The Two Sisters In 'Two Ways To Belong In America'

The father believed the teacher though his son was a slow-learner because Wind-Wolf is shy and quiet and it takes time to adjust to a new environment and culture. Wind-Wolf’s experiences are different then that of his Western society peers and the Western school culture is unfamiliar. The children growing up in Western culture are prepared to excel in Western school culture because they are taught lessons even before they start attending school. For example, a child understands that there are 12 months in a year. Wind-Wolf was taught that there were 13 due to his cultural beliefs. It would be hard and

This shines light upon her Native American roots and how it can be an inspiration for her Century Quilt, each square representing her family’s racial diversity and mixed roots. It is quite difficult to learn of all the harsh animosity they were enduring, such as Meema and her yellow sisters whose “grandfather’s white family nodding at them when they met” (24-27). The hostility is clear as the white relatives only register their presence; no “hello” or warm embrace as if they didn’t acknowledge them as true family. However, with descriptive imagery, the speaker’s sense of pride for having the best of both worlds is still present as she understands Meema’s past experiences and embraces her family’s complexity wholeheartedly; animosity and all.

In life, what we perceive tends to show misconception in how the thought plays out. A good example would be the character Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s American classic: The Great Gatsby. Gatsby was unable to distinguish between his love for Daisy, a reality, versus the illusion that he could recapture her love by establishing and inventing a fraudulent past. He believed he could repeat the past, and acquire a flaunting wealth. In the novel, Jay Gatsby seems incompetent in establishing a difference between the realities of his life versus the illusion he made out.

In the short story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, the two main characters, Maggie and Dee, are sisters who are very opposite to each other. Throughout the story, the girl’s differences become evident through their physical appearances, personalities, lifestyle decisions, and the way they feel about their heritage.

“Two Kinds” is a short story written by Amy Tan about a young girl attempting to please her mother, but also cultivate her own identity. Ironically, (or most likely intentionally), there seem to be two different types of themes driving the text: the cultural differences between an immigrant and a natural born citizen of America, and a mother and daughter. The mother is an immigrant from China that believes in the American dream; she believes that anyone can make it in American with enough hard work and practice. However, her daughter was raised in American and does not have the same ideology as her mother. Instead, she believes that people should have their own identity and thoughts, rather than trying to be like someone else or impress other people. Her mother refuses to think in such a way, and instead attempts to make the daughter into a child prodigy. Unfortunately, the daughter gives up trying to please her mother, and instead begins to live her own life, to the disappoint of her mother.

The feeling of being judged for the experiences an individual faces can be detrimental to the person 's personality by that these experiences result in you trying to become someone you are not so that you hide what society feels is your flaw, your race. Starr lives in two completely separate worlds, Garden Heights and the area surrounding Williamson High School. These two worlds hinders Starr’s ability to voice her opinions and thoughts about anything because in both of these areas there is this fear of overstepping boundaries. Overstepping boundaries in either area causes an individual to become threatened, for example, in Garden Heights, Starr silences herself whenever she is around gang members because she is frightened that the gang members will harm both her and her family for her opinions. Starr silences herself when she is at Williamson High School, especially since she is one out of the few African Americans that attends there, because her opinion is outnumbered by the majority of the population who are either ignorant about the issues that affects Starr’s race or cares less to even hear issues that occurs to others beside them.

This writing is about her time living in New York. She is a mother and belongs to a poor family. Anna lives in the slums of New York City along with many immigrants who all come from different countries. Anna’s family has experienced many cultural differences collide together to make a mixed culture. Anna herself is a Italian and lives peacefully with many different ethnic people such as Yugoslavians, Spanish people, Japanese people, and more. One example that displays how she lives along with different immigrants is by letting her children eat with them. Anna writes “My children are upstairs in the house next door, having dinner with the Ecuadorian family that lives on the top floor” (Quindlen 1). Anna letting her kids eat with a different ethnic family shows that she is fine with her kids assimilating into a different culture. Another instance of a cultural mix is shown when people buy squid. Quindlen writes, “About a third of the people in the neighborhood think of squid is calamari, about a third think of it as sushi and about a third think of it as bait” (Quindlen 1). This sentence displays that people from different countries arrive to America and share different ideologies. For instance, Japanese people will use squid for sushi. In contrast, Italians will use squid to make calamari. Only people from different ethnic backgrounds will have differing values and traditions. If only Americans lived in this

