The Grass Is Always Greener On The Other Side

In her essay “My Two Lives,” Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian American, explains the balance between the identities of the two countries inside her heart, as well as her psychological struggle between her bicultural identities. She describes herself as an Indian-American because she moved with her family from India to the United States when she was very young. However, confused with her identity through her growth, she feels that she doesn’t belong to either of the two countries because of its completely different cultures. When she is at home, she deals with her parents in an Indian way, which is strange compared to the American way that she come across outside. She says that she has a distinctive identity in spite of her Indian appearance

Ain't no man ought to eat his women's food year in and year out, and see his children running wild. Ain't nothing right about that.” Maybelle responds, “Honey, you took good care of us when you had it. Ain't nobody got nothing nowadays.” This conversation between the mother and father contrasts the differences between the parents personalities and displays, just like the differences between childhood Lizabeth and women Lizabeth. Similarly to how Lizabeth's mother finds happiness in her family, Lizabeth found happiness in destroying other people's happiness. This consequently led to her loss of innocence by destroying Miss Lottie's yard, but because of this she gained compassion in others and through poverty. Marigolds represent happiness that sometimes have to be destroyed in order to lose innocence and gain compassion, but also the small feeling of hope and joy when the whole world around you is dark and sinister. The author uses the technique of symbolism of the marigolds to display how when people are so deep in depression and poverty, they look for something hopeful and happy to put or “plant” in their

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”.

The importance of cultural identity has a great presents throughout This Blessed house while a couple struggles to live with one another on their separate representation of being a true hindu. In the United States of America we are know for being the biggest melting pot of the world. Where many ethnicities blend together; to the rest of the plant we don't necessarily have a distinct unified culture. I believe that Jhumpa Lahiri had great meaning behind this work and it significant to the pressure almost every person must bare from their culture within america. In today's society everything is a statistical poll (ex. In 2014, 35% of Hispanics ages 18 to 24 were enrolled in a two- or four-year college) grouping people within in genders, age, and culture . The blessed house just demonstrates two very opposite reactions in maintaining this so-called reputation in culture.

This book depicts the national and cultural status of the immigrant mother, who is able to preserve the traditions of her Indian heritage that connect her to her homeland. Ensuring a successful future for her American-born children is coordinated with the privilege of being an American citizen. Ashima yearns for her homeland and her family that she left behind when

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

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 addition, disappointment is another reason Jayanti choses to let assimilation take over her self-identity. When she finally realizes that America is not as glamorous as she imagined, read about or saw in pictures, she feels disheartened. When she arrives, she looks forward in seeing, “neat red brick house with matching flowery drapes, the huge, perfectly mowed lawn green like it had been painted, the shiny concrete driveway on which sat two shiny motorcars”(73). However, she is greeted by a, “crowded [apartment] with faded, over stuffed sofas and rickety end tables that look like they’ve come from a larger place...the tiny room I am to occupy - it is the same size as my bathroom at home” (73,74).

In the short story, The Other Side, a young African-American girl named Clover had spent her childhood with a fence to separate her home with another white family. Throughout the book, she meets a new friend, her neighbor, and together they decide that someday a deeper thought than the fence would be torn down and overcome. Clover experienced segregation when it had been affecting the whole country. The fence that had separated their homes, Clover and Annie, had indicated the segregation and racism that was happening at the time when they had met.

As Ashoke settled in the United States with his new wife, Ashima, as first-generation immigrants and started their own family, Ashoke insisted to her wife the life that America can offer to their children, from sufficient education and multiple possibility of a better future than a life in India. Ashoke’s principle towards life proves the conceptualized idea of America’s supremacy in different sociocultural aspects that again places the Asian Americans in the margin of the culture paradigm. Racism is another portion of the marginalization that is displayed in Nair’s film. A scene from the movie exhibits the perception of some Americans

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

The internal conflict for Mrs. Sen is that she is so uncomfortable with her life in America and she can’t change it. The only two things that make Mrs. Sen happy in America are both related to India: the arrival of a letter from her family, and fish from the seaside.(l.281-p.9). Mrs. Sen doesn’t want to give up the customs in India, for example, keeping vermilion and wearing sari, these evidences show her strong nostalgia. Mrs. Sen has no choice but to live in a place far from home. As a result, she cherishes those things that remind her hometown—cut fish properly for more meals, keep the head, and play the cassette over and over again.

In "Neighbors", Bill and Arlene Miller are a couple with menial jobs who give credence to the saying "the grass is greener on the other side of the fence". They are

“Mrs.Sen’s” and “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” are both stories from, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. Lahiri developed the main characters, Mrs. Sen from “Mrs. Sen’s” and Mr. Pirzada from “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” in very similar ways. Mrs. Sen and Mr. Pirzada are from Indian countries and are trying to assimilate to American culture, but are having a very difficult time. Mrs. Sen cannot drive, nor is does she have much interest in driving which is revealing her sense of isolation since driving is an important aspect in American culture. Throughout the story of “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” it can be argued weather or not Mr. Pirzada is actually Indian.