A Proper Goodbye And Nach Unen

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.

For more than 300 years, immigrants from every corner of the globe have settled in America, creating the most diverse and heterogeneous nation on Earth. Though immigrants have given much to the country, their process of changing from their homeland to the new land has never been easy. To immigrate does not only mean to come and live in a country after leaving your own country, but it also means to deal with many new and unfamiliar situations, social backgrounds, cultures, and mainly with the acquisition and master of a new language. This often causes mixed emotions, frustration, awkward feelings, and other conflicts. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, the author

Moving to a new town can be hard, adjusting to a new house and meeting new people. Moving to a new country, however, can be far more difficult. Not only are there new people to meet, immigrants must adjust to an entirely different culture and language. Many find it hard to assimulate into the new culture, while still maintaining they customs and traditions of their old country. One author who writes about immigrants' struggles is Jhumpa Lahiri. She heard stories first hand of the struggle to adjust from her parents, immigrants from India. Some of her short stories are based on her parents' experiences. In the stories "This Blessed House," "The Third and Final Continent," and "Mrs. Sen's," Lahiri shows how the struggle of immigrants to

Cristina Henriquez’, The Book of Unknown Americans, folows the story of a family of immigants adjusting to their new life in the United States of America. The Rivera family finds themselves living within a comunity of other immigrants from all over South America also hoping to find a better life in a new country. This book explores the hardships and injustices each character faces while in their home country as well as withina foreign one, the United States. Themes of community, identity, globalization, and migration are prevalent throughout the book, but one that stood out most was belonging. In each chacters viewpoint, Henriquez explores their feelings of the yearning they have to belong in a community so different than the one that they are used to.

Miline, Ira Mark. Short Stories for Student. Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Short Stories Volume 8Virtual Reference Library. Detroit, Mich: Gale. Web. 13 Jan. 2010.

Every individual, no matter who they are, will all face challenges that result from their backgrounds and cultures. Born in Calcutta, India and later moving to the United States, Amin Ahmad was an individual who discovered this harsh truth first-hand. In his essay, “I Belong Here,” Ahmad reflects on his experience of being treated differently from those around him based off his cultural background. He analyzes the emotional barrier that forms between the journey of immigration and the continuous feeling of inferiority based solely on the desire to belong. The article is written to provide a different point of view; one focused on introducing to the world the challenges and emotions immigrants face after starting the journey towards a new life.

Since the establishment of the colonies, America has been viewed as the “land of opportunity.” It is thought to be a safe haven for immigrants, and a chance at a new beginning for others. “The Clemency of the Court” by Willa Cather published in 1893, tells the story of Serge, a Russian immigrant, who overcame the struggles of a tough childhood and fled to America to receive protection from the state. “Clothes” by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni published in 1995, tells the story of Sumita, a Indian immigrant, who is moving to America so that she can marry her husband that her family has arranged for her. Both “The Clemency of the Court” and “Clothes” show the evolution of the American immigrant experience.

The Language of Dreams by Belle Yang features the role of memory, language and story-telling in human lives, especially those displayed and complicated by the movement and the blending of culture (pp 697) whereas, Death of Josseline by Margaret Regan encourages a reconsideration of how the immigration issue is discussed in the media (pp704). Both the article describes about change in one’s life because of immigration.

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

Before introducing any major events, or analysis, it’s important to note that this autobiographical work was only made possible with the aid of written documentation, and tales passed on from the family and the community. This is imperative because a great portion of the piece focuses on events that Edwidge didn’t experience first-hand, so she heavily stresses on the details being re-surfaced through friends and family to complete a holistic emigration story. Family history and the involvement of cherishing family moments is often an overlooked form of communication, but without this, this and many other important minority stories would have never been complied in a way where we can now discuss them in a culturally-reflective academic setting, like this course.

Lubna Warawra’s “The Departure-The Arrival,” and Nila Somaia-Carten’s “February 1, 1992,” from When Your Voice Tastes Like Home: Immigrant Women Write, are short stories written in first-person that describe the author’s journey immigrating to Canada. The women face many challenges immigrating, such as the pain of leaving behind their families, and loved ones. Warawra writes about her experience immigrating to Toronto from the West (Western) Banks of war-torn Palestine and Somaia-Carten shares her experience immigrating to Vancouver from Kenya, in hopes of living a better life. Both stories employ symbolism to accentuate the struggles of migrating to a new country.

1-Mika, a Japanese woman, came from a high socioeconomic status, where her father is a political official and her mother spends the time helping him with political issues. Although she was closer to her grandmother when growing up, her parents’ statuses had an impact in her life. In Japan, her social status was very important and provided her with many benefits such as recognition. After moving to this country, she began to experience a feeling of isolation. The process of adaptation to a new culture is very difficult for immigrants. In the case of Mika, she had to live through this process, deal with the fact that her socioeconomic status had changed, and the language barrier. She also expressed that she did not feel accepted by her classmates

As a writer of Diaspora she avoids the sentimental cry of ‘dislocation’ or ‘alienation’ but she exposures the difficulty of their suffering. In her personal life, she faced the suffering of obtaining a passport and struggled to get American citizenship. She faced a lot of sufferings in her own life because she also an immigrant family, she born in India and later she moved to America.

Some of the terms used in this project are migrant literature, border thinking/awareness, and transnational motherhood. Migrant literature is an essential term in this project as it looks at a specific narrative of migrants in the host countries. Søren Frank in his exploration on migration and literature asserts that the term “migrant” in popular culture “is associated with migrant workers,” which defines “workers engaged in remunerated activities in a country where they are not nationals” (10). Concerning immigrant narrative, Frank argues that people’s understanding of the immigrant experience is formed prominently by the fictions about immigrants (15). His concepts on immigrant narrative, which includes the Western immigrant narrative, is beneficial to discuss IDWs narrative as immigrant narrative. Frank briefly explicates several key components of immigrant novels namely a hero, a journey, and a series of trials. Given the fact that the corpus in my project does not include novels, it will be challenging to apply those key components into discussion. However, such effort will benefit me in attempting to delineate the Indonesian immigrant narrative, in this case IDWs’ narratives.