My Journal 3 assignment was to read two short stories. These two stories are very different, but both seem to take you through the lives of people. Although these two stories a different, they both are about different cultures. One story is written in third person, while the other is a narrative.
The short story This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona written by Sherman Alexie takes place on a Indiana reservation in Spokane, Washington. The two main characters are Thomas Build-the-Fire who saw visions through dreams and Victor. The story begins immediately with two sad events occurring to Victor; he lost his job and found out his father died of a heart attack in Phoenix. The story revels that although Victor and his dad …show more content…
Over time Victor began to disbelieve Thomas’s visions and one night while Thomas was drunk he beats up Thomas, which Norma Many Horses stops the fight.
This story tells about the things that no one wants to talk about, such as drunkenness, abuse, outcast and poverty, as well as wanting to escape the reservation.
Two Ways to Belong in America is a short story about two sisters coming to America for education in the 1960s. Mira is the older sister and Bharati Mukherjee is the younger sister as well as the narrator. Mukherjee shares the struggles of the two sister’s lifestyles, choices and views on citizenship (567). Both sisters grew up in India and originally came to the US for their education with plans to return home and marry the men their father had selected. The sisters love each other and have the same religious beliefs, however they are very different.
As the story goes on Mira married a fellow Indian student, while Mukherjee married a man from Canada (567). Mira remained true to her culture while Mukherjee adapted to the culture of the United States