...As the daughter of two hardworking immigrants who left everything behind to start a new life in the United States, my background is not an entirely unique one. My parents entered the country illegally and as a child, I never knew exactly what that meant. I did not know the reason my father always drove at the exact speed limit and never over was because he was petrified of being pulled over or that the reason I had never met my grandparents was because traveling to my parent's home country was impossible. I did not know that if my parents were caught by immigration they could be deported back to El Salvador, separating us by thousands of miles. Growing up in a rough neighborhood in Dallas, there were various families in the same situation as ours, so I had not...
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...Sells.session1.journal As an imigrant I have faced a lot of discrimination, especially at work since I'm the only latina in my department that was not born in the U.S. Because of this, I don't feel as happy and fulfilled as I should. I know I do my job correctly and to the best of my ability. I take personal pride in knowing I go the extra mile for my patient's, however, others take the credit for the good I do and blame me for everything that is wrong. I want to better myself to show them and my kids that I can do whatever I put my mind to. I was fearful that I would come across these same kinds of difficulties going through the admission process and in classes as I have at work. But once I took the innitiative of doing something to enrich...
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...I am a proud daughter of an undocumented immigrant. My father is also widowed. When I was little it was quite difficult to comprehend school or anything at all. As a young girl, I struggled to comprehend my schoolwork especially since my parents’ and I first language was Spanish and not English. I vaguely remember going to my older cousin’s house and asking for help. My parents during my early childhood tried as best as they could to help me find someone who would be able to explain how to do my homework. Despite the limited financial resources my parents and I had we were able to get through the early years of my childhood. In the beginning of 2013 disaster struck. My mother became sick. On April 9, 2013, my mother passed away and she left...
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...I am an immigrant, simple as that. As an immigrant, my life is like any human in this world. But in this case, there is fear and emotional moments that happened to me that I will never forget. Afraid that I may not be who I want to be. Never have I imagine that I would have this kind of situation. Dealing with these events is not that easy. My mom's timing made a big difference for me. She came illegally in the United States and later became pregnant with me. Until she made a butterfly effect and made a whole difference. When she was almost eight months pregnant to me, she decided to go back to Mexico and gave birth to me there instead. At Mexico, she had problems finding jobs and did not have enough money to take care of me. She went back to the United States with me and returned illegally. If she could have stayed at least one month, she would have given me birth in America, and I would have become a U.S. citizen. Finding out that I am not legal, I became worried about my future. Worried that I may not get a job, go to college, and not even get a driver's license. Besides finally getting a DACA, a document that gives young immigrants permission...
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...became a divided country in two, so he could never see his family again until now. Notwithstanding his deep sorrow that was originated in dispersed families, he devoted himself to pastoral duties for his whole life in South Korea. Even though I was raised in poverty, I was blessed every moment through my parents’ praying. Every early in the morning, my mom prayed for six daughters individually setting her right hand on our foreheads. My father prayed for us constantly until this very moment. I cannot express enough by words how helpful this was to overcome my difficulties and affliction in my life. Like my father had touch and difficult times in his life journey as a immigrant to south Korea, I have seen and heard lots of problems of the 1.5 generation...
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...My parents, Bolivian immigrants that moved here to start a new life.To give their 3 children the ability to attain an education and a degree that means something.While living here, my parents worked more than 50 hours a week,my dad working 2 jobs a day, and my mom taking care of us. As growing up my parents always said that there only inheritance they will be leaving us when the pass, is a college education. They highly showed us that hard work in this country is always paid back and rewarded in all sorts of types of ways. Which is something that makes me,me, the amount of work that you put into something is what you're going to get out of it A challenge that really put my parents values they emphasized into effect was in elementary.I wasn't...
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...Growing up as a child to immigrant parents was difficult. Being in a small town where everyone knew everyone was not familiar to me. I did not have any relatives In America. I did not have any cousins to play with. I did not have aunts and uncles in here. When my parents came to the U.S. it was like coming to a new world. When my parents found out they were expecting, they came to America to have and raise me. My parents came to America in 1996. Back then it was not hard to cross the Boarded back and forth. They decided it was a risk they should take in order to give me more opportunists then the ones they ever had. They made sure to visit their families in case it was the last time they would see each other. Three years after I was born,...
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...immigration through personal narratives, and many Hispanic immigrants like sharing their stories to inform others and give themselves a voice. Personal narratives tell us that Hispanic immigration to the United States needs to be reformed promptly. These narratives tell us that immigration will never end despite the current US government’s...
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...a violent provocation. Manipulated public opinion about domestic immigration policy. Introduction - The great May Day marches of 2007 began a new social movement on the issue of immigration. Its outpour forced US citizens to consider the existence of immigrant workers in society. Moral legitimacy The nations perception of immigrant-rights marchers is a crucial factor that helps shape national attitudes towards immigrants and immigration policy. How TV depicted the assault by Alabama police and state troopers with truncheons and tear gas on 600 nonviolent civil right marchers in Selma in 1965. - May Day 2007- two separate marches took place in LA Morning- took place as normal without any incident Afternoon- ended violently. LA police suddenly attacked 7000 peaceful demonstrators. Paralleled an earlier episode of LA police misconduct- Marked a turning point in Chicano Moratorium - 40 years ago the nations perception of the marchers was not crucial Today, the medias portrayal of immigrant rights is key to the public perception and to the ultimate success of this new social movement. - Research on television news representation has underscored its power in the framing of social movements, Latinos and immigrants. The mass media present the news regularly document the use of crude and demeaning Latino stereotypes These depictions reflect the restricted access Latinos have to all kinds of media One decade later, research shows that Latinos...
