Why Do Families Lose American Culture

When reading Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, I was reminded about the struggles of being an immigrant in the United States with all of the barriers with learning a new language and culture. I really saw this when it came to all Spanish words that are written in the book. To be able to understand her own culture, the reader has to have a basic understanding of Spanish. Culture is really taught through language, and there is a lot missing if the reader does not have this basic understanding. When immigrating to the States, people have to learn English not only to communicate well, but to fill out paperwork, and to understand the culture. For this essay I am going to focus on one story that resonated a lot with me when I was reading

Growing up with parents who are immigrants can present many obstacles for the children of those immigrants. There are many problems people face that we do not even realize. Things happen behind closed doors that we might not even be aware of. Writers Sandra Cisneros and Amy Tan help us become aware of these problems. Both of these authors express those hardships in their stories about growing up with foreign parents. Although their most apparent hardships are about different struggles, both of their stories have a similar underlying theme.

Another reason is that children learn a language by imitating the sounds they hear (mimicry) without an accent. This enables children to obtain a correct diction. Here a child has a positive experience and is able to assimilate with ease. On the other hand, an elderly person will find the learning process a challenge and to a certain extent the situation might even be so burdensome that one loses interest in learning. In Amy Tan?s speech My Mother?s English, she explains the difficulties her mother faced because she (Tan?s mother) was unable to clearly express herself. She (Tan) also felt the effects of this as a child. Not only did Tan?s mother find speaking English a barrier in the process of assimilation, but Tan herself felt her mother limited her perception (Tan 45). Since Tan?s mother was unable to speak English properly people would not give her good service and would not treat her seriously even to the extant that people ?pretended not to understand her or even acted as if they did not hear her,?(Tan 45). This is just one example of many that shows how some people have had negative experiences assimilating into American society.

Language is much more than a method of communication. Permeated within it are traditions, customs, and legacies of one’s culture. The identity of an entire population is in the distinct vocalizations of their native language. Unfortunately, as a wave of immigrants enters the United States at young ages, many face language barriers that pose significant challenges. Language barriers affect a multitude of immigrant populations to different degrees. This, in turn, causes many of them to abandon not only their native tongue but a piece of their ethnic identity, as well. In Maxine Hong Kingston’s personal narrative,“The Language of Silence,” she describes the difficulties she experienced throughout her childhood with a language barrier as a

I am a U.S. born citizen. My parents moved to the United States in 1984 without knowing anything about this country. Looking for a fresh start and new opportunities, my parents settled in Houston. With hardly knowing any English, my parents knew this was the place to make dreams become a reality. Luckily, I had older siblings to look up to whenever I needed help. Like Lahiri, I was trapped in between two different cultures while I was growing up. At home, I only spoke Spanish, but in school it was English. My habits and customs were different than others. Life as an immigrant’s offspring can be very difficult. As I grew older, I allowed myself to open my eyes and see the beauty of being an American from Hispanic descent.

The mediocre speakers are tasked with translation between their family and the rest of the world. They learn about handling adult responsibilities and protecting their families from the world's criticism before they even finish elementary school. These children learn that there is an unspoken dynamic of us and them, with their families being the underdogs. The world is pushing them to adapt to this new society. Their surroundings preach conformity to this new nation. All the while they try to maintain connection with their past world and rich culture. They endure torment from ignorant peers, are labeled terrible names, and constantly face underestimation from those who view non-native speakers as incompetent. This kind of environment feeds their insecurity and requires repeated effort to disprove the assumptions of others, but where most would give up their efforts, immigrant children persevere. They learn to use their environment to their advantage. For them, the media is now an interesting way to pick up on the language and slang the other kids use. With these newfound words and knowledge the children have more confidence to approach new people and attempt to make

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.

In “How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents” by Julia Alvarez, It’s shown how being engulfed into a new culture can cause people to struggle with keeping their own culture alive since they are around so many people that are living a different culture. Even though there are so many different races and religions in America, we all as Americans grew up here and know how Americans live, therefore, it can be tough for a different culture to live out their own ways in such a mixed country. It’s impossible to adjust to a culture without changing and being exposed to cultural discrimination. At the beginning of the book Yolanda is a grown woman and visiting her family in the Dominican.

