...Kazakhstan pertained to the Soviet Union at the moment of my conception. My father was a Cuban exchange student finishing Geology, and my mother, a Russian-Greek descendant graduated from metallurgical engineering. Around eighteen months old, I visited Cuba to meet my parental family. After returning to Kazakhstan and living there for almost four years, I went back to Cuba and never saw my country of origin again; however, for the first time, we lived all together as a real family. After Soviet Union’s collapsing and the end of its assistance program, living in Cuba became unbearable. It was not only due to the economic constraints, but also the country’s social deterioration. Thus, we decided to emigrate again, but this time to Greece. To avoid suspicion, my father departed first in 1992, the following year I did; however, my mother was intercepted in her attempt to escape by the Cuban authorities. It was not until 1995 that she was able to finally leave Cuba. The moment of my departure was the last time I saw my mother in many years and this incident destroyed my parents’ marriage. Before immigrating to Greece, I flew to Russia in order to obtain Greek’s tourist visa. I spent one week in Moscow with my uncle and when my documents were available, I could finally fly and reunite with my father. After living in Greece for one year and not obtaining legal residency status, my father decided to try fortune in another country: the US. Leaving Greece was easy, but when we reached...
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...Week 3 Assignment 1.1 \\Eng 115 The author of the essay “Facing Poverty with a Rich Girl’s Habits” is Suki Kim. In the essay, Kim wants to explain her struggles. The essay discusses the struggles she had as a child being in the 7th grade and moving from South Korea to Queens, NY. She went from being rich to being poor basically overnight. Her world as she knew it was changed in an instant. Her father went from being a billionaire to having nothing. Her main purpose is to describe what she faced while trying to adapt to different beliefs and cultures. Kim talks about her life going to a new school where everyone spoke English. She noticed that even Korean American kids avoided her. She had not realized there was much diversity within an immigrant group. There was definitely a separation between the groups. Being a teenager, she was “already rooted in Korean ways and language”. Her soul was not quite American although on paper that is what she was considered. She would rather use her Hello Kitty backpack instead of one that had pictures of the Menudo boys who were popular in the 80’s. She was upset that her parents would not allow her to pierce her ears. Most girls her age had their pierced. It sounds like she struggled to fit in and still keep her Korean culture Her lifestyle changed tremendously. She went from having a chauffer to taking public transportation. She had to get used to being called an Asian when she had only heard that term in school in...
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...Third World was at the forefront of revolutionary cinema as filmmakers in those countries treated cinema as a tool of social change and a weapon of political liberation. This use of film as a social and political force emerged first in Latin America and spread to Africa and China, while also emerging in the First World countries including the U.S.S.R. and United States. The counterculture and the New Left were examples of an international politics of youth that focused on opposition to American involvement in Vietnam, critique of post-World War II capitalist society, and social-protest movements focused on equality of diverse groups. Eventually, radical leftism declined in the mid-1970s, but engaged filmmaking remained central to the micropolitics of the era. A June 1979 alternative-cinema conference in New York assembled over 400 political activists working in film and video in the United States. In some countries, government liberalization led to funding for militant film. The new Labour government in Britain assisted Liberation Film and Cinema Action, while the regional Maisons de la Culture allotted money for local media groups in France. Some parallel distribution and exhibition circuits proved successful in promoting films about nuclear power, day care, ethnic rights, and similar issues. In the United States and Great Britain, feminist filmmaking pioneered the turn to issue-centered, grassroots problems. By 1977, 250 women’s films had been produced in the United States...
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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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...Bibliographic Essay on African American History Introduction In the essay “On the Evolution of Scholarship in Afro- American History” the eminent historian John Hope Franklin declared “Every generation has the opportunity to write its own history, and indeed it is obliged to do so.”1 The social and political revolutions of 1960s have made fulfilling such a responsibility less daunting than ever. Invaluable references, including Darlene Clark Hine, ed. Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Evelyn Brooks Higgingbotham, ed., Harvard Guide to African American History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); Arvarh E. Strickland and Robert E. Weems, Jr., eds., The African American Experience: An Historiographical and Bibliographical Guide (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001); and Randall M. Miller and John David Smith, eds., Dictionary of Afro- American Slavery (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1988), provide informative narratives along with expansive bibliographies. General texts covering major historical events with attention to chronology include John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2000), considered a classic; along with Joe William Trotter, Jr., The African American 1  Experience (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001); and, Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold, The...