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...Mukherjee and the American Immigrant: Reimaging the Nation in a Global Context Leah Rang University of Tennessee - Knoxville, lrang@utk.edu Recommended Citation Rang, Leah, "Bharati Mukherjee and the American Immigrant: Reimaging the Nation in a Global Context. " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 2010. http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/655 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Trace: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of Trace: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact trace@utk.edu. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Leah Rang entitled "Bharati Mukherjee and the American Immigrant: Reimaging the Nation in a Global Context." I have examined the final electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, with a major in English. Urmila Seshagiri, Major Professor We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: Lisi Schoenbach, Bill Hardwig Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official student records.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Leah Rang entitled ―Bharati Mukherjee and the American Immigrant: Reimagining the Nation...
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...minorities that took part of it. He does so by including pictures, songs, and firsthand account stories of people that lived in that era. Takaki talks about the great importance these races have in American history and how they, in fact, are part of it. He mentions that most Americans see America as a white country and view people who are not white through the “Master Narrative” filter. He defines the Master Narrative to be the teaching of American history from a white perspective, therefore enforcing the idea that Americans are only white people. Takaki challenges this idea by telling the history of a multicultural America in his book; he does so by telling a history that is inclusive of minorities, such as Mexican Americans. Therefore, teaching a more inclusive history vanishes the social distinction that separates white people and people of color. According to Takaki it is easy to misunderstand why many immigrants are not considered American; it is why he states that the master narrative is at fault. Many Americans see Mexican Americans as “aliens” and very foreign to this country. However, one...
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...was compelling and persuading. The structure of his personal narrative drew my attention in how he would express his emotions in such rhetoric frases. “In the early 1970s, Nixon instructed the Office of Management and Budget to identify the major racial and ethnic groups in the United States. OMB came up with five major ethnic or racial groups.” His claim in his essay is that all the groupings of people only exist in this country but do not really split all races apart how President Nixon labeled them. “But I was reinvented by President Richard Nixon.” Rodriguez stated that President Nixon reinvented him because President Nixon was the one categorizing all races into the races we have today. “For “Hispanic” is a gringo contrivance,[3] a definition of the world according to European patterns of Colonization.” Rodriguez emphasizes that the term “Hispanic” is a term that was...
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...In recent years there has been a growth of research on undocumented immigrants in the United States; however these studies do not captures beyond public policy and economic perspectives. Few studies have focused on the representation of undocumented immigrants on contemporary literature and their personal narratives. Through a qualitative comparative analysis, this research will study Reyna Grande’s The Distance Between Us: A Memoir and her first novel Across a Hundred Mountains. Reyna Grande at the age of nine illegally crossed the border and became an undocumented child immigrant. Leaving her native country during her mid-childhood influenced her identity construction in the U.S. More significantly, as a writer her immigration experience...
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...In the article, Queer Cyborgs and New Mutants: Race, Sexuality, and Prosthetic Sociality in Digital Space, Mimi Nguyen analyzes the dialectic relationship between organic bodies and technologies in society by conducting an intersectional analysis. Specifically, Nguyen utilizes a narrative about Karma, a mutant who was a Vietnamese war refugee with the ability to “seize control of other peoples mind and bodies” (Nguyen 38). Nguyen, also of Vietnamese descent, use this first-personal narrative to not only relate herself to Karma, but to also humanize the subject at hand. Nguyen exhorts that being a cyborg or mutant is considered to be the ‘other’ in society. She claims that al though these mutants were brought together to fight evil mutants, these “New Mutants are nonetheless viewed with fear and suspicion by the non-mutant population” (Nguyen 374). These cyborgs and mutants are characterized as outsiders because their bodies are subjected to specific stereotypes that do not fit in the overwhelmingly “normal” society. Nguyen continues to say, “in these science fictions mutant bodies and cyborg bodies are analogized as minoritarian bodies, subjected and subjugated…” (377). Relating back to class discussion, these bodies are actually constructing the space around them. Since these mutants are so different and are being put in a space where they are considered to be the “other,” a majority believes it is there duty to remove them from that space. Even with their unique powers and...
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...Lower East Side Memories : A Jewish Place in America By HASIA R. DINER The Lower East Side and American Jewish Memory I'm Jewish because love my family matzoh ball soup. I'm Jewish because my fathers mothers uncles grandmothers said "Jewish," all the way back to Vitebsk & Kaminetz-Podolska via Lvov. Jewish because reading Dostoyevsky at 13 I write poems at restaurant tables Lower East Side, perfect delicatessen intellectual. —Allen Ginsberg, "Yiddishe Kopf" The poet Allen Ginsberg, born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, returned in his later years to a narrative style of expression, shifting gears from the anger and fire of his early career. In this poem from 1991 he also touched down again, after a long hiatus spent exploring Buddhism and Eastern philosophy, upon some Jewish themes, as a way of remembering the world of his youth. He described that world in one poem, "Yiddishe Kopf," literally, a Jewish head, but more broadly, a highly distinctive Jewish way of thinking, based on insight, cleverness, and finesse. That world for him stood upon two zones of remembrance. The world of eastern Europe, of Vitebsk, Lvov, and Kamenets-Podolski gave him one anchor for his Jewishness. Thai space of memory gave him a focus for continuity and inherited identity, tied down by the weight of the past, by family in particular. The other, the Lower East Side, nurtured and...
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