Unconsciously, we all speak different languages; we categorize the way we speak by the environment and people at which we are speaking too. Whenever a character enters an unfamiliar environment, they experiment with language to find themselves and understand reality. For immigrants, language is a means to retain one’s identity; however, as they become more assimilated in their new communities their language no longer reflects that of their identity but of their new cultural surroundings. When an immigrant, immigrates to a new country they become marginalized, they’re alienated from common cultural practices, social ritual, and scripted behavior. It’s not without intercultural communication and negotiation

The teenage years and transition to adulthood is in itself a very difficult period. Blending or fitting in are omnipresent issues that must be dealt with. For children of immigrants, this difficulty is only intensified through language. Both Amy Tan and Khang Nguyen strategically use narrative anecdotes and employ several rhetorical devices to illustrate this struggle in their works, “Mother Tongue” and “The Happy Days,” respectfully. Amy Tan chooses her childhood home as the primary setting of her work. This allows her to focus primarily on her conversations and interactions with her mother. However, she also gives several anecdotes in which her mother’s background and improper English negatively affected her, outside the home. Through

I was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and live in the U.S. I went to Lowell High School and took all ESL because I didn’t know much about English. In order to succeed, I started to read and speak more English than my first language, yet I speak Khmer at home because my parent doesn 't want me to lose my native language. In America, there are a lot of immigrants that are trying to come and to get a better opportunity. According to Joel Swerdlow, in “Changing America,” “before 1965 more than three-quarters of all immigrants to the U.S. came from Europe, owing largely to quotas that favored northern Europeans.” (313). In 1965 Congress removed those quotas, and since then more than 60 percent of immigrants have come from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Latin America. However, do children of immigrants often feel they must lose their cultural identity in order to be American? Children of immigrants often feel they must lose their cultural identity because they are changing their own culture identity regarding three topics: Language, Dress, and Behavior.

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.

Soon I will be arriving in America with my mother, father, and brother, along with some of my other extended family members. My family is originally from Berlin, Germany but migrated to Russia 150 years ago (Heinze Miller). For generations, my ancestors have been living as Volga “colonists”, as we are called by the Russians (Heinze Miller). We live in our German exclusive villages along the Volga River in Central Russia, in the governments of Saratov and Samara (Heinze Miller). Our heritage remains untouched by the Russian culture because, as both my mother and father have said, their civilization and ideals have not been worth emulating (Heinze Miller). This can prove as many disadvantages, since we do not have access to proper communication

Every Friday afternoon, I receive a text message from my mother stating, “What time will you be home tonight for Shabbat dinner?” Sometimes, while replying, I reflect on the challenge I faced being the firstborn to two non-English speaking parents a year after they came to the United States, and how far I have come since then. My mother, from Tajikistan, and father, from Uzbekistan, immigrated to New York in 1993 to escape an ongoing civil war after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although we lived in government-subsided housing projects, growing up in Starrett City enabled me to experience a truly diverse community. We identified with different cultures, spoke various languages and valued distinct principles. Initially, it was difficult

United States is a multiethnic society with many foreign languages spoken, yet English is the primary form of communication. English is widely spoken around the nation, even though it is not the official language of the country. Thus, for an immigrant, it is imperative to learn English to take advantage of the opportunities that the country has to offer, and to also lessen the cases of racism and prejudice. Many immigrants do not want bi-lingual programs in school so that their children can smoothly adjust in the American society, however, learning another language does not mean eliminating the native tongue that was inherited from the ancestors. To be able to speak two languages is something to be proud of. In both of the short stories entitled, “Mother Tongue”, written by Amy Tan, and “Why and When to Speak Spanish in Public”, by Myriam Marquez, both authors emphasize the importance of learning English language, yet also demonstrate the possibilities of surviving in the American society while preserving diverse cultural identities. Therefore, retaining cultural individualities and learning English is possible, and even though the United States is a multicultural society, the majority of people speak English, and for that reason, it should be the official language of the country.