This Blessed House

       “This Blessed House” is one of Jhumpa Lahiri’s shot stories in her book Interpreter of Maladies. In this story we are introduced to a recently married couple who have purchased their first home. From the day they move in, until the day of their house warming party Sanjeev and Twinkle find Christian artifacts all over their home. These artifacts are what lead to the theme of this story, which I argue is respect, for both a religion as well as for a spouse. In this story Twinkle is represented as the dominant force in the relationship, since she has all the masculine traits that would describe a man, especially that of having the final say. It is through Twinkle that we first see a respect for a religion when she finds a statue of a Christ figure and decides to keep it; “No, we’re not Christian. We’re good little Hindus.” (Lahiri, p. 137, 1999) Twinkle not only stands up to Sanjeev in order protect this Christian artifact, but many more such as the Christ poster, the Mary and Joseph salt shakers and a statue of Mary as well. Although Sanjeev is angered at the sole fact of having those artifacts in his home or outside his home, he still displays respect at simply going along with Twinkle’s decisions. This is evident, when “Sanjeev pressed the massive silver face to his ribs, careful not to let the feather hat slip, and followed her.” (Laniri, p.157, 1999) This quote not only shows respect for a religion, but for both his spouse and a religion. Reason being is that Sanjeev, not  only respects his wife, but also loves her, and it is threw his love for her that he is able to understand her and respect the things she believes. “Please. I would feel terrible throwing them away. Obviously they were important to the people who used to live here. It would feel, I don’t know, sacrilegious or something.” ( Lahiri, p. 138, 1999)

Bahareh Bahmanpour

Bahareh Bahmanpour’s article “Female Subjects and Negotiating Identities in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies” examines four short stories of Jhumpa Lahiri. Bahmanpour uses "Mrs. Sen”, “This Blessed House”, “The Treatment of Bibi Heldar” and “Sexy”, in order to take a close look at the at the female characters  that are trying to find their identity between two cultures.  This is proven when the author states: “the lives of Indians and Indian-Americans whose hyphenated Indian identity has led them to be caught between the Indian traditions that they have left behind and a totally different western world that they have to face culminating in an ongoing struggle to adjust between the two worlds of the two cultures.” (Bahmanpour, 2010) In this article the author uses words such as “hybridity" and “liminality” to show how these immigrants react when it comes to finding their identity. The author then explains how each character in Lahiri’s stories travel threw their experience of finding their identity, which is constantly changing. The reason for theses constantly changing identities the author argues is because identities are constantly negotiating from one to another. In the end Bahmanpour concludes that through Lahiri's stories Indian women are able to have a voice. This is something that I must agree with, because women, especially in Indian culture, have always had less power than men, which had led them to silencing all of their pain and suffering.

Debarati Bandyopadhyay

Negotiating Borders of Culture: Jhumpa Lahiri’s Fiction by Debarati Bandyopadhyay is an academic article that focuses on analyzing Jhumpa Lahiri’s writing. In this article the author argues that in Lahiri’s work there is a variety of movement between continents and cultures in which Indians seek in order to establish their identities on alien shores. (Bandyopadhyay, p. 97, 2009) In order to support her argument Bandyopadhyay uses stories from both of Lahiri’s books: The Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies.  What Bandyopadhyay is suggesting by analyzing Lahiri’s work is that it is necessary for one to adapt to multiculturalism, in which the individual can be at a “transitional point between two hemispheres-East and West- and two segments of the world hierarchy- Third and First-“(Bandyopadhyay, p. 98, 2009) Bandyopadhyay points out that, until there is a perfect balance between both cultures one may suffer from feelings of being alone or a lack of a sense of belonging. This is evident in Interpreter of Maladies in the short story When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine. In this story Mr. Pirzada continues to have a strong tie with his homeland and does not adapt to life in the U.S. This in return makes him feel like if he does not belong and yearns to return to his own country. The author also points out that in The Namesake, Gogol being born in the U.S. and feeling as American as one can be ends up cherishing his homeland, but not until he has lost everything: “Now that one peripatetic Gogol Ganguli loses the only fixed point, his `home` containing his roots, he is able to understand the value of the `homeland.` (Bandyopadhyay, p. 107, 2009) At it is seen even if you are a U.S. citizen or born outside the U.S. as long as you are from a different background, culture, set of beliefs etc. you can never feel at ease with yourself by leaving your old culture behind and embracing your new culture, and vise verse. In conclusion I must have to say that I agree with the author’s suggestion of embracing multiculturalism, because it leaves you in between both cultures in which you can go to and from one another.

