Theme Of Mangoes On The Maple Tree

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”.

In a world where seven billion people can communicate in fractions of a second across the globe, share thoughts and exchange cultures, the way we choose to identity ourselves can often ‘’mark’’ us. You can often tell a lot about someone who proclaims to be Quebecois before being Canadian. And theses thing are often present in areas that have a clash of cultures, such as Québec in the former example. But the author Thomas King dives deeper into the subject with his short story Borders. King’s characters do not attach themselves to the place they were born, instead they take pride in their parents’ legacy, their heritage. By writing through the eyes of a twelve year old boy and using opposition, King displays the importance of such things and how minorities are slowly losing them.

Every individual, no matter who they are, will all face challenges that result from their backgrounds and cultures. Born in Calcutta, India and later moving to the United States, Amin Ahmad was an individual who discovered this harsh truth first-hand. In his essay, “I Belong Here,” Ahmad reflects on his experience of being treated differently from those around him based off his cultural background. He analyzes the emotional barrier that forms between the journey of immigration and the continuous feeling of inferiority based solely on the desire to belong. The article is written to provide a different point of view; one focused on introducing to the world the challenges and emotions immigrants face after starting the journey towards a new life.

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.

Every individual, no matter who they are, will all face challenges that result from their backgrounds and cultures. Born in Calcutta, India and later moving to the United States, Amin Ahmad was an individual who discovered this harsh truth firsthand. In his essay, “I Belong Here,” Ahmad reflects on his experience of being treated differently from those around him based off his cultural background. He analyses the emotional barrier that forms between the journey of immigration and the continuous feeling of inferiority based solely on the desire to belong. The article is written to provide a different point of view; one focused on introducing to the world the challenges and emotions immigrants face after starting the journey towards a new life.

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.

Canada is referred to as a ‘land of immigrants’ since a large number of newcomers have settled here and helped to enhance and preserve its ethnicity and diversity. Every country has its own norms and principles in accommodating new immigrants and assisting them to settle down. However, not all the immigrants are fortunate enough to sustain the uncertain circumstances that they had foreseen before migrating to a new country. While in the process of adjusting to a new society, these settlers are often reminded of the fact that they are not in their own country. Such circumstances put them in a tight spot of returning back to their homeland. Thus, taking instances from the writings of Mehri Yalfani, Isabel Vincent and Himani Benerji, the facts that new immigrants have to come across various complications throughout their journey of settlement to a new country, are being raised in the subsequent part of this journal. Moreover, the issues related to racism in Canada and the assurance of equality and freedom from racial discrimination to the Canadians are also reflected below.

Canada is a place known to be a multiculturalism country to many. Although it is meant to be a positive thing in many minds, it is also tended to be a negative thing. This is shown in the essays “No Place Like Home” by Neil Bissondath, and “Immigrants, Multiculralism, and Canadian citizenship” by Will Kymlicka. Both essay make powerful points to why multiculturalism is negative, but also shows the method that the authors use to write such as racism, how both author’s use the pathos and logos method, but also false premises.

Many second generation minorities from immigrant parents are driven subconsciously to conform to new culture and social norms. For foreign born parents and native born children integrating the two cultures they inhabit brings about different obstacles and experiences. In Jhumpa’s “The Namesake” the protagonist Gogol is a native born American with foreign born parents. The difference with birth location plays an important role in assimilating to a new society in a new geography. The difficulty for parents is the fact that they’ve spent a decent amount of time accustomed to a new geography, language, culture and society which makes it difficult to feel comfortable when all of that changes. For Gogol the difficulty only lies with the cultural norms imposed by his parent’s and the culture and social norms that are constantly presented in the new society.

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).

Forming a new identity in a foreign country is not an easy task. Immigrants usually face challenges to identify themselves. Identity formation is the development of one’s distinctive personality due to particular reasons such as new environment, new culture and conflicts. During the process, some characters from Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake either create or deny the bond with their own culture; some undergo conflicts among generations. Those processes reflect significantly in Ashima and Gogol throughout the book. The degree of assimilations determines to what extent the characters have formed the new identity in the new culture.

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

Exploring the themes of identity and immigration, this essay will focus on one short story and two case studies. Caterina Edwards’ Island of the Nightingales, follows Teresa Pomoronzola, a second-generation Italian immigrant living in Edmonton, who is sent to her mother’s homeland, the island of Lussino, in order to think clearly and gain perspective. Primarily, Teresa faces the internal conflict of choosing between her two lovers, yet she is also conflicted about her identity. Through the juxtaposition of divergent lifestyles and cultural values, Edwards’ Island of the Nightingales, suggests that a second-generation immigrant’s return to their family’s homeland is the ideal method for reconciling a conflicted identity and effectively understanding one’s background.

Aunty Uju, who is burdened with task of getting a job and raising a son alone, feels the need to change her personality, mentality, and appearance for a smoother immigrant experience; but Adichie highlights the abandonment of identity resulting from

An article written by Kara Somerville in 2008 provides an interesting insight on the issue of transnational identity, and how different factors tend to affect it. Especially the paragraph about the Indo-Canadian immigrants' emotional connections to their both home's offers a good viewpoint on Anil's own process of forming her identity. (p.27) The people interviewed all bring up how