The Effects of Culture and Space on American Families

967 Words4 Pages
After reading the essays, we can now reflect on the relationship between culture and space and how it affected the lives of these three families. Edwidge Danticat’s essay “Westbury Court” focuses on her memories as child growing up in an apartment in New York, Joyce Carol Oates “They All Just Went Away” recounts the antics of a lonely girl growing up in upstate New York while Judith Ortiz-Cofer’s “Silent Dancing” explores the relationships of a close-knit immigrant family living in New Jersey. Does space influence culture? Or does the culture influences the space inhabited? Let us examine this in further detail While Danticat and Cofer essays share similarities as they both lived in apartments and both families migrated to the United States, the similarities don’t extend to how they adapted to the new space and how much they were influenced by the their own culture. Danticat relates that "Though there was graffiti on most of the walls of Westbury Court, and hills of trash piled up upside, though the elevator wasn't always there when we open the door to step inside and the heat was not always on, I never dreamed of leaving Westbury Court until the year of the fire"(p.78). We can infer from the quote that the Danticats have adapted to the space, although the apartment building was not properly maintained, they were prepared to live there until they could afford to move into better building. The influence of culture on the Danticats is not highly developed in the essay but we know that after school, Danticat and her siblings stayed locked in their apartment while their parents were at work. The children did not socialize with other kids on the building to the extent that she did even know the names of the children who lived in the apartment across the hall who later perished in the fire. After the fire Danticat recalls that "I would always listen carefully for our

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