Good observations about this story Hamdi. Let’s consider some elements and themes found in this story. How are gender issues treated in this story? Is Silko a feminist or is she merely reinforcing patriarchal stereotypes? Is the narrator breaking free from oppression or merely giving in to a new oppressor?
By Cadeus Gregory The Namesake from Jhumpa Lahari's novel painted a perfect picture of people like me who have immigrated in the United State to find a better life and the challenges we unexpectedly discover in the process. The difficulties faced by the immigrants are feeling alienated, cultural difference, and the second generation’s desperate desire to identify themselves. Being a stranger in a foreign land is noticeable throughout the novel. During Ashima’s pregnancy she became afraid for her baby. Because the notion of raising a child in "a country where she is related to no one, where she knows so little, and where life seems so tentative and spare."
Due to Nat’s condition, she doesn’t fit into a “normal” school, so her parents are sending her to boarding school. Forcing her family to move and her father to pick up two jobs on Alcatraz as a guard and electrician, he is rarely ever home to help the family out. Moose and Natalie’s father is willing to go to the extent of working two jobs and never being home to help out Natalie, because of her disability. Not only does Natalie’s condition affect her father but her brother. He is a twelve-year-old who wants to spend time with his friends and play baseball.
In other words, she describes how immigrants view the United States in such high expectations hoping for a brighter and better future. Instead she feels like an outsider or a misfit because if she dies right there now no one would know or mourn for her. She there with no family and the These resident aliens such as herself, faced reality the hard way and all the obligations that came along the way while she struggles to balance her family and her own personal life. She feels like a stranger at first; however, soon she adapts and finds a job, a lover, a child, and a telephone friend. She does all this just to keep her busy and tired.
Atwood discusses the several genres of fiction that are available in this time and explains how this is not only a time of gender crossover but of genre crossover. By using the comparison she shows how literature has evolved as well as gender relations. In conclusion Margaret Atwood’s speech “spotty handed villainess” is a speech that explores the flaws in extreme feminism, challenges the patriarchal order and examines the intentions of literature and fiction. The speech still has relevance today as it examines gender roles and expectations in modern day
Lam uses irony through-out the story to expose the reasons that many Vietnamese children living in America will struggle with identity. Lam begins the story with a hint of irony when his Mother asked his aunt “Who will light incense to the dead when we’re gone,” and the aunt replies, “None of my children will do it, and we can forget the grandchildren. I guess when we’re gone, the ritual ends” (Lam, 2011, p. 1077). Although Lam’s Mother has brought her children to America for a better life she is disappointed that they have not kept their Vietnamese identity as she has. “Such is the price of living in America” is the only answer that the narrator has for this.
15% were ‘insecure resistant’ (type c)- uneasy around their mother and upset if she left. They resisted strangers and were also hard to comfort when their mother returned. Takahashi found that 68 % of the infants were classified as type b, almost identical to the original American sample. None of the infants were classed as type a. 32% were classified as type
Her poetry intentionally brings up questions of Otherness and forces readers to reevaluate “their relation to her ‘Otherness,’” thus, both reader and author come into a dialogue over the text (47). Using the ideas of the Enlightenment, Wheatley sought to make her readers rethink “the prejudices of tradition” (57). By seeking Phillis Wheatley we find “a powerful perspective on how we can seek out each other in our own moment” (62). Henry Louis Gates, Jr. provides a clear explication of how Phillis Wheatley fit into the debates over race and racial equality in the eighteenth century. The phenomenon that Wheatley became in her day is indicative of the debates over human’s natural rights versus nature’s placement of them.
Alexandra Szkutnik Dr. Weiss English 1010 1 October 2009 Searching for One's Self Growing up is hard enough on all children. Colin Powell and Jhumpa Lahiri, both children of immigrants, had to grow up as the "others" in an America that made them feel singled out because of their races. Colin Powell grew up where race did not seem to matter and as an adult learned otherwise, while Jhumpa Lahiri grew up in a world where she was constantly aware of how different she was, and learned as an adult that that is acceptable. Although race is an issue that has been and still is a major stumbling block of our world today, both Colin Powell and Jhumpa Lahiri have overcome this stigma and grown into adults with mindsets of which, although are different,
Edna’s husband, Leonce, often noted “…her habitual neglect of the children” (Chopin 7). Chopin uses the words “habitual neglect” to intensify how Leonce felt toward Edna’s attitudes for their children. Leonce was not pleased with Edna’s lack of care and motherly abilities. Through his diction, it is evident that he senses a change in Edna. Furthermore, Leonce “thought it very discouraging that his wife, who was the sole object of his existence, evinced so little interest in things which concerned him, and valued so little his conversation” (Chopin 6).