Summary Of Bapsi Sidhwa's An American Brat

Great Essays
The prime objective of this critique is to highlight the various issues related to cultural divergence that Bapsi Sidhwa has dealt with in her fourth novel ‘An American Brat’. An American Brat contrasts the status of women in the Third World and First World countries through a female character Feroza who migrates from Pakistan to America where she finds herself tempted for an inter-community marriage. An assortment of elements such as diaspora, self assertion, female characterization, migration experience and inter cultural marriage are touched upon. How an individual from the Third world suffers, adjusts and lives in the First World is brought to limelight. The paper also shows the impact of dominating American culture on the values and belief system of people from the Indian Subcontinent. The problem of cultural shock is exposed along with the possible conclusion. The paper evaluates the story of a girl who changes herself from a dependent and shy girl to an independent, self-determining and self confident woman. The conclusion hints at the feminist self affirmation.
Keywords: Diaspora, First & Third World, Cultural Difference, Migration, Feminist
Introduction
Bapsi
…show more content…
Initially she gets bamboozled by the American life style. But she overcomes her dilemma and drenches herself in colorful lifestyle of the First World. She shows her impatience at the inspection of the custom officer on reaching America. Each and every item of her luggage is inspected and a lot of rude questions are asked to her. She feels frustrated at this callous behavior. Here the novelist describes the first experience of an immigrant. Later Manek reprimands her for the way she behaved with the custom officer. Feroza gets enchanted by the glorious and glamorous city New York. The incredible city lights, shopping malls, etc. excite

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    After seeing Mrs. Sen’ s story, a question comes up to my mind: What role does cultural differences play between the life of Mrs. Sen’ s life and the life of Eliot’ s mother? This story is not a single manifestation of Mrs. Sen’ s life as an immigrant woman who is isolated from her own culture. Instead, Lahiri uses Mrs. Sen takes care of Eliot as a clue to show another typical life, which is the life of Eliot’ s mother, a American single mother. Eliot’ s mother shows typical American loneliness and apathy. On the other hand, Mrs. Sen is a representative of Indian culture in the American environment.…

    • 882 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Fitting in is not the easiest thing to do. I went to a predominantly African American middle school in a predominantly African American community. I assumed all schools curriculum were the same but I was wrong. My mom moved us to a community across town that had more Caucasians than African Americans and I had to then transfer schools. At my former school I was a top notch student academically and was sure to carry that reputation with me.…

    • 1512 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Bharati moved to America to study creative writing for two years. After her two years in America, she was to move back to India and marry the man her father picked out. Things did not happen the way she had originally planned. In America, you have the freedom to marry whomever you desire, unlike in India. While doing her schooling, she met a fellow student, an American of Canadian parentage, and they got married.…

    • 945 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Through the essays, “Us and Them”, “Matrimony with a Proper Stranger”, “An Indian Father’s Plea”, and “Dave Barry Does Japan”, the authors prove that a person’s culture informs the way he or she views others and the world through traditions, marriage, education, and communication. The way a person views the world can have a lot to do with their culture, and cultural background. Tradition for example, can have a major impact on the way someone views the world around them. In the essay “Us and Them”, David Sedaris goes into detail about how the concept of going trick-or-treating “...was one of the things you were suppose to learn simply by being alive…” (75).…

    • 998 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Their life is a mixture of two lifestyles and it is difficult for them to relate with either one of the cultures fully. Furthermore, the people in either one of the cultures don’t want to accept them either. First generation immigrants find themselves with two contrasting ideology’s pulling at them and their outlook on the world is mix of both. Henry’s and Keiko’s life is representation of this universal theme that affects the whole world. Everywhere first generation immigrants wrestle with their own self’s to figure out where there place in life lays in between the blend of cultures and traditions.…

    • 1148 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When she arrived to America, she could not believe her eyes! Everything around her was amazing. Something she has never seen before! The land of “ freedom”. She felt nervous and weird.…

