Mukta Dhara by Rabindranath Tagore

One source once stated, “By masking the discomfort, of being pre-judged” (Mora 40). People should examine their culture in order to better understand how it affects their identity and perceptions. In order to understand one’s cultural identity, he or she needs to understand what the term means. According to one source, cultural identity can be defined as “We all have unique identities that we develop within our cultures, but these identities are not fixed or static” (Trumbull and Pacheco 10). Various aspects of a person’s life that may determine his or her cultural identity music, community, family, ethnicity, relationships, religion, clothing, and food. After analyzing several texts, the reader recognizes that four important

In the memoir, “By Any Other Name,” Santha Rama Rau explores the British attempt to replace Indian culture with the “superior” British culture and her resistance to this change. The speaker depicts this man vs. society conflict by sharing the story of a culture clash she experienced at a British run day school. The conflict is first seen when the headmistress decides to change the girls’ names, as indicated when she states, “Suppose we give you pretty English names” (Rama Rau 35). By calling English names pretty, the headmistress is implying their Indian names are not pretty, and thus inferior to British names. She said it was because Indians cheat…So I don’t think we should go back to that school. Another instance where the conflict is evident

Individuals should learn to accept themselves for who they are, not what society wants them to accept. As we continue to evolve, we build up our own characters, and they are typically a mix of the ethnicity and culture we inherit from our family, various encounters in our life, distinctive identity and personality we have. Our character and identity is not something that we get easily, it's an intricate process. The story “The Other Family” by Himani Bannerji is based on a mother and a daughter who immigrates to Canada. They belong to a black family, but after the immigration they are living in the dominance of the white society.The school is considered as the hegemony of Canada and teacher is considered as the mainstream, it is a sort of social institution that a hegemony shape but they does not know the awareness of marginalized groups. The mother feels anxious when she sees a drawing of a white family by her daughter. It was the misperceptions of the kid that lead to forget her identity or she was too small to identify it. So to examine about the identity of the marginalized individual the beginning is to focus on the quality of the education. It is necessary for every school system to teach equality and inclusions of every group status so that the marginalized group are not left isolated from the society. Secondly, the fear of the marginalized parents from losing their kids in the mainstream society shows their lack of confidence in their own cultural pride. Since

The author Stephen Mitchell reflects on a scripture titled “Bhagavad Gita”. This scripture is a new translation based on ancient Hinduism. Throughout the scripture, it explains the teachings that can be used in an everyday life situation. Its diverse audience can learn how to face different dilemmas, and how to live in this world with happiness and peace by doings ones’ duties. It also helps the audience understand the true purpose of life. For those who go through the encounters of life educating themselves with perfection, knowledge, and intelligence, they are considered God dearest devotees. Overall, the scripture assures that God will respond to his devotees with love. Its teachings focus on those who are suffering and

“I’m Nikhil” (Jhumpa Lahiri 96) these are the words that Gogol uttered for the first

In Sister of my Heart, a coming-of-age novel by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, the two main characters, Sudha and Anju, are not aware of the secret that runs within their families. The act of keeping a secret is to purposely keep something hidden. Although telling the truth can help create a stronger and more honest relationship, in some cases, when the secret is revealed, it can have a negative effect. Sudha exemplifies this as the secret she keeps from Anju affects Sudha's life and her relationship with Anju.

• Doyadastethe – the goddess of dawn who often plays the resentful chief's daughter in multiple Iroquois myths.

For some people finding out who they are is not exactly the hardest thing to do in the world, some know it from the moment they are born. There are, however, also other people who have to struggle and search for their identities. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri is the story of a boy who does just that. It focuses on the Ganguli’s, a Bengali family, who, after moving homes from India to the United States, struggle to uphold a delicate balance between honoring the traditions of their heritage and assimilating into the American culture. Although Ashoke and Ashima’s parents are proud of the sacrifices they have made to provide their children with as many opportunities as they could, their son, Gogol, strives to create his own identity without leaving his heritage behind. In the novel Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, Gogol faces many struggles while searching for his identity.