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine, is one of nine short stories in Jhumpa Lahiris’ Interpreter of Maladies.  This story revolves around the experience of a young girl (Lilia) divided between two cultures.  However, Lilia has no clue of what her Indian culture is about or its history, which is what, brings her between the culture she was born in that the culture she was born into. When Lilia is first told by her dad that Mr. Pirzada is no longer considered Indian, she is curious as to why that is. She explains that how come a person who acts the same way, eats the same things, and says the same things as her and her parents are considered to be different. Her father then shows her a map points to where Mr. Pirzada is from and where they are from and says “As you see, Lilia, it is a different country, a different color”. (Lahiri, p. 26, 1999) After his talk with his daughter, Lilia’s father is bothered by the fact her daughter knows nothing about her culture and asks of her to watch the news with them every night in order for her to learn what the current situation of her parents’ home country. After watching the news for several days Lilia starts to notice the differences and her separation from her Indian culture. This is evident when she notes “No one at school talked about the war fallowed so faithfully in my living room.” (Lahiri, p. 32, 1999) Lilia also starts to notice the differences in school, when she is assigned a project on the American Revolution and was ordered to put a book about Asia back on the shelf, because it is not a part what they were studying.  Even at a friend’s house Lilia notice the differences when she calls her mom after a night of trick-or-treating: “When I replaced the phone on the receiver it occurred to me that the television wasn’t on at Dora’s house at all.” (Lahiri, p. 39, 1999) After all of her experiences it is evident that Lilia is placed between her Indian and American culture, because she lives and was born in America, but has parents that raise her with Indian beliefs and customs.

Nineteen Thirty-Seven

Nineteen Thirty-Seven is a short story featured in Edwidege Danticat’s Krik? Krak! This story revolves around one young girl’s experience of dealing with her mother’s accusation and arrest for being a witch shortly after the massacre of 1937 in the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. During the story the author mentions the horrible experiences this young girl’s mother went through during the massacre, as well as what both mother and daughter did along with other women in order to remember the sacrifices many did on that night of the massacre. In this analysis I will argue that in story there is a special bond between the generations of women that have inherited the Madonna. When the story begins, it starts off by mentioning that the Madonna had shed a tear as the young girl was on her way to visit her mother at the prison and at that very moment she thought her mother was dead. Then when they young girl gets to see her mother the first thing her mother asks is if the Madonna has cried and when she answers yes Manman starts to cry. By the Madonna crying both the daughter and mother see it as a prediction of what is to come to Manman in the future which is stated when the narrator states: “Now, Manman sat with the Madonna pressed against her chest, her eyes staring ahead, as though she was looking into the future.” (Danticat 40) What this means is that if neither mother nor daughter had a bond, they would never know the meaning of the Madonna crying or the importance of keeping the Madonna close ones self.

Elvira Pulitano

Landscape, Memory and Survival in the Fiction of Edwidge Danticat by Elvira Pulitano is an essay written to explore Edwidge Danticat’s writing. The purpose of Pulitano’s essay is to try and persuade other writers to represent the lands and the ocean differently in Francophone writing. As her thesis, the author argues that Danticat uses physical, cultural and linguistic borders with the Caribbean Sea and that her writing “participates in the revisionist process of remapping European discourse on Caribbean island (hetero)topology and writing” (Danticat, pg. 2-3, ). In order to support and prove her argument Pulitano uses Danticat’s short story The Farming of Bones, along with other of Danticat’s writings that focus on the 1937 massacre. In these stories the author points out the physical border as the sea; the sea cannot be part of nor be apart from the Haitian landscape, which is filled with the suffrage of the many faceless people. The linguistic borders that come up in these stories is that that distinguished them as Spanish speakers and French speakers by the simple pronunciation of “perejil” that if mispronounced would lead to their death. Pulitano then interprets the cleansing ritual as a cultural border, which to the Haitians is a way of hope. I believe that the author makes a good point in wanting to make these borders important to the meaning toward Danticat’s writing. This, will make it easier to interpret and understand each of Danticat’s stories in the future.

