... It was the day after departure. I had just left England, heading for the new America. My family was not the wealthiest of most. I was seated in the peasant class. They couldn’t afford to send the rest of my six siblings. Me, The oldest at fifteen and most sagacious , went. The boat was very eerie and large. It creaked whenever it turned the slightest of degrees. It had one long hallway running down the entire boat. Each class had a door, guarded by an officer of the police. Every door had a small window about shoulder high. Each class had rooms to stay in, a common room, and a shared kitchen/diner. There were special hallways to the kitchen because you were not aloud to cut through other classes. I had just woken up. As I have already mentioned, it was the first day after departure. I really wasn’t sure what to do with myself. It was the first time I had so much freedom. So, I went over to grab some breakfast. I lounged around and I met a boy named Toby. Toby was a nice boy, (and also a very fat one too). He was around my age. We had many things in common and a lot to talk about. But, he was riding in first class. We talked for about an hour, then he said he need to go back to see his parents. So, then I moved to the lounge. When I went in I thought of the luxuries that Toby had. I was sure he had very plentiful leather chairs and couches. It made me angry and jealous. But these feelings didn’t last for long because I overheard people talking. They were talking about...
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...An African-American Dream You may know the term, The American Dream. However, your definition of that term is most likely different from mine. For some the dream is to achieve a higher living standard and for others the dream is to be famous. The American Dream also varies depending on which country you are from. Furthermore, the dream can reach unrealistic heights and end in disappointment. In the following paper, I am going to see how the American dream, immigration and race are interpreted in the story “The Thing around your Neck”. I will also look at symbolic meanings and the 2nd person narrator. In the short story “The Thing around your Neck”, the young woman Akunna from Nigeria wins the American visa lottery. She travels to the United States to live with her aunt and uncle, but when the uncle tries to abuse her, she leaves their house. She finds an apartment and a job as a waitress. A young man in the restaurant quickly finds her interesting, and Akunna says yes to go on a date with him, after he has persistently tried to ask her out. They are in a relationship until she gets a letter, informing her that her father is dead. She travels back to Nigeria without her boyfriend even though he offers to travel back with her. America is the land of opportunities, but are these opportunities for everybody? At first Akunna’s family have many expectations to America and thinks that people living in the country gets a big car, house and a gun. Therefore, the country is from...
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...During the 19th century, many Americans started to become irritated and annoyed of typical American stories cliché “all well ends well”. Many Americans at this time struggled with poverty and depression. Americans immigrants at this time were often taken advantage of and never achieved “the American dream”. Citizens became upset with these stories because it did not match up with their stories. All of these stories had happy ending where their stories did not. This is called realism where citizens wanted the truth in stories and not lies. Many writers use realism to speak for the American citizens. Jack London short story To Build a Fire displays that a slight mistake can cost you your life. A man told the protagonist not to travel the Yukon...
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...Dusk over Atlantic Wharf. Summary of Dusk over Atlantic Wharf by Susmita Bhattacharya: The short story is about Anuj and Lata, you follow Lata in the story, whom has just moved from India to Britain. She has difficulty adjusting to her new environment and her husband Anuj. They are newlyweds and just getting to know each other. Lata doesn’t love Anuj, but is learning to do so. Lata had a very different life in India; she has never cooked and cleaned, they had people to do that back in India. She thinks a lot about her life in India and how her life is now, nearly comparing everything to her home in India. Lata and Anuj, go out to the cinema and watch a Bollywood movie, the whole time during the movie, Lata thinks more about the places in the movie, where she used to live, than actually watching the movie. Lata breaks down in tears after the movie. Characterize Lata and her relationship to Anuj: Lata has a high-class background in India, now she is an immigrant with nothing in Britain, she feels alone and doesn’t want to bother anyone, she is afraid of her accent and her clothes from India make her feel like an old lady comparing to what the British girls are wearing. She misses India and is trying to adjust. Lata doesn’t love Anuj, but she will learn to. She is adjusting to his company, but doesn’t try nearly as hard as Anuj dose to hers. It’s a difficult relationship with many differences between them. The ending: Lata breaks down. She feels...
