Assimilation; How Does One Truly Do This in Chimamada Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck As immigrants enter the United States, there is no way of escaping the act of assimilating to the American culture in some way or another. When looking at Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck, this belief is evidently true in her various short stories. Although various character’s attempt to assimilate to the American culture, Adichie represents how there is no true way to fully let go of your past cultural roots. More in particular, this struggle is understood in her two stories titled The Arrangers of Marriage and The Thing Around Your Neck. While Agatha struggles with almost every aspect of her new life in America because of her husband’s idea …show more content…
In the midst of making their way up in America, Dave expresses to Agatha at the grocery store, “‘Look at the people who shop here; they are the ones who immigrate and continue to act as if they are back in their countries.’ He gestured, dismissively, toward a woman and her two children, who were speaking Spanish. ‘They will never move forward unless they adapt to America. They will always be doomed to supermarkets like this’” (Adichie 175). Dave’s character is basically saying that if people immigrate to America, they have to reshape their selves to the American lifestyle in order to live in it. Just as Dave was forcing Agatha to speak like the American’s do, he calls out the family for speaking in a different language saying that you must speak English all the time. While Dave calls out this family for utilizing their first language, Adichie uses this family as an example to show how people who don’t assimilate to the English language are looked down upon. After this sighting happens in the supermarket, Dave takes Agatha to the mall where their conversation is as follows, “‘Biko, don’t they have a lift instead?’ […] ‘Speak English. There are people behind you,’ he whispered, pulling me away […]” (Adichie 177). After Dave just got finished with informing Agatha that speaking in your native language is bad, she still continues to do so …show more content…
It says, “So when he asked you, in the dimness of the restaurant after you recited the daily specials, what African country you were from, you said Nigeria and expected him to say that he had donated money to fight AIDS in Botswana. But he asked if you were Yoruba or Igbo, because you didn’t have a Fulani face. You were surprised […].” (Adichie 119). While Akunna developed her own presumption of America’s ignorance, this male character proves this idea wrong and gives Akunna hope and reason to want to stay in America at this point. Despite the fact that this character stalks Akunna, his intentions are sincere and he differs from Agatha’s husband because he is accepting of her Nigerian culture. It says, “He found the African store in the Hartford yellow pages and drove you there” (Adichie 123). His character is fully interested in Akunna’s cultural roots portraying the idea that you don’t have to let go of it just because you’re in America. Therefore, he doesn’t necessarily force Akunna into a different lifestyle. On the other hand, she sees how lucky he is as an American to be given the option of going to school. It says, “[…] his parents, how they portioned out love like a birthday cake, how they would give him a bigger slice if only he’d agree to go to law school” (Adichie 126). Akunna envies this guy for his option to go to
An immigrant's life is impacted by many things when arriving to the United States. For example, when arriving to the United States they have trouble communicating with others or fitting into a new life that awaits for them. Alvarez uses imagery and symbolism to show that American Identity can be heavily impacted by the need to fit into society and adapting to a new culture while trying to stay true to one’s native culture. Author Background and Historical Context
Amy talked about how people don’t understand her mother English and the main reason why they don’t understand her English is cause her tongue. “Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking Chinese.” (Tan pg.1)
By directly quoting her mother, who doesn’t use language “effectively”, we see how her broken English affects how little power and control over the situation the mother has, such as, the stockbroker not getting her the check when they said they would because they think she is less important than clients who speak English well. This is seen when we hear how the stockbroker treats Amy Tan when they think that she is her mother. When Tan speaks English perfectly to the stockbroker, the response differs greatly from the response to her mother. Tan tells the stockbroker, “Yes, I’m getting rather concerned.
One day I was watching a television show; many people have watched it before and have finished. That show affected me more, in my perspective than anyone else I knew. It was about the past of a high school student and what went on in her life. I never told anyone about my past, this made an old struggle come back even stronger and more difficult to overcome again. It was just my mom and I watching this show yet my mom skipped almost half of it because she didn't want me to see parts, yet I filled them in with my own imagination.