Danielle DeVoss and Annette C. Rosati

        “It wasn’t me, was it?” Plagiarism and the Web is an academic article written by Danielle DeVoss and Annette C. Rosati that deals with plagiarism and how the internet has facilitated plagiarizing for students. This article was started off of observations from both authors. These observations were of their very own students and the work they had turned in to be graded. After noticing that many of the students had plagiarized, the authors then wanted to know why the student had come to such dishonesty. As a result they found that many students did not know how to cite their sources, others did not know what to write about based on their topic, and others were just lazy. When a student is not interested in a topic or has no idea what to write about based on a topic many tend to plagiarize by “patch writing” or “kidnapping”. Patch writing as the author states “allows student a place to borrow from text, manipulate it, and work through new concepts by piecing their writing with the original work” and kidnapping is “borrowing, weaving writing as impersonation-writing as experimentation, as mimic.” (DeVoss & Rosati, p.194, 2002) Even though both of these strategies are good to come up with new ideas, it is still plagiarism when you do not cite your source even if a whole sentence was not used, you are still borrowing. Many students are placed in a state of confusion when a teacher asks them to write and original idea with plenty of sources that can back up their new idea, which often leads them to plagiarize. The reason for that is that many students do not understand what is expected of them or simply think: “How can I come up with a NEW idea if there has to be evidence out there that supports my idea?”This will just lead the student to try and get ideas from some other place and try to present it as his or her own which is plagiarizing. When researching many students don’t like putting much time or effort into their research, most students, as the author puts it think that research “was going to Yahoo…doing a simple search, and using the first 10 or 20 hits.” (DeVoss & Rosati, p.194, 2002) By doing so many students end up plagiarizing, because they either don’t have enough evidence or ideas to write what is expected of them or if they do they just simply don’t want to spend time writing and use the “copy” and “paste” function to finish their work. In conclusion the authors suggest that students should view any written piece of work as “intellectual property”. If a student starts thinking like the author suggest it will be less of a chance that he or she will plagiarize, because they will now see the written work as property and stealing someone’s property is not a good thing. This is something that I can agree with, because I’ve been in many situations like the ones above and this will be very handy to me whenever I have to write any paper from now on.

Nancy Sommers

Responding to Student Writing by Nancy Sommers is an academic article that focuses on teachers commenting in student writing. This articles purpose is to open the eye of every teacher there is out there and have them realize that not every single comment made on student writing is beneficial to students and their writing. These types of comments are also useful to question or show any discrepancy in our writing “that we, as writers, are blind to.” (Sommers, 1982, p.148) In order to prove herself, Sommers started a study based off of 35 teachers, the comments the teachers wrote on first and second drafts and interviews of both the teachers and the students that the writing belonged to. In her study Sommers found that “teachers do not respond to student writing with the kind of thoughtful commentary which will help students to engage with the issues they are writing about or which will help them link about heir purposes and goals in writing a specific text.” (Sommers, 1982, p.154) What Sommers meant by her first point is that teachers take comments and use them as a way to grammatically correct a student’s writing and not engage the student further into the topic, which in turn will be useless because the student only makes those changes the final draft will look exactly the same or worse. On the second point Sommers also points out that many of the teachers take commenting as a mean for appropriating a student’s text. She notes that instead of teachers letting students express how or what they feel the teacher turns around and makes the writing say or sound in the way they want or think is the “right-way”. In order to make better writers Sommers suggest that “we need to reverse this approach” (Sommers, 1982, p.154) and have a change in action by starting on trying to give students thoughtful comments. These comments are both positive and important to writers because they are needed in order to show when an idea has been communicated or when it has not. By taking the authors research and my past experiences I would have to agree because I have been in the situation when I do not understand the topic and when I read the teachers comments I have no idea if I am headed in the right direction or not. This will come to great use in future use of peer-reviewing. 

