The F Word Firoozeh Dumas Analysis

In the essay “Two Ways to Belong in America,” from 50 essays, Bharati Mukherjee contrasts the different views of the United States from two Indian sisters. The author distinguishes her American lifestyle to her sister’s traditional Indian lifestyle. Both sisters grew up in Calcutta, India, moved to America in search of education and work. Bharati adjusts to the American society very quickly, where her sister Mira clings to her Indian traditions more strongly. Despite both sisters living in America, only Bharati is an American citizen, while her sister Mira is not.

Iranian writer, Firoozeh Dumas, in her narrative essay, “The F Word,”illustrates the challenges of having a different name in America. Dumas’ purpose is to represent the importance of accepting one’s identity and other’s. Having a different name brought her a great challenge to fit in with her peers. Through the story, she learned how to accept her own name and how should others accept people’s differences. She portrays this idea in a humorous way.

“Two Kinds” a short story out of Amy Tan’s book “The Joy Luck Club” is a representation of the pressures immigrant children face from their parents. In the story, we follow a young girl named Jing-Mei as she embarks down the road to becoming a Prodigy. Her mother believed that “you could be anything you wanted to be in America” (Tan). For Jing-Mei that meant her mother believed she could become instantly famous. “Of course, you can be a prodigy, too”, her mother told her (Tan).

This quote from the narrative showed the author 's realization of the difference in the way that she speaks in different environments. Later Amy grasped that she uses the same type of English with her husband, but she comprehended that it was the language of family talk or the language she grew up with. Tan starts to tell her mother 's story about the gangster that wanted her mother family to adopt him. She states, "You should know that my mother 's expressive command of English belies how much she actually understands" (Tan 1). This part of the narrative inserts that her mother knew what she was talking about even though she spoke improper English.

For example Firoozeh, states, “When i went to college, I eventually went back to using my real name. All was well until I graduated and started looking for a job….. After three months of rejections, I added “Julie” to my resume. Call it a coincidence, but the job offers started coming in. Perhaps it’s the same kind of coincidence that keeps African Americans from getting cabs in New York.

After reading the novel Revolutionary Mothers I have gained significant knowledge and a better grasp of the Revolutionary war. Carol Berkin 's purpose in writing this book was a simple one: Presenting a series of lenses of various raced women and how they affected and were effected by the Revolutionary War. She presents how women of every skin color was a major factor during the war and ultimately in aiding the formation of our nation. A major difference between this novel and what I have previously learned is that this novel magnifies contributions women have made for this country. Furthermore the textbooks that I read once in class greatly minimize those contributions and just give a broad overview of them.

This article was meant for everyone one to read but especially to show those not from these states the injustice that was happening within their own country. According the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website, during the 80’s and 90’s, the United States saw a large increase in illegal immigration. Then the U.S. decided to improve its security through acquiring new technology and employing many more officers. The government provided funding to place a new computer system to stop the illegal border crossing.

Julia Alvarez and his three teenage sisters discover the “key” to assimilating into their new country. Their stereotypical understanding of what it means to be an American is defined by one’s appearance. Comparing themselves to the women featured in the Miss America contest, makes the Alvarez girls long for the “American look”. It narrows down to a caucasian, hourglass shaped figure with long seamless straight hair. “Although we wanted to look like we belonged here, the four sisters, our looks didn 't seem to fit in.”

In the article entitled “Finding the Bicultural Balance: Immigrant Latino Mothers Raising ‘American’ Adolescents” by Yolanda Quinones-Mayo and Patricia Dempsey, Quinones- Mayo and Dempsey discuss the barrier between immigrant mothers and their “American” adolescents because the American society teaches the adolescents to become independent from their mothers (2). The article itself presents the social work analysis of the relationship between the mother and child respectively based off the Latino culture, as well as the adaptiveness of the adolescent to American culture. Specifically, Quinones-Mayo and Dempsey argue that the strain in the relationship between immigrant mothers and their “Americanized” children is caused by American idealism.

The role of politics in Marjane Satrapi 's life is a critical one, as seen in her graphic novel Persepolis, which narrates her experiences as a young girl raised by revolutionaries during turbulent times in Iran. Particularly, Satrapi uses juxtaposition between her parents and children to highlight the hypocrisy and myopia of the upper class revolutionaries when it comes to the interpretation and implementation of their political ideology. Satrapi builds the foundation of her criticism through the superficial comprehension her child self exhibits regarding her parents '—and, by extension, upper class communists '—ideals, then warns about the dangers that such lack of understanding presents through child soldiers who are fed ideologies and then sent to war. However, while pointing out the shortcomings of the movement, Satrapi 's use of children as the vessels for comparison entails that there is room for the communist community to develop, like Marji does as she matures from child to teen, and encourage equality through the removal of social barriers created through binaristic thinking to truly promote communist ideals. The first point of juxtaposition is Marji herself, particularly her initial myopic thinking as a child.

Carol Berkin was born on October 1, 1942 in the US. She became interested in history from a young age, stating that is was the “closest thing to time traveling” she

Braden intended for it to be like many of her articles, letters and other material: a call to action for whites to recognize the faults of the world around them and fight to make a change. She taps into her recognition of this wall between societies when she was young and covers up until the end of the case, all while outlining her own

I have chosen Janet Bodnar’s article The College Debt Trap for this unit’s discussion assignment. This is the third quarter that I am taking college classes. After I completed the process of applying and enrolling for on-line classes it was now time to figure out how I was going to finance my education. I never knew what a FAFSA was or what it meant. It took weeks to understand the process of applying for financial aid and luckily I now understand how it works.

When I asked Akadina how she might describe the importance of education, she claimed that people that are not educated choose not to be. She used her life as the reasons why she believed in this idea. Since Akadina immigrated to the Unites States, she had to acculturate to the American culture. However, she decided to pursue and education though she had struggled to learn English. Akadina is convinced that the people that immigrate to this country have the same opportunities that she has but the difference between her and them is that she aspired for higher

It’s amazing how much I reference my reading to my experience to the my time at Robeson High School. I remember having a group discussion with the girls about their Ethnic identity and what they’ve faced so far in the world. At first, of course the girls were very reluctant to share but after Stanley and I shared our experience, they found familiar situation that they’ve experience. In “Hyphenated Selves: Muslim American Youth Negotiating Identities on the Fault Lines of Global Conflict,” the article talks about Muslim youth experiencing discrimination and having to be more conscious and mindful in their surrounding due to the event of 9/11. Although the girls aren’t muslim, they’re all black and they too face discrimination because of their skin.