Staying Put : Making A Home In A Restless World By Scott Russell Sander

They help people visualize a problem that they might not be able to picture themselves, but the picture that they do imagine can be bigger than what the author originally intended. The metaphor also leads to readers not viewing immigrants as people but as something to oppose. Instead of using metaphors to describe the amount of people moving, writers should focus on trying to give readers concrete information so that situations to not get blown out of proportion and people can actually start to comprehend what it happening around

A lack of belonging can destroy a sense of placement in society. This statement is thoroughly explored in the poem, ‘Migrant Hostel’ by Peter Skrzynecki, investigating the concepts of alienation and dislocation through the migrant’s lack of acceptance by the Australian citizens. The migrants are also unable to find a fixed home, and therefore feel no sense of stability or permanence. This transitory nature is best identified in the simile, ‘We lived like birds of a passage/Always sensing a change/In the weather’, where the comparison to birds emphasises the absence of a home. It is clear that the migrants feel unable to adapt to Australian society, constantly moving and never settling. The migrant’s exclusion is further highlighted in the lines,

One’s understanding of belonging can broaden their understanding and acceptance of themselves and the world around them. The statement that we all strive to belong is true, however it may take time to belong to a certain person, place, group, community or even the larger world. This issue is explored in Raimond Gaita’s biographical memoir Romulus, My Father and Khaled Hosseini’s confronting novel The Kite Runner. Throughout these texts, the themes of personal relationships, migrant experience and morals and values arise from the concept of

Leaving one's own country and moving to another is one of the most difficult journeys anyone can make. In one's home country, he or she has a place, an identity that is

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.

Scott Russell Sanders writes in the passage, Making a Home in a Restless World, “Stand still, we are warned, and you will die”, demonstrating the stereotypical mindset of many Americans (Sanders 17). The passage written by Scott Russell Sanders is a response to Rushdie about the ongoing debate on whether moving or migration is beneficial or damaging towards America. Rushdie who left his Native India for England believes that it is extremely valuable for migrants to make a “new imaginative relationship with the world because of the loss of familiar habits”, insinuating that moving is valued (Sanders 47). While Scott Russell Sanders believes the contrary. He believes that when we finally decide to settle in we will make a more durable home for ourselves. In the passage, Making a Home in a Restless World, the author Scott Russell Sanders utilizes the rhetorical appeal of emotional pathos as well as the rhetorical device of hasty generalization so that he can stress his perspective on migration.

Today’s world is characterized by a global environment of rootlessness. Political upheavals, poverty, and opportunity cause populations to shift and move, and people that are citizens of one country to move to another. The resulting disconnect between the traditions of their homeland that they have internalized, experiencing these as “home,” and the new environment that they move to where the culture is vastly different calls into question what “home” really is, and what citizenship means.

Author, Scott Russell Sanders, once wrote, “Wholesale dis-placement may be inevitable; but we should not suppose that it occurs without disastrous consequences for the earth and for ourselves” (70-74 Sanders). This quote can be traced back to his work, “Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World,” in which he encompasses the revolutionizing topic of human migration. He commences his essay with the origins of migration and proposes that Americans are now likely to concur with the idea of migrating, as a result of Salman Rushdie’s story, a writer who left his native India for England. However, Sanders contradicts and retaliates Rushdie’s notion. Rushdie believes migrating is imperative, meanwhile Sanders thinks the idea of migrating is more detrimental, rather than beneficial. In Scott Russell Sanders’s composition, “Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World,” he utilizes effective diction and fear tactics in order to develop his perspective about moving.

Immigration is the means for a individual that is not originally from an area or country to migrate to another area, “the action of coming to live permanently in a foreign country” (Google, 2017). When an individual from a different country migrates into a foreign country they undergo “immediate stressors associated with meeting basic survival needs, losing the familiar, learning English, and meeting the demands of life in a new environment. They also soon face resettlement challenges of cop- ing with cultural change, mobilizing resources to meet their needs, and formulating future life goals” (Timberlake, Faber, Wall, Taylor, Sabatino, 2003) Immigrants usually rely on their spirituality, moral frameworks, culture framework and famility sustaining

Many second generation minorities from immigrant parents are driven subconsciously to conform to new culture and social norms. For foreign born parents and native born children integrating the two cultures they inhabit brings about different obstacles and experiences. In Jhumpa’s “The Namesake” the protagonist Gogol is a native born American with foreign born parents. The difference with birth location plays an important role in assimilating to a new society in a new geography. The difficulty for parents is the fact that they’ve spent a decent amount of time accustomed to a new geography, language, culture and society which makes it difficult to feel comfortable when all of that changes. For Gogol the difficulty only lies with the cultural norms imposed by his parent’s and the culture and social norms that are constantly presented in the new society.

Ever since, Palestinians have had to adapt to new places and cultures in order to survive, which makes it more difficult for them to preserve their own. Said presents several examples of transculturation throughout the essay. For instance, the use of the Mercedes, even though Said describes it in negative terms, the use of the Mercedes has come in handy for Palestinians. Enduring one disaster after another, Palestinian identity is arduous to preserve in exile. It is a struggle of having no country. Our country is a big part of who we are. As we are born, we are destined to become a part of it. It becomes part of our identity. Things that we grew up with meant something to us. We usually treasure things that became part of our lives. Even unconsciously, we take hold of it. Home brings us memories, memories that we want to hold on up to our last breath.

Chen Jenli made the selfless decision to move to New York for a few years to scope out a better life for both herself and her family. Good intentions do not always have good results. In her mind, Chen Jenli thought that this decision existed as a grand and noble one but, she fell into the trap of assumption. When she moved back home, she figured everything remained the same and all proved well again in her life. She stood blindsided and did not exercise mindfulness. She embodied acculturation and how it exists as “a process through which cultural patterns (e.g., values, beliefs, behaviors) change as a result of sustained

“They knew there was a possibility the agent had sold them out to the militants, and so they knew there was a possibility this was the final afternoon of their lives”(Hamid 102); leaving your country might be the hardest decision that someone has to make. In Mohsin Hamid’s novel Exit West he puts his main characters in a dangerous situation of trusting a total stranger to get them into another county with a chance of them being sold out and killed. This decision to migrate includes leaving your family and friends, starting your life over, and possibly endangering the lives of your family along with yourself. Hamid follows a young couple migrating out of their home town for safety and a better life. The challenges presented in the novel can be applied to real life migration. Hamid represents the difficulties of traveling from country to country through his magical doors, includes learning how to find your way in new places, and presents the idea of countries not wanting migrants. Exit West reveals the migration issues in today's world to prove that migrants deserve the same basic liberties as everyone else, because it effects everyone else and takes a lot of will power to travel to an unfamiliar place.

In the chapter titled “Reflections on Exile,” Edward Said discusses the different aspects of being an exile. His discussion of exile includes what it means to be an exile, the feelings that being an exile produces in individuals, exile in relation to nationalism, and the role of exile in the modern world.  Said first defines being an exile as a state of terminal loss. He states, “the achievements of exile are permanently undermined by the loss of something left behind forever” (173).  He then contrasts this terminal loss with the cultural impact that exile has had on the modern West.  He states that, “modern Western culture is in large part the work of exiles,” (173) and, “our age[...] is indeed the age of the refugee, the displaced

Living with a different culture to our roots can lead to changes in our lives. Migrating to