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...Research Project-Spring 2014 Assignment (adapted from Ways of Reading, AW 1) One way to work on Patricia Nelson Limerick’s essay, “Haunted America”, is to take the challenge and write history—to write the kind of history, that is, that takes into account the problems she defines, the problems of myth, point of view, fixed ideas, simple narrative selective storytelling, misery. You are not a professional historian, you are probably not using this text in a history course, and you don’t have the time to produce a carefully researched history, one that covers all the bases, but you can think of this as an exercise in history writing, a mini-history, a place to start. Consider the following as a place to start: Go to your college library or, perhaps, the local historical society, and find two or three first-person accounts of a single event, ideally accounts from different perspectives. Or, if these are not available, look to the work of historians, but historians taking different positions on a single event. (This does not have to be a history of the American West.) Even if you work with published historians, try to include original documents and accounts in your essay. The more varied the accounts, the better. Then, working with these texts as your primary sources, write a history, one that you can offer as a response to “Haunted America.” Suggestions for writing: Stage the work out into several drafts, writing first from one position or point of view and then...
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...University of Tennessee, Knoxville Trace: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Masters Theses Graduate School 5-2010 Bharati 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:...
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... 2011 13 Reading, Inquiry, and Research ■ PART 2 | Using What You Have Learned to Share Information 57 TANYA BARRIENTOS Se Habla Español MEMOIR he man on the other end of the phone line is 1 Tanya Maria telling me the classes I’ve called about are firstBarrientos has rate: native speakers in charge, no more than six stuwritten for the dents per group. Philadelphia “Conbersaychunal,” he says, allowing the fat vow- 2 Inquirer for more than els of his accented English to collide with the sawedtwenty years. off consonants. I tell him that will be fi ne, that I’m familiar with 3 Barrientos was born in Guatethe conversational setup, and yes, I’ve studied a bit mala and raised of Spanish in the past. He asks for my name and I in El Paso, Texas. Her first novel, Frontera Street, was supply it, rolling the double r in Barrientos like a pro. published in 2002, and her second, That’s when I hear the silent snag, the momentary Family Resemblance, was pubhesitation I’ve come to expect at this part of the exlished in 2003. Her column “Unchange. Should I go into it again? Should I explain, conventional Wisdom” runs every the way I have to half a dozen others, that I am Guaweek in the Inquirer. This essay originally appeared in the collectemalan by birth but pura gringa by circumstance? tion Border-Line Personalities: A Do I add the humble little laugh I usually attach New Generation of Latinas Dish to the end of my sentence to let him know that of on Sex, Sass & Cultural...
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...Daniela Escudero Eng-101 Prof. David Schleicher Narrative Essay 5/27/2014 Moving to America Transformed My Life In the past I came across many changes but leaving my country was the toughest change in my life. I had to learn how to live away from people I love and how to start a new life in a new country. Immigration is a life changing experience; learning a new language, adapting to the culture and lifestyle changes are all strenuous things that were thrown at me once I became a part of this country. Even though moving away from my family and friends was a difficult decision, it changed my live for a better. It taught me how to deal with change, how to become an independent and responsible person, and how to feel this country my home. I never imagined living in another country. I remember as it was yesterday when my mom said, “Daniela, I know you do not want to leave Colombia but I have to take you with me, you are my youngest child and I will not let you here” I started arguing with her, saying that how she could do that to me when I already had plans to start college and that I was happy in my country but at the end I gave up and decided to come to America. It was February 10th, 2010, when I left Colombia and was forced to leave my friends, my grandmother, my school, my language and culture to move to this big new country to start a new life. As I took my last look at my home, I remembered all the fun times I had with my mom and sister and friends...
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...worked behind the scenes, the local groups and individuals, who set the stage for these legal amendments to be possible? The Civil Rights Movement was one of the most significant events in the modern history of the United States that has formed the basis of many of its core values and laws today. The Civil Rights Movement unofficially ended with the passing of the long awaited “1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act” which legally saw an end to the racial discrimination faced by African Americans. However the historiography of the Civil Rights Movement has “undergone some serious revision” since 1965 as it ‘gained popular appeal.’ Initially the Civil Rights Movement was “romanticized” and considered to be a “heroic narrative of moral purpose and personal courage by which great men and women inspired ordinary people to rise up and struggle for their rights” such as the famed Martin Luther King, who was painted as the ‘driving force behind the movement’ ,President Lyndon Johnson and Kennedy and organisations such as ‘The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People’ (NAACP) This idea of the federal government, prominent leaders and organisations playing the defining role in the passing of these bills soon became less plausible in the 1970’s and 1980’s as the “second generation of scholars suggested that the focal point for investigation should shift to local communities” and the ordinary people, commonly known as “grass roots activists” who...
