preview

Small Island and a Concise English-Chinese Dictionary for Lovers

Best Essays

Introduction
The movement of people from a certain socioeconomic condition is known as migration. Migrant refers to a person that moves or migrates and is used to express the difference between them and the natural-born citizens. In a cosmopolitan nation, the citizen evolves as a stranger who starts with the ‘other’ to define his or her own cross-cultural identity. Through immigration, the migrant, from the perception of the receiving country is seen as the "Other" to the citizens of that nation. The host nation does this in an effort to try to defend its statehood. On the other hand the citizens victimize the migrants in a reaction to the difference they have. For the migrant, who at this point is gradually transforming into a much …show more content…

She armed herself with an English-Chinese dictionary to aid in her communication (Guo, 2008, 45). Through her writing citizens of the Western culture get some insight about the Eastern culture. They get to learn the experience of moving to a new socioeconomic culture, the language as well as being seen as different. Through her honest yet naïve nature, she critiques the Western way of being polite which she describes as superficial. She does not condone hypocrisy; to her being polite goes beyond words. The Eastern culture portrays manners as something that borders class and goes beyond the verbal ritual (Guo, 2008, 256). The heart of her novel is when she meets a forty-four English man, ex-anarchist, who lives in Hackney. The novel portrays this man as ideal, but the man is not good enough to offer her any sort of future. This shows by his inability to commit to their relationship. Instead of the man she romanticized about, the reality about him is of someone who instead pulls away. He instead values his privacy and often struggles to keep his life private aided by his poor communication skills (Guo, 2008, 157).
Her boyfriend is further depicted as a pure vegetarian who has never appreciated meat. Herself she enjoyed some new discovered hot dumplings with pork and fennel, describing her boyfriend’s meal as living on roots and grass as if in perpetual famine. She wonders what her mother would think of if she was to travel

Get Access