Take Away, By Jhumpa Lahiri And Pot Roast By Mark Strand

A common rhetorical device throughout this essay is description. Using this device, Shteyngart makes the reader feel a little bit of what he felt, taste a little bit of what he tasted, and maybe smell a little bit of what he smelled. One example is when he describes the McDonald’s, saying, “The sixty-nine-cent hamburger. The ketchup, red and decadent, embedded with little flecks of grated onion. The uplift of the pickle slices; the obliterating rush of fresh Coca-Cola; the soda tingle at the back of the throat signifying that the act was complete.”

When adapting to a new culture, many find it hard to assimilate into their new world while still holding on to their past life. Finding yourself in a new place with a new language and unfamiliar faces is challenging for immigrants. Jhumpa Lahiri, an immigrant herself, sheds some light on the Indian culture in her book, Interpreter of Maladies. She conveys many challenges that immigrants face when moving away from their homeland in a myriad of short stories. These short stories introduce similar themes of immigration and adaptation through different experiences. Two of Lahiri’s short stories, “A Temporary Matter” and “Mrs. Sens”, do a great job in showing similar challenges of cultural differences in two different ways. They introduce characters

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 Jessica Harris’s “The Culinary Season of my Childhood” she peels away at the layers of how food and a food based atmosphere affected her life in a positive way. Food to her represented an extension of culture along with gatherings of family which built the basis for her cultural identity throughout her life. Harris shares various anecdotes that exemplify how certain memories regarding food as well as the varied characteristics of her cultures’ cuisine left a lasting imprint on how she began to view food and continued to proceeding forward. she stats “My family, like many others long separated from the south, raised me in ways that continued their eating traditions, so now I can head south and sop biscuits in gravy, suck chewy bits of fat from a pigs foot spattered with hot sauce, and yes’m and no’m with the best of ‘em,.” (Pg. 109 Para). Similarly, since I am Jamaican, food remains something that holds high importance in my life due to how my family prepared, flavored, and built a food-based atmosphere. They extended the same traditions from their country of origin within the new society they were thrusted into. The impact of food and how it has factors to comfort, heal, and bring people together holds high relevance in how my self-identity was shaped regarding food.

A Comparison of Two Poems Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan by Moniza Alvi and Search for my Tongue by Sujata Bhatt

In the short story of “Boiling Water”, three metaphors comparing life’s struggles to a potato, egg, and coffee beans are introduced. Each one of these foods was placed into a pot of boiling water. However, the outcome of the three foods was different. The potato came out soft and weak while the egg came out hard and strong. The coffee beans came out as something different.

This paper will compare and contrast the different eating habits and examine the cultural dining of West Africa to East Africa. Africans like most of the world outside of American and London aren’t fanatical on fast food even though it is becoming more popular most people eat at home or at relatives or friends home. Even Africans living outside of Africa love to cook rather than dine out in most cases. This report was based on interviews from Africans who grew up in traditional African homes in Africa. All references have been crossed checked and stories verified on how most African dishes are prepared, and their history. More research was done by the books listed, as well as other references such as internet sites. Most of this data has

In both The Glass Castle and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian,

Personal Reaction. Both “Looking for Work” and “An Indian Story” was interesting narratives. Although “An Indian Story” sparked my interest more than “Looking for Work”, Roger Jack reports more of attention to detail. When conversing about a family, one must provide detail all the aspects of the family and culture backgrounds. Jack

Luckily, he did not have to overcome his journey alone. Lahiri incorporates his family life in Calcutta with his family life in America. His life in Calcutta was not the best that it could have been, he quite literally watched his mother die. He had to take on a mature role in her passing as he explains that, “and then, because my brother could not bear it, I had assumed the role of the eldest son and had touched the flame to her temple, to release her tormented soul to heaven,” (Lahiri, 5). All of the familial memories associated with Calcutta seem to be very dark and deep in contrast with the familial memories the narrator makes in America. Lahiri most likely did this in an effort to show the bettering and renewal of a life. A very minute detail of this story that resonates deeply would be the narrator’s son. Though he is only mentioned on the last page and not even given a name, he seems to hold a lot of the weight of the story and underlying themes on his back. The son grows up fully in Massachusetts and lives life as a Bengali submerged in an American culture. The narrator grows afraid of his son losing his sense of Bengali pride after the passing of himself and his wife, Mala, and makes it a point to incorporate Bengali tradition into everyday life as much as possible, as shown on page 14: “So we drive to Cambridge to visit him, or bring him home for a weekend, so that he can eat rice with us with his hands, and speak Bengali, things we worry he will no longer do

Neither life nor culture can be sustained without food. On a very basic level, food is fundamentally essential for life, not simply to exist, but also to thrive. A means by which carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, nutrients, and calories are introduced into the body, food is a mechanism of survival. However, on a more abstract level, food is also fundamentally essential for culture by establishing its perimeters and dimensions and in shaping its authenticity and character. Food becomes the

A student will gain the ability to apply international food and culture knowledge, immediately, and to all facets of life. In this diverse world that we live in, to understand all that influences the choices of those individuals that we encounter, on a day to day basis, increases the students’ compatibility and empathy. Important global information is also useful to all students, not only providing the building blocks of culture and tradition, but also the struggles that are faced in nourishing the inhabitants of different areas of our country and the world.

Through her tasteful selection of contemporary Indian influenced prose pieces, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the unique journey of Indian families established in America. Focusing on the intergenerational aspect of traditional households, Lahiri conveys the emotional rollercoaster that accompanies a person who is branded as a foreigner. In America, there exists a common misconception that immigrants who arrive in this country fully assimilate or seek to assimilate as time progresses. The category I chose was "The Dot of true Happiness." The dot which signifies the bindi, a traditional red mark worn by Indian people, is the source of true happiness among these immigrants.

The book Interpreter of the Maldives is a collection of short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri that examines the relationship between Indian and American culture. Lahiri does this by using motifs, patterns and themes that recur throughout the short stories. The relationship between the two cultures is not only evident in romantic relationships of Indian-Americans, but in Lahiri’s description of clothing. Lahiri's description of clothing in the short stories, Sexy, This Blessed House and the Third and Final Continent, show how well a character is adapting/accepting American culture.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth is comprised of eight short stories about different Indian families’ struggles in America, many of them going through the immigrant experience. The conflicts are with friends and family, and also with themselves, as each of them attempt to find their own identity along with fitting in with the rest of society. One of the causes of these struggles that because the families in the stories are mixed in terms of generation. Many of the adults in the stories were first generation immigrants from India, while many of the children were raised in the United States, which is the second generation. This led to blending of culture and at the same time, clashes between the immigrant mentality of living and the American mentality of living. In Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri demonstrates to the reader the important influence of environment, specifically culture and how it impacts parental teachings, on the personality and development of an individuals’ identity, and how the actions and development of characters can affect one’s family and friends; the impact of environment and culture is shown especially by the characters and stories “Hell-Heaven” and “Hema and Kaushik”.