Culture In 'Two Ways To Belong In America And Legal Alien'

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Did you know that culture is most important part of our lives no matter what age we are currently at? As we start to express culture for the duration of our lives, it influences who we are, how we understand things, the way we behave, and how we start to classify others and the environment around us. The literary works "Two Kinds," "Two Ways to Belong in America," and "Legal Alien" all provide examples of the influences culture has on people. In the story "Two Kinds," by Amy Tan is about a young Chinese girl named Jing-mei is trying out varieties of prodigious talents in which her mother is forcing upon her to do. Eventually, Jing-mei wasn't able to do any of those talents, so she concluded, "For unlike my mother, I did not believe…show more content…
The story is about an Indian woman named Bharati, who is an illegal immigrant living in America while her sister, Mira, has a green card. Bharati seemed to be unsatisfied living in the United States. So Bharati said, "She, for the lack of structure in my life, the erasure of Indianess, the absence of an unvarying daily core" (Muhkerjee 71). The narrator Bharati analyzed that Mira and her are developing into two different people ever since they've arrived in the United States. Bharati feels like she does not belong in the American culture, but she still continuously maintains the values of her Indian culture, like wearing traditional saris. However, Bharati's sister, Mira, is definitely the quite opposite. Mira is increasingly adapting and embracing the American culture. She's mostly wearing regular American attire instead of saris. In the middle of the story, Bharati stated, "I feel some kind of irrational attachment to India that I don't to America" (Mukherjee 71). From this quote, we can infer that Bharati maintains a connection with her homeland at India and favors it greater rather than to continue to reside in America. Bharati distinguished the American environment as something that doesn't really appeal to her. Nevertheless, "Two Ways to Belong in America" shows how the environment of the American culture influenced the way Bharati values her Indian…show more content…
For example, in "Two Kinds" when Jing-men's mother thought that she "could be the Chinese Shirley Temple" (Tan 18), this established that instead of culture influencing the way we behave, our parents could influence the approach of our behavior. This idea is acceptable, but not completely valid because there could be more factors of influences like friends, strangers, situations on television, etc. Even though parents are closer to us, they don't know the possibilities of what we are doing when we're out of their sight. Another example would be in "Two Ways to Belong in America" when Bharati spoke about her and Mira "were always acknowledged adversaries" (Muhkerjee 71). This shows how they were both behaving in a confused manner which shown the sisters are unknowing of them being an opponent to the information being brought to them. Bharati thinks the American culture is not accepting of
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