Alice Walker, a famous author, stated in her short story, Everyday Use, “Dee (Wangero) looked at me with hatred. “You just will not understand. The point is these quilts, these quilts.” Each person’s identity is shaped from a culture that is built with the offering of everything in his or her surrounding environment. Culture is one of the most important factors, though there are many other contributing factors, that can influence someone’s perspective on the world because all of their opinions, decisions, and morals are all based off of their surrounding environment. In the poem and story, “My Mother Pieced Quilts” and Everyday Use, they both demonstrate how one’s cultural identity is influenced by his or her surroundings, changing the

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.

Traditions and old teachings are essential to Native American culture; however growing up in the modern west creates a distance and ignorance about one’s identity. In the beginning, the narrator is in the hospital while as his father lies on his death bed, when he than encounters fellow Native Americans. One of these men talks about an elderly Indian Scholar who paradoxically discussed identity, “She had taken nostalgia as her false idol-her thin blanket-and it was murdering her” (6). The nostalgia represents the old Native American ways. The woman can’t seem to let go of the past, which in turn creates confusion for the man to why she can’t let it go because she was lecturing “…separate indigenous literary identity which was ironic considering that she was speaking English in a room full of white professors”(6). The man’s ignorance with the elderly woman’s message creates a further cultural identity struggle. Once more in the hospital, the narrator talks to another Native American man who similarly feels a divide with his culture. “The Indian world is filled with charlatan, men and women who pretend…”

In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee she uses many excellent quotes that can be broken down and analyzed, one of the quotes she uses is “People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.” The world and everyone in it isn’t what people always think it is. Furthermore, don’t judge people for how they look or act, dig deeper and get to know them. For example Scout remarks, “Atticus, he was real nice.”

In “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker the reader is informed that Dee, on of the main characters is attempting to reclaim her heritage from Africa, but in the process, she is also rejecting her immediate African American background, “A dress down to the ground….Heat wave it throws out” (Everyday Use, Pg 317). We can see the narrator's journey near the end of the story as she is ironically happy. Both the narrator and Maggie seem to be at peace in a way they weren't in the beginning of the story, Therefore they have undergone a pivotal change in character. This experience is part of the hero's journey. We are able to see a similar character conflict within these three different stories which proves that these characters have had to overcome certain obstacles. Many of the Settings in the stories are also the same and provide a look at how these authors use similar techniques to display a message.

Have you ever become embarrassed because you were different? The author Lensey Namioka wrote about a girl who felt left out because her family was unique. Many authors use figurative language to develop themes. Shel Silverstein wrote about how everyone is the same ‘When we turn off the light.’ Lensey Namioka and Shel Silverstein are two examples. They use similes, metaphors, and hyperboles to develop the theme of tolerance in the short story “The All American Slurp,” by Lensey Namioka and the poem “No Difference” by Shel Silverstein.

For millions of immigrants, America has been seen as the land of opportunity where anyone could become anything he or she wanted to be. A family that believes strongly in the American dream can be found in Amy Tan’s short story, “Two Kinds.” The story centers around the daughter of a Chinese immigrant who desperately wants her daughter to become successful. In the story, the author shows the difficult lives immigrants face when moving to a new culture. In this short story, the theme shows the protagonist’s conflict with her mother on the type of daughter her mother wants her to be. The author establishes the theme of how difficult mother-daughter relationships can be through characterization, setting, and symbolism.

Once the student is back in his room, he begins pondering his life's situation. He is sensitive to his current environment, and imagines Harlem and New York talking to him, as if they were friends. They are the two worlds he is a part of, and he tries to resolve the differences by acknowledging the similarities. He recognizes that his life has many things in common with other people; working, loving, reading, learning, eating, sleeping, etc. Only the objects of expression are different.