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...James Baldwin’s story is about two brothers who came to understand each other, the two sides of the African American experience, as well as their relationship at various points in their lives. Sonny’s Blues opens as the narrator learns from the local newspaper that his younger brother, Sonny, has been arrested for dealing drugs, heroin to be specific, which is a addictive drug that caused millions of deaths in America only. The narrator and his brother Sonny’s childhood were filled with rage and darkness.(Lovalerie,Scott,2000). The narrator assimilated into the white society deeply but is still saddened by the racism and placed restrictions to be found upon his opportunity. Sonny, the main character channels his suffering into music, Jazz music that is, which was and still is very popular especially in the African American community. The story also has biblical implications, which relate to the Holy Bible, Baldwin’s style of writing is a poetic style, not meaning that the story rhymes, but poetic in a way that the writing is very lyrical and beautiful, such as this passage “As the singing filled the air the watching, listening faces underwent a change, the eyes focusing on within; the music seemed to soothe a poison out of them; and time seemed, nearly, to fall away from the sullen, belligerent, battered faces, as though they were fleeing back to their first condition, while dreaming of their last.” The paragraph seems to be very musical as the way he puts his sentences together...
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...The architectural critic Montgomery Schulyer wrote about the new St. Thomas as ‘one of the chief architectural ornaments of New York’. The ornament and detail within the church quickly made it into a recognizable monument in Manhattan. America springs to action during the spring of 1917 with resolute and celebratory emotion, while anticipating victory. The American, British, and French flags ran sequentially along the wide bustling street of Frederick Childe Hassam’s painted Allies Day, May, 1917. The painting is of an impressionistic style, which confronts the viewer with insistent images of identity and nationalism. Fifth Avenue thus became known as the Avenue of the Allies. The part of Fifth Avenue that was selected for the painting is...
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...mohsinhamid.com home about novels essays stories interviews connect The Reluctant Fundamentalist Published in 2007 in these languages. Became an international bestseller with over a million copies in print. Was adapted for the cinema. Awards Won the Ambassador Book Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Asian American Literary Award, Premio Speciale Dal Testo Allo Schermo, and South Bank Show Award for Literature. Was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Commonwealth Writers Prize, Arts Council England Decibel Award, Australia-Asia Literary Award, and Index on Censorship T R Fyvel Award. Was named a Book of the Decade by the Guardian and a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times. Reviews 'An artist of fantastic cunning... demonstrates what certain trumped-up laureates of post-modernity seem incapable of grasping: that it is possible to simultaneously address the byzantine monstrosity of contemporary existence and care about the destiny of one's characters... [a] resounding success... not unworthy of Nabokov.' -- The Village Voice (full review) 'Taut and accomplished... Changez's story, which seems to gush from him like blood from a wound, traces the self's shifting sense of itself against the rumblings of a rudely shaken world... Dostoyevskian.' -- San Francisco Chronicle (full review) 'Changez's voice is extraordinary. Cultivated, restrained, yet also barbed and...
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...Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton may be characterised as a 'social problem' novel. Basch (1974: 263) states, 'Mrs Gaskell's impure women came from ... the work and exploitation which she knew, relatively speaking, better than other novelists.' Gaskell was the wife of a Unitarian clergyman in Manchester. She devoted her time to setting up homes for fallen women, and after Mary Barton women became her central characters, her novels primarily seen through women's eyes. Thomas Hardy, since his career began, has been notably associated with his portrayal of female characters. Erving Howe even writes about 'Hardy's gift for creeping intuitively into the emotional life of women.' (Boumelha 1982: 3) From this point of view, I intend this essay to establish a comparison between Gaskell's 'fallen woman' in Mary Barton and the way in which Thomas Hardy frames his central female character in Tess of the D'Urbervilles. !Note the same structure for the next paragraph: a broad display of reference and knowledge, with a strong final sentence. In the context of the nineteenth century, there emerged an increasingly ideological 'rethinking' of sexuality, particularly of the female. Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 and The Descent of Man later in 1871 argued that men and women were somehow mentally different. Darwinian sociology led to sexual stereotypes such as Clement Scott's 'men are born "animals" and women "angels" so it is in effect only natural for men to indulge their sexual appetites...
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...NORTH AMERICAN FICTION BRIEF INTRODUCTION: Before starting our study of American Fiction we must understand what American Literature is in itself and which pieces of writing we can include within this label. It is believed that when a piece is written in North America, more precisely in the USA, it would automatically be given this epithet. But it should be taken into account that this idea is quite broad and doesn’t reflect the real essence of the term. However, there is also another definition that gathers this essence: American Literature is the one that represents the Americanism, the singularity of the USA philosophy and culture. This way, instead of focusing on who the author is, it is focused on the content of the writing. In that which concerns Fiction, the following documents are the ones considered as narrative: Speeches Letters Short Stories Essays Political Documents Sermons Novels Diaries 1 FIRST LITERARY EXPRESSIONS The first documents in which the idea of Americanism is very present are the Sermons. They respond to the strict Protestantism settled in the New Continent after the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers and Puritans in the Mayflower (1620) and the Arabella (1630). They established a theocratic community whose main and only point of reference was the Bible. That is why the idea of the ‘city upon a hill’ is still very present in American mentality. As we all know...
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