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...Briefly about the author: The short-story ” My Son the Fanatic” is written by the British author Hanif Kureishi. He grew up in England in the 1950s and 1960s, being the son of a Pakistani immigrant and an English woman. He studied philosophy and began writing novels at an early age. Being the son of an immigrant, a majority of his novels unravel the difficulties and challenges a huge amount of immigrants face in their new country, especially the difficulties involved in finding a place to belong. Some of Kureishi’s most famous scripts and novels are among others My Beautiful Laundrette and The Buddha of Suburbia. The story: Parvez, the father of the teenage boy Ali, begins noticing changes in his son’s behavior and at first sees this as a good thing. He believes that his son is finally growing out of his teenage attitude and taking more responsibility. However, when Ali begins throwing out valuable belongings and his friends starts avoiding him; Parvez gets seriously worried, and feels as if his son is ungrateful and that he himself has done something wrong as a father. Finally he opens up to his colleagues who instantly believe that Ali has a drug problem and that he is selling his things to afford drugs, which later is revealed to be incorrect, seeing that he is giving his belongings away to charity. Parvez begins watching every movement Ali makes, but cannot find that anything is physically wrong with his son. He shortly after finds out that Ali has become interested...
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...My Son the Fanatic My Son the Fanatic is a short story written by Hanif Kureishi. It was originally published in The New Yorker in 1994. The story is about a Pakistani father-son relationship. It deals with Islamic fundamentalism in second-generation immigrants. Parvez, the father, is a Pakistani immigrant living in England. He is working as a taxi driver and has embraced the western way of living. He drinks with his colleagues, he eats pork for breakfast and as part of his regular clientele he drives around prostitutes. Throughout the short story you get the impression that Parvez no longer can identify himself with his Islamic upbringing. His son, Ali, seems to also embrace the lifestyle of his British peers. Parvez refers to Ali as a gifted cricket and soccer player. He also has a talent for swimming and a bright future in accounting. However all is not as it seems; Parvez is growing more and more concerned with his sons obvious change in behavior. The taxi driver speaks with his colleagues and to Bettina, a prostitute that has become his friend, about his sons changing behavior. As the story progresses it becomes clear that all of Parvez’s “dreams of doing well in England” dissipate when Ali confess that he is disgusted with his father’s neglect of the Muslim culture and religion. Increasingly disturbed by his sons religious fundamentalism and contempt for the western world he seeks to confront him. The story concludes with this confrontation. My Son the Fanatic is set...
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...Shaun Tan’s “Tales from Outer Suburbia” was published to the market in the year 2008. The book contains stories and poems that deal with the lives of immigrants, love and human experiences. The author has used different symbols and allegory to represent the different aspects of life. The short story “Eric” is an allegorical story and the author has used playful and lively images to help the reader understand the story. The images are used to symbolize the text and assists the story to come to life. The “other one” is an important symbol which plays a major role in the text as it unfolds the story and tells us about the immigration experience. The short story “Eric” consists of numerous images that explain the text and act as symbols. The...
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...In an interview with Peter Segal, Junot Diaz says that his books are a shorthand for matters people need to talk about. This is noted within his book Drown. This story by Junot Diaz is a collection of short stories that deal with multiple different themes that play out through the interaction of all the different characters. It takes place in areas of the Dominican Republic, and, through the characters migration, the United States of America. In one of the short stories, “Fiesta 1980,” the narrator Yunior, his brother Rafa, and his mother, have already migrated to the United States of America from Santo Domingo for about three years to reunite with their father. Their father, Ramon, had already been in the USA, working to eventually bring...
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...Brackley and the Bed READING Reading literature 1 All five short story features are represented in the short story “Brackley and the Bed” to a larger or smaller extent: Short time span: About two-thirds of the short story takes place during one single day in Brackley’s life. The remainder covers some subsequent weeks. Few characters: There are only two characters in the short story: Brackley and Teena. One central incident: The central incident is Teena’s arrival in London. Conflict: The intrusion of Teena into Brackley’s seemingly uncomplicated life in London. Turning point/surprise: The main turning point is at the end when Teena reveals that her aunt is coming over to stay with them. 2 2a The short story is set in post-war London before 1962. There is a reference to the Colonial Office in London which handled matters related to the British colonies. Trinidad and Tobago was a British colony until 1962. 2b Brackley is the protagonist of the short story. He is a young Tobagonian who has come to London in search of work. Being a Caribbean he realizes that it is difficult to find decent work and accommodation in a white society such as London. He seems to have resigned to his fate, which has often been so typical of many immigrants from the colonies. When encountering such challenges, it is easy to become passive, lazy and apathetic. He also understands that the English do not care and that he has to rely on himself. In this environment he also tries to adapt...
