier than the first generation migrants. In this ethnography, I take a deeper insight on the perspective towards migration possessed by Krishna, a first generation Indian migrant to the US, who was able to achieve the American dream. Unlike most of the immigrant stories of ‘suffering’ that come to the limelight in the society, Krishna’s stance towards his immigration is relatively positive, as he believes that his new country has more or less fulfilled his dream of attaining a higher level of “well being” (Powers and Faden 2006: 15), which was his primary motivation behind the decision to migrate.

Through her tasteful selection of contemporary Indian influenced prose pieces, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the unique journey of Indian families established in America. Focusing on the intergenerational aspect of traditional households, Lahiri conveys the emotional rollercoaster that accompanies a person who is branded as a foreigner. In America, there exists a common misconception that immigrants who arrive in this country fully assimilate or seek to assimilate as time progresses. The category I chose was "The Dot of true Happiness." The dot which signifies the bindi, a traditional red mark worn by Indian people, is the source of true happiness among these immigrants.

‘Diaspora’ is a word which is derived from Greek, which means ‘to disperse’. The term diaspora means the movement of people or group to a country away from their own. Historically it means the movement of the Jewish people away from their own country to live and work another countries, mainly exilement of Jews in Egypt. The literature of diaspora refers to the literature of any people who have moved away from their own country and settled elsewhere. Diaspora is also a popular term in current research and it has various current transnational globalization: borders, migration, “illegal” immigration, repatriation, exile, refugees, assimilation, multiculturalism, hybridity.

The Diasporic consciousness manifests itself in a variety of ways: a sense of loss and dispossession, a feeling of remaining straddled between two cultures, and anxiety to belong— either to one’s native cultural milieu or the new environment; an assertion of one’s nativity or immigrant status; an attempt to turn one’s in betweeness into strength; an agenda of multiculturalism; an active interrogation of all notions of belonging and an ultimate urgency to prove oneself (Sharma, 2013)