Josephine Fontana
Professor Fioravante
English 111
November 6th, 2014

Sometimes moving to a new place can cause some problems, especially if you’re considered “non- american” or “not a part of an american culture”. This can make you feel overwhelmed and uncomfortable especially when you try to learn to grow accustomed to the american way of life. You try to feel normal like everybody else, but it’s hard to when you’re not treated fairly because all in all, we are all the same. Brent Staples in “Black Men And Public Space” and Firoozeh Dumas “The F Word” both discuss the transitioning of where they came from until they moved to a different place.

In “Black Men And Public Space” that first appeared in 1986 in Ms. magazine, Staples explains that even walking down the street, he was given certain looks; worried looks. He explains that he came across a young woman who kept her distance. He states “To her, the youngish black man-a broad six feet two inches with a beard and billowing hair, both hands shoved into the pockets of a bulky military jacket- seemed menacingly close”(Staples 346). The young woman picked up her pace and was soon running. Staples had began to suspect people take him to be as dangerous as a hazard in itself. When he had worked as a journalist in Chicago he was mistaken for a burglar.

Firoozeh Dumas who was born in Abadan, Iran and then moving into the United States, discusses the troubles her and her family had faced with their ‘ethnic names’; she had dealt with the prejudice remarks and discusses the difficulties of the transitioning from her home country to the great american homeland. In this text, her struggles of trying to adjust to the american way of life was a little different. She discusses that she never knew her name would cause such obstacles. She had came to the conclusion that she wanted to add an American name. She