Personal Experience: Relating To American Culture

I have been taught to work for what I get. My life has been a big road of that so far, having its ups and downs. My whole life I have had to deal with immigration, racism, or my parents not being able to help me when it comes to school purposes. But this has helped me in many ways. It has pushed me, and made me trust in myself. But of all honesty, it has not been so bad, because my parents had took it all for me. And other than that, I have had no problems. If I do, I will ask for help. I feel like I am living a great life. My American experience has been run by motivation, trust, and hard work.

My American ExperienceAmerica is home to millions of people. I have lived my life in America my entire sixteen years on this world, and have cherished every second of it. Through these sixteen years, I have been able to establish my own thoughts and feelings on what the American experience is about to me. I may have my own opinions, though others may disagree with them. I cannot live the life of the millions of people living in America, nor can I explain the American experience on their behalf through their experiences. My own interpretation is a product all the experiences I have gone through growing up in America. As a child I was in the process of developing my own character and learning new things. I grew up with the impression that You can do anything you want if you put your mind to it. That is what America is all about the land of dreams and opportunity. If I wanted to become a doctor, I could become one. There s nothing stopping me from becoming president or anything else I want to be. But you don t become president like that. It takes hard work and determination to accomplish anything, hence the phrase if you put your mind to it. The path to success may not be an easy one, but only through hard work and education can it be obtained. Some say we are slaves to society forced to spend our worthless lives working nonstop. Perhaps one can make that case when referring to a country such as Russia, where the people work for the success of the country with a communist

Studying in a foreign country is an interesting experience of an individual lifetime. One tends to learn a number of things relating to ways of life in a foreign land. Social, political and economic values and aspects are usually different from one region to another. Therefore, through studying abroad one is able to learn different issues about another society such as gender and sexuality issues, social class and race/ethnicity issues. Having come from a developing country studying in the U.S.A has been a great experience personally. This paper will attempt to provide a reflection of my personal experience on studying in the U.S by comparing the history of Angola and the U.S.

Growing up in Ghana, I had heard a lot of things about the U.S. This was a country I had always wanted to visit; my prayer was answered when I got the opportunity to travel there. Arriving in a new environment came with many experiences. Adjusting with food, language and the weather was not easy. With the passage of time, however I have been able to0 adjust and fit it. This write-up therefore is to elaborate on my experiences since coming to U.S.

In the documentary, American Experience: A Family Gathering, directed by Lise Yasui and Ann Tegnell, explores three generations of the Yasui family immigration to Oregon in the early 1900s, and through their imprisonment in internment camps during World War Two as Japanese-Americans. I found this documentary heart-warming, eye-opening and emotional to what the Japanese immigrants had to deal with when immigrating to the United States and different insights to what went through their minds before, during and after World War Two. From watching the documentary, I can’t even fathom how a civil and nothing but perfect Japanese family like the Yasui family, could immigrate to the United States, establish themselves with work, a home and the start a family, could be seen as enemies of the country and lose everything for just looking or sounding Japanese. I mean, when I was growing up and I read books about Pearl Harbor or looked at pictures, videos and the film about Pearl Harbor, I right away got mad and emotional about those attacks and got a sense of anger from those attacks and found myself thinking that the Japanese deserved what they got and brought it upon themselves, which is harsh. Now, I was just a young child and to get those feelings years later, should show to a degree on how easy it was for Americans to be upset, angered and thought of the Japanese-Americans as evil people at the time. The Pearl Harbor attacks were one of the hardest attacks on U.S. soil from a

C. My presence at the event was normal. No one looked at me differently because I am hispanic. I felt a part of the event because everyone was helping one another. Whenever I received help I knew they were doing it in a good way and without making anyone feel uncomfortable. I absolutely felt accepted. I did feel accepted and welcomed to the event. Their treatment made me feel comfortable and able to ask for help. They seem very approachable from the moment we walked into the room. I feel that since the host appeared approachable I could ask them questions and not feel uncomfortable making a mistake and asking for assistance.

