Jhumpa Lahiri Essay

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Identity crisis through Americanization In the United States, there are many immigrants from all over the world. There are many immigrants who come to the United States of America for different reasons and many of these immigrants have never placed a foot on America's ground. A lot of these immigrants are parents with children. It is a huge transition when a family or individuals from different countries go to America because they are not familiar with the customs, traditions, and behaviors from people of the United States. The traditions, customs and behaviors differ so much between the United States and other countries such as Mexico, China, Korea and France. So when Immigrants move to the United States, they find it very difficult to be able to interact and be a part of their new culture they are living in. The young children who move from one county to another seem to have the most difficult time because they grow up having to transition from one culture to another such as Jhumpa Lahiri did in her story, "My Two Lives" and Eric Liu's story "Notes of Native Speaker". For them as immigrants having two cultures in their lives causes them to question who they are because they're raised in one culture however surrounded by the American Culture. In "My Two Lives" by Jhumpa Lahiri, Lahiri examines her personal past and difficulties she faced as a child. As an Indian having grownup in an American Culture since the age of two, she has always felt that she had to be balanced in her two cultures, as in not be more Indian than American or not be more American than Indian. "Like many immigrant offspring, I felt intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new, approved of on either side of the hyphen". Lahiri felt pressured and confused as she could not focus on neither culture as she had to live her Indian culture while at home and live
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