    • 521 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Immigrant Seamstress

    • 214 Words
    • 1 Pages

    In the text, “The Life Story of a Polish Sweatshop Girl” the author’s main goal is to inform the reader about how the life of an immigrant seamstress was, its difficulties, and its positives. The information in the text is presented in a cause and effect structure to explain the difficulties of living foreign country and why they happened, but uses a step by step structure to tell of the ordinary routine of a seamstress in the 1900’s. In the text, the author’s purpose is to inform the reader about the life of an immigrant and seamstress, the central idea is that life as an immigrant wasn't always easy, but it was enjoyable. The two both tell of the life of an immigrant seamstress, but the central idea looks at the big picture to where as…

    • 214 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the personal essay “Two Ways to Belong in America” by Bharati Mukherjee demonstrates the idea of Bharati interfering with her culture by doing things the complete opposite of how her family would normally handle circumstances. On the other hand Bharati’s sister, Mira is the complete opposite with how she handles…

    • 736 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    During the cold war tensions where high between governments with opposing theories or ideas. Communism was spreading into Asia and the USA did not want that to happen. Vietnam was one of the most controversial wars that America fought. There were protests and rallies against the Vietnam War put on by United States citizens themselves. Some people believed that we should be interfering with other countries’ governments and others did not.…

    • 1063 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    After two years of attending college, Mira married an Indian man and got a green card of hassle-free residence and employment. On the other hand, Bharati married a fellow student that was American. This shows that even though both sisters started the same, they each developed their own culture views. Bharati embraced the American culture which is free like said “For the lack of structure in my life, the erasure of Indianness, the absence of unvarying daily core” (Mukherjee, 71). As Bharati said, America and India have different cultures.…

    • 589 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Merriam-Webster defines culture as the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group. Culture can sometimes informs the way someone views other people and the world by thinking about cultural stereotypes. In the essay “Two Ways to Belong in America” by Bharati Mukherjee, it discusses the struggles and stereotypes of Indians living in America. Mukherjee wrote, “…I was opting for fluidity, self-invention, blue jeans, and T-shirts, and renouncing 3,000 years (at least) of caste-observant, “pure culture” marriage in the Mukherjee family” (Mukherjee 89).…

    • 322 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As a child, the world to me was a place with elusive networks of dirt roads. The small, dirty, square shaped, concrete houses provided shade and comfort from the heat that bounced off the streets causing a mirage of wavering images. The streets were filled with honks from countless motorcycles and rickshaws. Hearing similar dialogues and accents as the people argued for cheaper pomegranates from the food stands located at the corner of the streets. This place of dirt networks, flat-roofed houses, and loud, crowded streets was where I grew up.…

    • 690 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    “Squatter” is a creative and simultaneous meditation on the effects of cultural differentiation and the experiences faced by migrants as they try to fit into foreign societies. The story has an overall toilet-related subject wit and Mistry uses the theme to create a story that reflects on the shortcomings of relocation. It further offers a cynical view of the impacts of cultural variances on a person’s psyche and identity. “Squatter” is a narrative that combines two stories that Nariman Hansotia tells to the boys in the Mumbai neighborhood. The first story features a gifted sportsman, Savushka, and the second one is about a eponymous young squatter known as Sarosh.…

    • 1150 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    There are many issues of gender and sexuality in A Passage to India: the novel includes an “alleged sexual assault on a British woman by an Indian man” (Childs 1999: 348), and the intimate, homoerotic, relationship between Fielding and Aziz, plays an important part. As Childs states, the novel analyses issues of control and resistance in terms of gender, race and sex (Childs 1999: 348.). Colonisation has, as mentioned above, been described as an example of the survival of the fittest, where the colonialists, the strong ones, use their power over the inferior, colonized people. The colonized people were perceived as secondary, abject, weak and feminine. Colonisation could be seen as a struggle of the British to become the superior race.…

    • 956 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    America is known to be home to many cultures. America is a place where people can improve their lifestyle, get better education opportunities, and live the American dream to fulfill their wishes. In the short story “Everyday Use” written by Alice Walker and the personal essay “Two Ways to Belong in America” written by Bharati Mukherjee we read about sisters who share similarities and differences. In the pairing of Maggie and Mira we see them both embrace their original cultures and find no reason to adapt to a different but in Bharati and Dee’s case, they both chose to embrace the American culture.…

    • 984 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays