Summary Of Alice Walker's Two Ways To Belong In America

Born in 1940 and raised in Calcutta, India, Bharati Mukherjee immigrated to the United States in 1961 and earned an M.F.A. and a Ph.D. in literature. Mukherjee is the author of several novels, including Tiger's Daughter (1972) and Jasmine (1989), and short story collections, such as The Middleman and Other Stories (1988). She teaches literature and fiction writing at the University of California, Berkeley.

In the essay “Two Ways to Belong in America” by Bharati Mukherjee. The author talks about the problems immigrants face while they are in America. The author talks about her and her friend Mira’s struggles with Americas policies. This essay examines the audience of the text, the purpose for writing the story, and the subject of the book being read. By examining the audience, finding the purpose of the story, and researching and analyzing the author. The readers can have a deeper understanding of the book.

The life of a typical woman in America spends a lot of time dressing and applying makeup to fit into society.

Well culture is very powerful,it affects our living standards and how we view the world . Our surroundings that we grew up with such as family, is the source on why we adapt beliefs ,languages ,food,aesthetics and ethnicity.In the novel,”Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, shows the conflict between a mother-daughter relationship in which the mother forces her daughter into activities so she can have an American dream.In the short story,”By Any Other Name”by Santha Ramu Rau refutes that two girls name shouldn’t matter and ethnicity shouldn’t be the reason why people should mistreat them. Bharati Mukherjee’s personal essay,”Two ways to belong in America “ is about two sisters

Culture affects people’s perspectives of the world and others through their upbringing 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 different 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 involves all these pieces of her past that are stitched together. In the

    Many people see the world and others differently. Just like the two sisters in “Everyday Use”, the two sisters in “Two Ways to Belong in America”, and the father in the letter/short essay “An Indian Father's Plea”. All these people have different past and things they’re going through. The two sisters in “Two Ways To Belong In America” both have their different stories from their past, one likes America the other does not because they betrayed her. Next, the father from “An Indian Father’s Plea” sees America differently because the school was labeled his kid a “slow learner” which made him upset. In addition, the two sisters from “ Everyday Use” argue about a quilt in which they both view differently

Immigrants’ refusal to appreciate a fused culture promotes division. Mukherjee questions the idea of immigrants losing their culture for American ideals: “Parents express rage or despair at their U.S.-born children's forgetting of, or indifference to, some aspects of Indian culture,” to that Mukherjee asks, “Is it so terrible that our children are discovering or are inventing homelands for themselves?” (Mukherjee, 1997, para. 28). Many immigrants experience anger when their children no longer hold the ideals of their home country. This tension produced within the household hinders the unity within a resident country’s culture and encourages division within families. Using herself as an example, Mukherjee provides another instance of anger directed at her from her own subculture: “They direct their rage at me because, by becoming a U.S.

She explains her thesis by stating “Others who write stories of migration often talk of arrival at a new place as a loss of communal memory and the erosion of an original culture. I want to talk of arrival as a gain,” (360). The key points of the text include Mukherjee describing her transition between Calcutta and the United States, and what it means to be and American and how culture influences that aspect. The information in the text is significant; the people of America are a part of a melting pot, sometimes it is hard for them to find the distinction between American culture and their own. The information in Mukherjee’s story is clear and specific, unbiased, and is relevant to the purpose of the story. I believe Mukherjee has achieved her purpose of informing her audience about cultural differences; she presents certain strengths and weaknesses within the text.

In Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”, Walker juxtaposes two different daughters in their quest for a cultural identity. The narrator, their mother, talks about how each daughter is different; Dee went off to college and became well-educated, contrary to their impoverished and low status as black women in the south. Meanwhile, Maggie isn’t nearly as educated as Dee is, but is still literate. The entire story centers around Dee’s visit with her new Muslim significant other. The story’s climax is when Dee wants to take two special quilts back home, but those quilts are for Maggie. These precious quilts comprise their culture. Henceforth, Dee does not deserve to take the quilts with her because she has decided to take on a culture that varies significantly from her own and she is already used to getting what she wants.

Moving to America, for many, has been a reason for opportunity and prosperity. Through persistence, hard work and struggles, they pursue to find success in achieving the ‘American Dream’. One of the major struggles is maintaining one’s traditional values and their individuality while assimilating and not forgetting who he or she really is. The narrator, Jayanti, in “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs”, by Chitra Divakaruni, illustrates a good example of how a person loses their individuality and self-identity to do whatever it takes to assimilate and fit into the society.

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.

‘American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion’ by Judith Shklar is about citizenship, mainly the components of citizenship and the effects of social standing. Shklar says that the main components to be a full citizen in the United States are the right to vote and earn and if those rights were not given then those citizens feel dishonored. Voting was an important right because it was a way for the citizens to express themselves and be able to pick someone who will represent them. Working and earning was a social right and according to Shklar it was a primary source of public respect, and if you are higher in the social standing it meant more respect for you, “...Americans appear to have a clear enough idea of what it means, and their relative social place, defined by income, occupation, and education, is of some importance to them.”(Shklar,388) So if you are someone with money, wealth, power or have a higher level of education it meant you would be considered as someone higher in statues and therefore will be given more respect.

Two Ways to Belong in America by Bharati Mukherjee is a personal essay about two immigrant sisters named Bharati and Mira, moving to the United States to work for around 35 years. Despite differences in personalities and perspectives, the two sisters love each other and get along quite well. Both share the same birthplace and culture background, however one admires wearing jeans, the other clings onto her sari. As it is mentioned in the essay in paragraph 4 and 6, Mira decided to stay true to here culture and marry an Indian student, and Bharati stepped further from traditions and married an American, “Mira married an Indian student in 1962” and “I married a fellow student, an

Diaspora, is the spreading of people from where they originally came from. In many African American literacy texts, there are aspects of Diaspora throughout the story. Some of these Diasporic themes are power, trauma, and family. These themes help the reader to understand how these things can continue to be present after being separated or generations later. In the texts, The Color Purple, Breathe, Eyes, Memory, and Homegoing the authors tell the themes of power, trauma, and family through their characters stories, and shed light on culture and traditions.

Diaspora is the deracination of society from one earthly region to another earthly region. It deals with the issues and problems of homelessness and integrity crisis. The term ‘’Diaspora” was mainly used for exile of JEWS from their homeland. The Diaspora gained values in peopel;s mind with the result of globalization. In our literature diaspora has no of meanings which actually express the pain and sufferings of expatriate peoples. The term has many synonymous like migration, immigration, emigration exile, dispersio also lingers over alienation, loneliness, homelessness, existential rootlessness, nostalgia, questioning , quest for identity. It also includes the term of ammalgamation of cultures. In this peopels feeling the clashes of singular and multicultural and past and present and many so on. To be dislocated people means to leave their motherly lands and live in the unbelonging room with new things. when migrants leave their roots and leaves than they cross the barriers and border lines history ,memories and time.