“A woman was convicted before the judges of adultery, and delivered over, as the custom was, her husband to be punished” (44). Equiano had made his point about his country’s manner. It has a certain effect on how he is as an individual. Equiano identified himself as an Igbo. Then later he had developed the identity of an African.
Nwoye Struggles with his identity and it has led him to embrace a new culture, which has Basically saved him, and shows the good effects colonialism can have on people.
Tan’s attitude towards her mother’s English begins with embarrassment and humiliation. Growing up in an immigrant family which speaks imperfect English, Tan witnesses many discriminations that her mother has encountered in department stores or at banks, those experiences help to shape Tan’s opinion to her mother’s English. For example, Tan states that “[she] was ashamed of [her mother’s] English. [She] believed that [her mother’s] English reflected the quality of what [her] mother had to say” (508). In young Amy’s opinion, her mother’s expressions and thoughts are broken and imperfect like the way she speaks, and she believes that linguistic expression is linked to a person’s intelligence. As a result, she was ashamed of her mother in public because of her fractured English.
Many writers use literary elements to intrigue their readers into reading their novel or short story and making them feel a certain type of emotion, they could either feel scared, happy, angry, or just plain silly. In the story " The Fall of the House of Usher" Edgar Allen Poe uses suspense, symbolism, and Gothic elements to draw the reader into the story and make the feel like they are a part of it. In the story, Poe uses suspense to trigger the readers sense of fear and suspicion on wanting to know what happens next . "As if in superhuman energy of his uttering...the huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed threw slowly back"(Poe 309).
A lot of people share common misconceptions about window tinting, and some of the things you believe about it might be just a myth. To shed light on them, this article will discuss the common fallacies surrounding window tinting and unveil the truth.
Adichie’s characters are subject to cultural suppression in several of the short stories. This is most pronounced in ‘The Arrangers of Marriage’ where Chinaza is forced by her husband to assimilate to her new surroundings by ridding herself of all signs of being Nigerian,
Cristina Henriquez’, The Book of Unknown Americans, folows the story of a family of immigants adjusting to their new life in the United States of America. The Rivera family finds themselves living within a comunity of other immigrants from all over South America also hoping to find a better life in a new country. This book explores the hardships and injustices each character faces while in their home country as well as withina foreign one, the United States. Themes of community, identity, globalization, and migration are prevalent throughout the book, but one that stood out most was belonging. In each chacters viewpoint, Henriquez explores their feelings of the yearning they have to belong in a community so different than the one that they are used to.
Achebe’s image of the African people is depicted extensively in his novel. Achebe gives us a look at life in an African village and what it was like during African colonialism. Tribal life in Nigeria is told from an inside perspective through the life story of a man, Okonkwo.
The author realized that her mother’s form of English is one she automatically slips into when she is around her family, it is her “intimate” form of English. As Tan and her mother are looking in furniture stores and debating prices, she begins speaking to her mother using the “imperfect” English she grew up with. She states, “We are talking
Or some who guessed that you were African asked if you knew so and so from Kenya or so and so from Zimbabwe because they thought Africa was a country where everyone knew everyone else” (p. 60 l. 16-21). So, when she finally meets a guy who actually is aware of her background and roots, she is impressed. They become a couple and Akunna loves him, but still there are a lot of things she can not get used to and which confuse her. Her relationship to this guy really shows the difference between living in Africa and America. She does simply not understand how he just can take a year of his education to travel, - because an education is a very huge and necessary privilege in Africa, that you just can not take a year of from. Akunna is also very loyal to her parents (frequently she sends them money, even though she does not earn much), so the fact that her boyfriend has a very strange relationship to his parents also confuses her. They also have very different ideas of money, which finds expression in Akunna’s negative reaction of getting presents.
With Adichie’s text being a collection of stories, she is able to express different viewpoints on the way immigrants are marginalized. In (Arrangers of Marriage), Adichie has two main characters: Chinaza Agatha Okafor and Ofodile Emeka Udenwa. Udenwa is Okafor’s new husband, and at the beginning of the story, he tells his new wife that he goes by Dave Bell, saying “...if you want to get anywhere you have to be as mainstream as possible...” (172). From that, Udenwa is saying how in American culture,