Music, Dancing, And Family Honor

Culture builds up and shapes how people view the world and the people in it. It determines how we judge and view the way others act, look, and even how they think. In the texts “Where worlds collide”, “An Indian Father’s Plea”, and “Two Kinds”, it is shown that a person’s views of others and the world are solely determined by their culture.

The wedding ceremony is a celebratory event romanticized by couples nationwide for its ability to unite creativity and tradition in a convenient package. One need only observe the plethora of wedding trends, from outlandishly alternative to stringently orthodox, to understand how important representing individuality remains among contemporary couples. In retrospect, much of the symbolisms attributed to these trends come from centuries of applied social significance; couples see the most value in a marriage celebration which allows them to flaunt their unique qualities as individuals while simultaneously modeling the long-standing customs of preceding weddings. In the 2002 film, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, director Joel Zwick illustrates the

Commonly, culture is considered large and extravagant events and holidays, such as Diwali, a wedding, or the Fourth of July. Each event and holiday have specific traits and rituals that occur to distinguish the event from everyday life, but culture isn’t exclusive to lavish events such as these and include everyday activities such as watching a football game and listening to a speech. Every belief, behavior, and symbolic system that a person shares with another is an example of culture. Authors Anne Fadiman and Joshua Reno explores the different aspects of culture and ethnography in their two books, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures, and Waste Away: Working and

Native Americans are losing their background and where they come from starting with culture and heritage that has been passed down to each generation. Not losing site of that, there is a chance in seeing the positive of preserving and continuing the culture and heritage of the Native Americans and bringing significance to ceremonies.

In Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Ceremony Tayo, a native american man orphaned at a young age and looked down upon by his foster mother, is on a journey to obtain peace of mind. Tayo grows up with his foster brother, Rocky who convinces him to join the army during World War 2. Tayo and Rocky were then captured and mistreated and Rocky was killed. After being released and returned to the states . Tayo struggling with the trauma of Rocky's death and painful war memories, participates in changing ceremonies in order to be healed.

While Mukherjee decided to embrace the new American culture, her sister decided to stick to her Indian roots. Mukherjee struggles to try and find where she belongs because she is always changing for others rather than for herself. Encountering differences is something she dealt with on her journey of creating her identity, she states, “Nearly 20 years ago, when I was living in my husband’s ancestral homeland of Canada, I was always well-employed but never allowed to feel part of the local Quebec or larger Canadian society” (Mukherjee 293). While changing herself to conform for others, we can all take a lesson from Mukherjee. In life, we go through many changes because we are growing up, becoming more mature, and finding things we like or dislike. We tend to change because of the people we surround ourselves with, like friends or coworkers in order to be accepted. However, she did not seem happy to be forced into a position where she had to conform to the way people would talk to her all for the sake of her husband. This takes away from building and developing one’s own identity because it does not represent who you really are. In society, we are sort of growing away from that in a sense people are taking pride in their identities. For instance, immigrants, women, and races are all

Culture influences people’s perspectives of the world and others through their childhood and how, when, and where they were raised. In the essay, “An Indian Father’s Plea,” Robert Lake writes about how his Indian child’s traditional way of learning is different from those in western education systems and that he's not a “slow” learner but learns in a unique way from his peers. In the personal essay, “Two Ways to Belong in America,” Bharati Mukherjee describes her differing views of living in America with her sister, despite both being raised in India. In the poem, “My Mother Pieced Quilts,” by Teresa Palomo Acosta, Teresa how this quilt that her mother made for her incorporates all these pieces of her past that are stitched together. In the short story, “Everyday Use,” a mother describes the effects of living in a low income community and a certain style of parenting that shaped the way her two daughters view their past and their heritage and how both views are completely different. In all these pieces of writing, they all illustrate the effects of beliefs, heritage, and symbolism within a culture and how it molds the way people interpret others and the world.

Before I read Stephen Prothero’s God Is Not One, I did not know much about Hinduism. For me, Hinduism conjured the images of bright colors, richly adorned statues, and jovial worship and dance. When we visited the Ganesh Temple in Flushing, that is exactly what I saw. Yet, now I know the reason for all these things. Although Hinduism is a largely varying tradition, it is namely about love and celebration. Given the evidence from Prothero’s book and my observations at the Ganesh Temple, Hinduism is a tradition that aims to gives purpose to human’s wandering souls through devote worship to deities and rituals.

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.

Many different cultures have helped impact the world today. Culture affects other people’s experiences and how one views the world. This is demonstrated in “Two Kinds”, “Kaffir Boy”, and “An Indian Father’s Plea.” In “An Indian Father’s Plea” a Robert Lake personal essay, culture affects other people’s experiences and how one views the world.

“A rite of passage is a public ceremony that marks, recognizes, celebrates or is believed to actually cause a change in a person and her or his status, usually brought about or related to increasing age” (Peoples, Bailey). Almost every culture has rituals that signal a change in life. Marriage is one of the most common rites of passage in any culture. Weddings and marriage ceremonies are clear transitions from adolescence to adulthood. “Some form of marriage is known to have existed in all human societies. Its traditional function in most of these societies has been to stabilize sexual relations and to unite a man and a woman in order to provide care for the young. In addition, marriage has linked and allowed for economic exchanges between different kin groups and has served as the primary coming of age ritual for women” (Nelson).

Central Idea: India is a fascinating country with diverse traditions related to their language, their costumes, and their cuisine.

Depending on an individual’s culture, the way in which one perceives life processes differs greatly. For Indians their culture plays a large role in how they perceive these things. Being a nation with

I have spent approximately 5,735 hours sitting at a dinner table with my family. Some of those hours dragged by and some of them ran out in the blink of an eye. Many hours took place around a huge mahogany table that seemed to extend for miles, while others occurred around a tiny folding table, barely big enough to contain the food and conversations being passed above it. However, one of the things that has always stayed that same, no matter the table or the topic of discussion, was the people that sat around it. Family dinner is such a profound time of the day; a time when everyone can come together as one. Throughout all of these years and all of these dinner tables, I have come to learn that relationships are sacred.

As such, firsthand approach to Indian tradition is lacking at large, and the idea of tradition being through the media of interpretative tradition has engendered the danger of a distorted view of tradition. The distortion often swings between two extremes – either in viewing tradition as Everything, or as Nothing.