Assignment 3 Comparison Although Richard Rodriguez and Amy Tan both had a distinct perception of the importance of their intimate family language, they both had the same similarities of facing the struggles they perceived society required of them which was learning the English language. Both Tan and Rodriguez faced these struggles at different points of their lives and had to manage whether they would let the English language conflict with their family’s language. They are fighting to identify whom they want to be in society and whether they want to maintain their roots and language of their culture or adapt to where they now reside. Aside from their differences the similarities they both shared with each other was significant due to them being in the same position and deciding whether they wanted to…
Language is more than a method of purely transferring interpretation; it can also transfer emotion. Whereas voice involves cadence, body assertion, and even facial articulation, the words written on a page are compelled to demonstrate more than just what is being told through a series of other strategies and manners usually implanted in the writer’s voice. Both the memoirs I Have Lived a Thousand Years by Livia Bitton-Jackson, and Night by Elie Wiesel, transfer the nature of oppression through certain methods of voice, particularly syntax and tone.…
Dr. Andrea Kitta is associate professor of English in the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences. She received her PhD in 2009 from the Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Newfoundland. That same year she joined the ECU faculty with responsibility for teaching and scholarship in Multicultural and Transnational Literature. Her chair’s nominating letter concluded with the statement: “Dr. Kitta is a terrific and challenging teacher and an internationally recognized scholar. She challenges students to interrogate critically the world and human experience as mediated by folklore and belief, and she challenges them to write well and to write as folklorists.…
During the early nineteenth century, generations of immigrant women undergo assimilation to unite themselves in American customs. The ideology that they will be accepted into a society that does not suppress their gender identity has driven them to this process but they blindly forget their origin culture. America’s “opportunities” is proved an illusion when the “American Dream” influences many foreigners to reevaluate their lives and social standings upon arrival. The illusion of upward mobility and freedom are highly enforced as immigrants enter American gates. One author who portrays the temptation of this “New World” America for Jewish women is Anzia Yezierska’s “Bread Givers”.…
Literary critic Gurleen Grewal notes that Song of Solomon reverberates alongside novels that have documented and refashioned cultural and ethical identities in America since the 1970s: Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, and Peter Najerian’s Voyages. In such novels, “characters’ self-hatred and angry confusion are related to a historic dispossession and to a psyche cut off from ancestral or communal wellsprings; their narratives chart a moving and powerful repossession of selfhood, articulating personal well-being in terms of the collective” (63).This is one of the distractive novels in which the pastoral is represented both in its pristine and transformed racialized version. It…
When choosing whether or not to include a specific text in the curriculum, an English teacher must consider many things to determine the story’s relevance, such as the content of the story and universal themes. Ishmael Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone is appropriate for the Sterling High School English IV curriculum because of its use of complex ideas and universal themes that make this text a worthy champion for the curriculum. Beah’s extensive and sophisticated figurative language appeal to the reader and forces him to think beyond literal representation and think about the deeper meaning.…
Every student learns different ways to analyze and write literature based off what their teachers have imposed on them. In the passage, “From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle” by Min-Zhan Lu the author informs the reader about her childhood growing up in China during the revolution. She expresses the multitude of problems that come up while she tries to balance learning English at home and Chinese in the classroom. Growing up with these two different lives, the author dignifies that learning two different methods of interpreting literature left her with conflicting perspectives. At school it was frowned upon to speak English, but at home her parents had the opposite attitude and prioritized the learning of English.…
In the story, “Cooking Lessons” by Rosario Castellanos, a Mexican poet and author, known for her articulate writings about gender oppression which influenced feminist theories, uses food images to reflect gender roles. Castellanos also uses an interior monologue to represent the fact that women have no voice and are expected to just do and know certain things as opposed to men, for example, cooking. Eloquently written, Castellanos illustrates the inner thoughts of an educated and independent woman who has to forget all she knows and enter a unknowing world where she must depend on a man and take on the traditional role of a woman; a housewife. The nameless narrator stands starring hopelessly into a kitchen not knowing what to do or where…
The Bone Sparrow – Analytical Piece Characters and Setting: The Bone Sparrow is a heart touching story, set in an Australian Immigration Detention Centre. A young refugee, Subhi, tells the story from his perspective but some chapters of the book, are told from third person. Subhi lives with his older sister, Queeny, and his mother who he refers to as ‘maa’. Subhi was born within the camp, and therefore has never experienced the ‘real’ world, beyond the fence.…
Many of the Latin American stories consist of depicting death, loss, oppression, and in some odd ways the obstacles in love. Everything unfolds in a surreal way while others convey magical realism into their plots; making each spun tale more alluring and breath taking. In the nineteenth century Latin America was transitioning from a world where society was its people spoke out and rebelled against those of higher authority with the goal of gaining freedom. However, for the most part there was a lot of terrorizing of the town folk, torture and death as far as the eye could see.…
Language is an integral part of every distinctive culture. It represents a way of life and a way of communication among those that share similar traditions, values, and heritage. The Irish people have consistently been faced with foreign cultures encroaching on their land and threatening not only their culture but also the Gaelic language itself. In Brian Friel’s Translations, the language barrier between the Irish and the English people is explored. The characters are faced with the difficult decision to either give in to the new, foreign language or remain true to the language of the land and resist these changes.…
Language is an immensely powerful aspect of each individual’s identity and it largely determines and influences how we think and what we think about. As German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world”. Though I believe there are definitely other factors that limit or expand one’s “world”, I agree that language strongly influences one’s perspective of the world and overall identity. In her memoir, Lost in Translation, Eva Hoffman addresses this very idea that one’s identity is deeply interconnected with one’s language and when the flow of language is disrupted, changes in one’s identity also occur. Throughout her memoir, Hoffman uses her own experiences to bring across the message that…
As the essay progresses, Tan learns to accept her mother’s broken english and uses it as inspiration for her writings.…
Tan not only uses language as a literary device but also in a literal sense. After stating the language barrier that occurs in a family that doesn’t use English as a primary language, she expresses her frustration on how it limited her possibilities in life. She says, “Sociologists and linguists probably will tell you that a person’s developing language skills are more influenced by peers. But I do think that the language spoken in the family, especially in immigrant families which are more insular, plays a larger role in shaping the language of the…
How is the theme, Cultural Identity reflected in the poems“Presents From My Aunts In Pakistan” by Moniza Alvi and “Search For My Tongue” by Sujatta Bahtt? The poems “Presents From My Aunts In Pakistan” and “Search For My Tongue” are both poems that convey the theme of Cultural Identity by personal experiences. “Presents From My Aunts in Pakistan” focuses on the idea of confusion and loneliness of belonging to two different cultures, while “Search For My Tongue” gives the reader an idea of the fear of losing him/her mother tongue when developing a new language. However, both these poems portrays the image of the difficulties of belonging to two different cultures.…