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...Everybody no matter where they come from has hopes and dreams of becoming extraordinary, but how much are we willing to fight for our dreams? And are we doing it for ourselves or are we just doing it for others’ approval? This is a short story called ‘’Two Kinds’’ (1997) by writer Amy Tan dealing with a mother and daughter who have two different ideas of what succes is. The short story is about a young Chinese immigrant girl called Jing-Mei who lives with her mother and father in the United States of America. The mother set voyage for America in the 1950’s after she had lost her family, her home and her first husband and children in China. She has hopes and dreams for herself and her daughter that the American dream surely will happen to them at some point. She wants her daughter to be a child prodigy while the daughter is trying to live up to her mother’s expectations. As I wrote earlier, the story takes place in the United States of America. Unlike her mother, Jing-Mei has lived her whole life in the U.S.A. Her mother did not have the same opportunities as Jing-Mei back in China, so she is frustrated that her daughter is not even trying to seize any of the many opportunities that she has got in her life, and that she is ignoring the fact that she can become anything, even a genius. She is sacrificing a lot for her daughter by cleaning for Mr. Wong and in return he will teach her daughter to play the piano. The only piano teacher she can afford is Mr. Chong who is deaf and...
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...statue in America. This Descriptive text describes how the statue has greeted immigrants as they arrive into New York Harbor for over 100 years, and then explains the purpose of the statue now. Rationale: The New York State Social Studies Framework specifically mentions how the Statue of Liberty greeted immigrants arriving in New York City as they entered New York Harbor, and because of this, it is imperative that my student understands the importance and significance of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island....
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...follows the story of Jurgis Rudkus and his new family as they move to America in search of...
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...Immigrants in our own land It is very difficult to adjust and live by a new set of rules from one day to another. That second where an immigrant cross’ a border to an unknown country, is the second that changes everything. But why is it so difficult to grow accustomed to a totally new life? The poem ”Immigrants in our own land,” is a text about the immigration that took place at Ellis Island near Manhatten, where a lot of immigrants passed between 1892 and 1954. The poem is a so-called chopped-up prose. The chopped-up prose does often describe a course of events, which can also be seen in this particular poem. The narrator is an immigrant. It is obvious because he uses expressions such as “myself,” “we,” and so on. It is a subjective narrator, which makes the poem very authentic. It can be seen that the main character of the poem is a guy due to the fact that he uses boxer shorts, which a girl does not normally use: “my T-shirts, boxer shorts, socks and pants are drying.” (p. 187, l. 25). He expresses how the immigrants felt when they came to America, through his point of view. He describes different events which has had an effect throughout his life. If the story was told from an American’s point of view, it would be much more different and the poem would probably have a completely different focus. A very central element in the text is the way he tells about the life in jail. He explains and expresses how it is to live behind bars and how an average day goes by...
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... This is a short story by Jan Needle. We follow the teenager Tony Robertson, who really wants to be friends with immigrants and thinks very positive of the multi-cultural society. It is pretty ironic that although his amiable behavior, two Paki-stanis eventually end up beating him up. Tony is liberal, he thinks that everyone should have the same chances, and he doesn’t prejudice anyone. “He’d brought Tony up to be liberal, to reckon on everybody being equal, having the same rights an so on.” (p. 42, top) “You could get robbed and kicked up by a white gang just as easy as a black” (p. 43 top) Tony is truly clearly thinking same about all ethnics group in the multicultural society. He is definitely setting a better example than some of the other boys at his school by being extremely tolerant. Tony has a very different attitude on immigrants than his father. This is showed in several of arguments and rows. “Every time they talked about something happening in the paper, even a strike by some poor starving hospital workers or something, he took the wrong side. It made Tony see red, get absolutely fuming” (p. 42, l. 11). “But what had gone wrong with Dad? …Defended them against all-comers. Then it had changed” (p. 42, bottom) These two quotes clearly state how upset Tony is with the way his father has changed to the other side. When Tony is questioning himself, “but what had gone wrong with Dad?”, it is very obvious that in Tony’s head the immigrants should be treated...
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...Drown Drown, the compilation of ten short stories written by Junot Diaz narrates the experience of Hispanic Latino teenagers with different themes and from one part of life to another. He pictured the world of Drown as a rough, violent, poor and seemingly hopeless experiences. The compilation of stories narrated by Yunior tells his stories from different points of view of life. The events and experiences mentioned in this novel by Diaz are what most Hispanic teenagers go through. As the novel begins with “The fact that I am writing you in English already falsifies what I wanted to tell you.” (Drown). This epigraph in beginning by Gustavo Perez Firmat gives a clue of focusing Hispanic community. After reading the whole book my question is this book merely story telling or autobiographical? This question came to my mind by relating Diaz’s interview in Colbert’s show. Stephen Colbert, the host of show when asked him how he came to America, Diaz answered that his father first came to New York, settled here and called them over. Diaz also mentioned that he saw his dad the first time as he was away from family and once they landed to America his father took them to New Jersey which was weird according to Diaz. Same scenario was somewhat presented in beginning of Drown but through Yunior- the narrator. Diaz used the specific words and some symbols which the reader can almost feel the story as if it is real. Diaz, who was born in Santo Domingo in Dominican Republic and migrated...
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