Lea Ramsdell

Language and Identity Politics: The Linguistic Autobiographies of Latinos in the United States by Lea Ramsdell is an academic article that focuses on how three writers use language to position themselves in relation to power. The sole purpose of this article is to show how powerful language really is. When the author uses the phrase “Language is identity and identity is political” (Ramsdell, 2004, p.1) she implies that your language identifies you with your family and ethnic history and your ethnic history and family have political pasts, statuses and beliefs. In this phrase Ramsdell also refers to identity politics in which the authors are able to identify who they are by the language they use. Richard Rodriguez (first author analyzed) sees English and Spanish at opposite ends because of going through the “agonizing” experience acculturation as a young boy. Rodriguez sees that by leaving Spanish behind and mastering English he became a member of the world of economic success. Ariel Dorfman (second author analyzed) also places English and Spanish at different ends. However he does not leave his Spanish behind, but in fact embraces both languages but in separate settings. On the other hand, Gloria Anzaldua (third author analyzed) views both English and Spanish as once since she identifies herself on both sides of the “linguistic divide”. Anzaldua “embraces Spanglish” to show the acceptance of both her American and Mexican sides. Though Richard Rodriguez, Ariel Dorfman and Gloria Anzaldua identify themselves differently they all view language as home and “the very essence of their selves”. (Ramsdell, 2004, p.1) From this analysis I have learned that there is in fact several ways that language can change how one views oneself or better embrace how they view themselves by changing both their actions and beliefs. Which I think is true because language is used to express oneself and if you do not feel comfortable with your language you will not be able to do so. This analysis will help me to better understand different cultures, especially since I will be reading The Toughest Indian in the World which deals with Native culture. 

Gloria Anzaldua

             La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness by Gloria Anzaldua is an academic article about a woman who has to live up to the expectations of two different cultures and the issues she has to deal with in order to do so. The main purpose of this article is trying to accept and adapt a new consciousness which the author is calling the “mestiza” consciousness. This new way of thinking will allow us to take down our borders; which are both physical and mental. The physical borders in the article is used as a metaphor for the identity issues that the author explores, “la mestiza undergoes a struggle of flesh, a struggle of borders, an inner war.” (Anzaldua, 1987, p.100) This inner war is the battle between the most dominant culture’s views and beliefs and the least dominant culture’s views and beliefs.  However, Anzaldua refuses to keep this “war” going. By using her life experiences Anzaldua suggest we should change or actions and our beliefs to adapt and accept the mestiza consciousness. Once we have accepted and have a mestiza consciousness we will be able to create new mythos- “that is, a change in the way we perceive reality, the way we see ourselves, and the ways we behave” (Anzaldua, 1987, p.102). Embracing a mestiza consciousness will help one deal with social and economic issues affecting oppressed groups in the United States, because it will take away the ignorance. Ignorance is what “splits people and crates prejudices” (Anzaldua, 1987, p.108). Only when the ignorance is gone will we be able to accept everyone as our equal and learn from each and every one of us has to offer and make this society better in both the social and economic aspect; which I completely agree with. When everyone works together towards a common goal they will be more prosperous. These new ideas will help me understand and view different cultures in a positive way, which will come in handy as I read The Toughest Indian in the World by Sherman Alexie.

David Bartholomae

Inventing the University is an academic article written by David Bartholomae whose main purpose is to make us understand why we as students struggle when writing about a certain subject. The author makes a specific point that as writers the errors we make in writing are not because of our lack of language but by our lack of familiarity with the communities. In the article Bartholomae focuses on comparing basic and expert writers. He analyses students finished work and points out several examples of what it takes to go from a basic writer to an expert writer. In the first example essay Bartholomae uses he point out that the student “even though he knows he doesn’t have the knowledge that makes the discourse more than a routine” (Bartholomae, 1986, p.457). This meant that the student had no awareness of the community he was directing himself to. Every time we sit down and write there is a different community; a different set of people with expert knowledge on that particular subject. With this being said as writers we have “to invent the university”, learn to speak their language and “carry off the bluff”. This means we have to think as experts, write as experts, present exceptional example and develop arguments that will make us sound like we are expects in that subject as well. Knowing how to write to a certain community will put you closer to becoming an expect writer. The second example Bartholomae uses a concluding section that neither gets us to “neither a technical discussion nor an academic discussion” (Bartholomae, 1986, p.458). In this example the student did not have a set of commonplaces, meaning he had no concept or statement that carried its own necessary elaboration to organize and interpret experience. Becoming an expert writer will take time and practice, but once it is done you will be able to “imagine how a reader will respond to a text and transform or restructure what you have to say around a goal shared with a reader”(Bartholomae, 1986, p.459), which is something a basic writer cannot do. After analyzing many students work Bartholomae concluded that the main problem lies within the community and their expectations and suggest that there should be changes in action; which I completely agree with. It is sometimes uncomfortable not knowing what the professors expect from our writing, but this will help make it easier to get started writing.