The one constant in society over the course of history are the actions of its youth. Children will always be children, with wild imaginations and the tendency to take after their elders. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by renowned author Mark Twain and The Life and Times of Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson both follow the lives of two young boys growing up in different periods of American history. Each of these literary works provide insight into the author’s perspective of the American experience of that time period. Twain’s opinions of pre-Civil War society live through young Huckleberry while Bryson’s views are told through a version of his younger self growing up in the 1950s. Slavery and racism play a big part in

The one constant in society over the course of history are the actions of its youth. Children will always be children, with wild imaginations and the tendency to take after their elders. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by renowned author Mark Twain and The Life and Times of Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson both follow the lives of two young boys growing up in different periods of American history. Each of these literary works provide insight into the author’s perspective of the American experience of that time period. Twain’s opinions of pre-Civil War society live through young Huckleberry while Bryson’s views are told through a version of his younger self growing up in the 1950s. Slavery and racism play a big part in

Arriving at a foreign country at the age of eleven years old was and exiting and yet intimidating experience. High buildings, wide roads, newer and nicer cars on the streets were some of the first things I noticed when I arrived to the city of Los Angeles CA. Living in a country where you were not born in could be difficult some times. Although Spanish is spoken at a grand scale in CA, it was difficult to communicate with and understand the teachers from my classes at the elementary level since all they spoke was English. Los Angeles is a city of great diversity, therefore it is believed to be the perfect place for any person arriving from another country to not feel like a foreign, such believe

America is a little spotty. On the way here, I thought it was going to be the best experience that I’ve ever had. Now that I have made it from the revolting ship ride, I have come to realize that America is just a place that doesn’t like to accept new people. They have treated me like I’m absurd! One moment, I am on the ship- smelled like not just one, but thousands of cats had died on there, and people were crammed into this small little place under the boat which I was one of them. Being claustrophobic and dealing with that is torture. People were getting sick from low amount of food and water, not bathing, no medicine, etc. When I say the ship ride was awful, I really mean deplorable!

“Experience” was a complex concept in American cultural life. At times it came to be associated with corruption against the simplicities of an innocent life; at others it came to represent the rugged frontier of sensibility of the West in contrast to the enclosed patrician communities of the East and at others with bitter encounters with economic hardship. American culture, ideas, spaces and identities-all contested in the 1950s with the view that the decade characterized “as a struggle between conflicting forces” (Halliwell 11). Michael Rogin regards that though Americans favoured pluralism of the 1950s against the narrow materialism of communist countries at the same time they championed individualism but had harboured fears that ‘the

I always found it challenging to say what my ethnicity and culture was. If anyone takes a look at me, they would say I’m Indian. Then I tell them I am on my mother’s side, but on my dad’s side, I’m actually from Pakistan. They only get more confused when I tell them my dad only lived there for 10 years and lived in Sweden for most of his adolescent life. That only tells people what my heritage was, but that’s where I begin to get befuddled. Even though my parents are from there, I was born and raised in the United States. I always had a difficult time defining myself culturally because I had deep Desi roots, but I was also a “normal” American. Just like most American teenagers, I go shopping at the mall, hang out with my friends, go to the movies, and spend hours listening to music off of Spotify. However, I still was different. Unlike my friends who could get Bs and Cs, go out without asking permission first, and wear short shorts, I had to get As, ask several times before going out, and had to stick with fingertip length shorts. Being culturally different from most of my friends always made me stand out in a crowd for both my skin color and for the way I acted which made me seem vastly different from “normal” Americans.

The whole course has been absorbing and rewarding. The experience has made me think about the world differently. It even reshaped my private life which will be touched upon later in this reflection.

American culture refers to the traditions and practices of the people of the United States. Culture comprises of the nature of buildings, religion, music language and marriage. The population of the United States is more than 320 million people making it the most culturally diverse country in the globe. Books such as Crabgrass Frontier, Manifest Destination and Muscular Christianity are important sources of information about American culture. This paper is a reflection on the methods that these books use in providing information about the evolution of the US culture. The paper examines the relationship between these three sources and ways they challenge or inform an understanding of the American society during the late 19th and early 20th century. There is an analysis of the efficiency of the issues tackled by these books in influencing the contemporary discourse surrounding American culture. The major argument of this paper is that Crabgrass Frontier, Manifest Destination and Muscular Christianity provide reliable information about the evolution of the US culture and they supplement each other through the use of relevant examples.

A person usually lives trying to find a compromise between his own cultural, religious, ethnic, socioeconomic beliefs and those of others. I observed this predominantly when I started my study abroad where my culture has experienced different assessments with only one result: to be included or to go back home. This suffering can be on a small scale affecting one aspect of culture when we agree or disagree with a friend or any affiliate. However, the big cultural challenge is when we face other ethnicities whose culture, religion, social norms, and moralities are different or in most cases are contradicting. Then, our individual intelligences and wisdom appear to be our guidance. The more educated a person is, the faster they interact with others.