A breath of fresh air is the first book written by Amulya Malladi. In 1984, when she was nine years old, her father was posted in the city of Bhopal. On the third of December, 1983 the city suffered The Bhopal Gas Tragedy that killed many people. When this gas tragedy occurred, she along with her family was staying at the Army Center which was a few kilometers away from the plant. Due to the wind that blew in a direction opposite to theirs, they remained unaffected by the gas leak. In the last half of the year 1984, she faced the Assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi that led the country’s division in the name of religion and made her come to terms with the finality of death.

A person’s heritage and cultural identity may be lost when moving to a new country where the culture is different and other cultures are not easily accepted. In the short story “Hindus”, Bharati Mukherjee uses setting, characters and the plot to discuss what it is like to lose your cultural identity while being a visible minority in America. Mukherjee uses the plot to describe the events that take place in the main characters life that lead her to realize how different the culture and life is in the America’s. She also uses the characters as a way of demonstrating how moving away from one’s culture and heritage can change a person’s perspective and ways of thinking. Mukerjee also uses setting in her story to identity the physical differences in culture between living in India and America. Alike the setting and characters, the plot helps describe the loss of culture with a sequence of events.

Khaled Hosseini presents the struggle Afghan women go through every day by discussing honour, marriage and the place of women in society in Afghanistan.

In Privilege, Shamus Khan examines how the once exclusively prestigious boarding school, St. Paul’s, is now open to a more diverse influx of elite students. This includes lower income individuals, nonwhites, and women. Even with this newfound openness, there is still a persisting inequity present. One prominent type of inequality at the institution is the gender differences displayed. These gender inequities are evident through the double standards of academic achievement and the portrayal of sexuality of the girls at St. Paul’s.

Manjula Padmanabhan (b. 1953) is best known as a journalist, illustrator, cartoonist, and author of children’s books and short stories. She became a celebrity when her fifth play, Harvest (written in 1996; published in 1997), won the first prize in the first Onassis International Cultural Competitions for Theatrical Plays in 1997.

She makes an important point when trying to go beyond the female (otherness), by paying careful attention to differences among women themselves, and by putting emphasize on the multiple realties that women faces, and by that trying to uncover universalist interpretations (Parpart and Marchand 1995:6). She reveals the inadequacy of binary categories by showing us how power is defined in binary terms, between the people who have (men) and the people who do not (women). This is a consequence of seeing women as a homogenous group, and contributes to the reinforcement of the binary division between men and women (Mohanty 1991:64). By assuming that women are a already constituted group with the same experiences and interests, gender is looked upon as something that can be applied cross cultures (Mohanty 1991:54), and it also produces an assumption about the “average third world woman” as poor and uneducated, in contrast to the educated, modern Western women (Mohanty 1991:56). Implicit in the binary analytic lies the assumption that the third world woman only can be liberated through western rationality. Mohanty is making an important point when emphasising the need to challenge these objectifications (Udayagiri 1995:163).

In the novel The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, the reader notices the differences between the modern American view of politics and society between the politics and society in the novel. This novel takes place in the southwestern part of India in a town called Kerala and is focused on the wealthy family of the Syrian Christian Ipe family of Ayemenem. Within this family, many of them have problems in their lives and as a result, go to the house once their problems have taken a turn for the worse. A major theme of this story is the society of India and the caste system that is in place. Some characters that were majorly affected by the caste system are a woman named Ammu and her two children, Estha and Rahel along with an Untouchable named Velutha. Besides the caste system Ammu and her children must worry about the social system and the outcomes of actions that are not socially acceptable. Another recurring theme of this novel is the change in political stances in the country of India and how it affects the characters. Since the Ipe family is wealthy, they own a factory called “Paradise Pickles and Preserves” and some character struggles revolves around the fact that there is a motion for a change in politics. Although the novel can be understood on its own, it makes it more understandable if the reader learns about the political history of India and an understanding of the caste system. Besides the political history and caste system the view on gender in the country of