The Namesake: Indian-American Immigrants

Every year, hundreds of thousands of immigrants, legal and illegal, from around the world, come into the United States. These immigrants have many different motivations; some enter the United States of America hoping to get a chance to a better life, others are refugees, escaping persecution and civil wars in their home country. Many of these people believe the United States have great opportunities including more freedom, protection, and benefits. Up on arriving to U.S, immigrants face several challenges and this paper will examine challenges and hardship immigrants go through when they moved to new country. This paper will also compare and contrast the film called The Namesake which is an Indian-American film and an interview conducted with an immigrant from Ethiopia. The movie concerns itself largely with being Indian and American at the same time. It tells the story of a young couple Ashima and her proposed husband Ashoke. They have an arranged marriage in Calcutta and move to New York, where they discover each other and their new country, and have two children. Along comes a son, Gogol and a daughter, Sonia. Their son was fine with his, however as an adolescent the boy comes to hate it. Gogol got his name, which is not Indian or American but inspired by his father’s favorite …show more content…
After a while, Gogol feels as if he is a part of her family, which sounds really nice until he realizes this means he is totally ignoring his own family in order to adopt his girlfriend’s lifestyle. The culture gap is demonstrated when Gogol brings Maxine home to meet his parents, and warns her “No kissing. No touching.” He has never even seen his own parents touch. But Maxine impulsively kisses his parents on their cheeks and it was very awkward. It was okay in Maxine culture to kiss people on their cheeks, but Gogol’s parent culture was