Transnational Identity In Anil's Ghost By Kara Somerville

Not keeping in touch with your cultural can make you feel lost because it is part of your ethnic background. It makes you feel like you just do not belong. Leticia Salais’s “Saying Adios to Spanglish” published 2007, Salais chose not to speak her native language in public because she was embarrassed by it and related it to poverty. Salais went to great lengths to hide her native language and culture from the public for professional gain not realizing that her native language and culture connects her to her ethnic background.

Anupreet is a young Sikh woman who is vulnerable to the violence that has increased between Sikhs and Muslims. She has just recently escaped a violent attack on her that left a cut across her face, and her parents are fearful because in spite of the scar on her cheek, her beauty attracts a lot of unwanted attention. Her father arranges to have Anupreet work as a maid to Mrs. Darnsley and her daughter as a way of keeping her safe.

Anzaldua produces her argument by utilizing her past experiences as a multicultural female living on the border between conflicting cultures and languages, and describes how she and thousands of others are being looked down upon for being a minority and for speaking their foreign tongues. Anzaldua opens her literary work with a narrative of the dentist where she includes the quote, “And I think, how do you tame a wild tongue, train it to be quiet, how do you bridle and saddle it?” (34) to introduce the concept of the wild tongue and how this idea applies to her both literally and symbolically. The tongue, representing her linguistic traditions, is being threatened by society who is pressuring her to forgo her culture. By incorporating a comparable and connecting experience, Anzaldua strongly utilizes the rhetorical strategy of pathos because she provides her readers with a perspective of a person who has experienced this “taming” of a “wild tongue” firsthand, evoking a sense of empathy within her readers.

Have you ever had to fight to speak freely? Have you ever had to stand up for what you believe and your culture? When Anzaldua says “So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language” she wants you to feel every aspect of what she is saying. She is wanting you to know that she is standing up for her culture. In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” she persuades her readers to believe the way she feels and that she has gone through hell to fight for what she believes in.

Ani met nice people that helped her when she was hurt and running away in the forest. They helped her get a job as a goose girl where she hid in plane site. She made friends with her coworkers, they did not know she was the princess and she pretended to be from the forest. They trusted her and admired her talents with animals, she found the real family she had always wanted.

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.

Culture can have a large effect on our daily lives, and can shape our thoughts and behaviors. The society an individual surrounds themselves in influences their decisions. It affects how they perceive themselves, their personal identity and reach their personal life goals. In the novel, The Secret Daughter, Shilpa Somaya Gowda explores the significant impact of social culture on the individual. It is evident through the experience of two women born into two different cultures, Kavita in India and Somer in America, and through the life of Asha, an Indian child adopted into an American home. The author uses these examples to show how different cultures contrast, and change an individual 's thinking and perspectives.

When you’re a child, you get to understand your culture. You live with it everyday, but when you grow up, things change in your life that might make you experience new things. That’s what happened to Sundara, when she found something else that was new and exciting for her .

In the personal essay, “Two Ways to Belong in America,” by Bharati Mukherjee, there are two different cultural views between sisters, Bharati and Mira. Bharati and Mira grew up in India, but both moved to America. The sisters have the same cultural background, but have different cultural views now. They have different views on the current debate over the status of

A study conducted by Akbar et al. (2008) on South Asian youth in the west found that many South Asians live a double life from there parents. The need to live a double life comes from there the pressure they receive from both family and peers. This need to please both factors in their lives leads them to negotiate who they are with either contextual factors - appearance, dress code and even personalities. Also showing signs of how the pressure leads to the moratorium state, similar to Aisha. However, this state did not last long when her father found out about her double identity, which led me to explore how her fear of not being able to communicate with her father must have plunged her back into diffusion. Since now she found herself getting

Research on transnational and diasporic identities suggests that identities are dependent upon local senses of belonging as well as upon maintained attachments with place (McDowell, 2003). As Stern (1995) suggests, identification with one’s own nation is inevitable because individuals have ‘primordial attachments to their nations, cemented in ties such as ethnicity, language, race, culture, religion, community, and kinship’ (p. 217). This focus upon local identities results in a reconsideration of attachments by both the indigenous and the migrant populations. As a consequence, just as diasporic communities are transformed by their host societies, so too are the host societies changed and challenged by the diaspora (Brah, 1996; McDowell, 2003).

Sunil inquires about the welfare of the mothers, but he does not pronounce a word about Sudha, does not even pick up the mail, if there is one from Sudha in the stack. Anju could never forget the look on Sunil’s face as he gazed after Sudha and picks up the handkerchief that had fallen from her waistband on the eve of their wedding. The fetish temperament of Sunil plagues Anju. She is aware of Sunil’s disposition. Anju is not ignorant of Sunil’s deception. The deceptive personality of Sunil is shocking to Anju, because she is only an immigrant. Anju discovers that marriage and her adopted land America belie her

Diaspora identity is when a group of individuals is displaced from a country of origin and must migrate to a new homeland. In some cases, the migration is forced whereas in others it is voluntary but forced through circumstances. The process of identity becomes central as those that migrate are forced to determine what it means to be a member of a new culture while still maintaining their own heritage and traditions. One way that culture can be honored is through literature. When considering diaspora identity one must consider history, race, culture and language. These four factors are all aspects of self-identification that are impacted through migration. In the case of African diaspora identity, literature has allowed expression of the experiences of those who have entered America with African origins. Literature has allowed free expression when at times the African’s who were brought to America were enslaved without a voice. To fully understand African Diaspora identity one must understand the four factors of history, culture, race and language and the ways it impacts identity.

The four texts “The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri, “The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy, “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini and “The Inheritance of Loss” by Kiran Desai all share the theme of a struggle for identity either though geographic, political or cultural displacement.

“The truth will always be the truth, even if no one believes it” is a seemingly fitting quote by Sonya Teclai about the basis of the novel Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje. In this book, every character seems to have their own personal version of the truth and what truth means. Anil believes that finding it will bring peace but furthermore clarity, Sarath thinks that there is no sure thing as the ‘truth’ anymore, and the Sri Lankan government changes and alters it for their own personal benefit. These are countless examples of the differing of ideas of what truth is as well as how everyone's ideas about it clash yet moreover alter one another's.