Ana Menendez Summary

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encounter What we meant by culture and culture encounter? When we think of the sense of culture, first thing comes to our mind is humans history and how humans lived their life since thousands of years. Culture means the human achievements and the different ways of living, thinking and interaction of a group of people in various countries. The culture linked with human and consequently the concept of culture encounter is the social relations and interaction between different countries. We have two main type of culture encounter. In culture encounter the exchange of cultures, ideas and Arts can be peacefully or by controversies, wars and colonization. Whether in fictional or real stories the function of culture encounter …show more content…

She born in Los Angeles in 1970 and speak only Spanish. Her parents hoped return to Cuba so they did not teach Ana speak English until she went to school and learned English language. She lived the pain of Cubans exiles living at Miami where it became a city of exiles because of the revolution. Due of migration circumstances Ana became aware of the sense of immigrants because she is one of them. She lived the experience of cultural encounter and linguistic encounter in her real life. The author displays the cultural encounter through a series of short stories about Cubans immigrants including the story being discussed in this topic. In this story also the protagonist Maximo here is aware of cultural encounter because he came from different place, culture and language. He tried to interact with American culture but he faced difficulties because everything around him remembered him to the past. He remembered his life in Cuba with his wife and how he was a professor at the university, but when he comes back to reality and how he loss everything and only sat at a park played domino. Maximo’s words proves to us that he is aware of cultural encounter. Here he compared between the past and the present and how he lost everything. So this cultural encounter had a negative impact on him and he tried to hide his feeling by telling jokes to his friend. He used jokes …show more content…

The park where the four old men gathering every morning to play domino. This game is a classic game played traditionally by Cubans in their home. The park reminded the immigrants in their homes, where it has become a famous place for Cuban exiles and it’s known as little Havana proportion of Havana in Cuba. The location of the park near the Mexico Gulf has become make it a place for memories of the homeland for Cubans. We also observe that the story began by mentioning the banyan tree and the wind in moved the leaves. What is the symbolism of banyan tree here? There are many of ancient literature used the banyan tree as a symbol of immortality and others as the true meaning of life but here it has different significant. The banyan tree, sunrise and sunset, all these things remind Maximo in his sadness and the pain inside him. Christmas holiday has a strong influence on Maximo which return him to his days in Cuba. This special occasion remembered him in the correlation of his family and the meeting with friends where he had lose in Miami. All these things made him feel nostalgic and hankering for home ground and sadness and failure because of losing his life in Cuba. This cultural encounter had a big impact on him because it is in a place that is similar to his residence place in Cuba and if it was in another place its impact will be less from

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