Both Jerre Mangione’s Mount Allegro and Pietro di Donato’s Christ in Concrete discusses formulations of immigrant narratives through the use of descent and consent relations to describe how immigrants inherit their cultural heritage and how they subsequently identify with their cultural heritage through their choices respectively. For Italian American immigrants, particularly second-generation Italian immigrants, although family traditions, values, and ideologies are passed down through generations, either through oral stories told by family members or through the teachings from the mother, whom often play the role of preserving the family’s cultural traditions, the internalization of their cultural upbringing, is dependent on their choices. …show more content…
For second-generation Italian American immigrants, like Paul and Gerlando, bella figura, or the idea of knowing how to properly interact with others in social situations, is often taught through folklores with moral lessons. The lessons taught from stories, like those of Annichia and the importance of shrewdness and Gisueppe Scalla and the concept of “true justice” (Mangione 194), act as a basic framework for younger generations of immigrant to model their behaviors on throughout their adolescence and adulthood. Others, like those about Maureen Daniels, the strafalaria, or Cicca and her tyrant father, Don Antonio, warned younger generations of the consequences of going against family values and of over-assimilating into American culture. In Christ in Concrete, however, di Donato portrays how the influences of descent relations on behavior through the idea of familial responsibility, or the theme of continuity between father and son. When looking for a job, Paul not only inherits his father’s career as a craftsman, or as commented by Nazone, “a born artist of brick and mortar” (di Donato 69), but also consents to becoming both a bricklayer and the father of the family. di Donato repeats this theme of Paul’s consent throughout Christ in Concrete, beginning with …show more content…
Throughout Mount Allegro, Mangione repeatedly mentions how his mother reinforced the notion of being able to communicate in a language shared by everyone in the household: “I don’t want to hear anything but Italian in this house . . . I don’t want my children to grow up into babbi who can’t speak the language of their parents” (Mangione 20-21) and “[another] unpopular rule she vigorously reinforced was that we speak no other language at home but that of our parents” (Mangione 49-50). While Mangione stresses the importance of second-generation immigrants being able to speak the language of their parents, a skill learned through descent, whether second-generation immigrants learn and integrate Italian into their daily lives is dependent on their own decisions, as seen through how Luigi’s children “knew so little Sicilian that he was seldom able to converse with them” (Mangione 21). Like bella figura, the enactment of omereta, the oath of silence, and other attitudes towards proper speech are often taught through oral stories told by parents or older relatives. The idea of omereta, passed down due to the older generation’s “lack of faith in the law” (Mangione 185), is the mutual
1)The first article is called Portuguese Immigrant Families: The Impact of Acculturation this was written by MARIE MORRISON, M.A. and SUSAN JAMES, PH.D.. This article helps us understand what happens when some Portuguese families move to the United States and how they are able to be able to change adapt to the change in cultures. It also looks at how it affects their thinking. Morrison and James describes acculturations as “when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous, first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original culture pat- terns of either or both groups’’.
Immigration is deeply rooted in the American culture, yet it is still an issue that has the country divided. Marcelo and Carola Suarez-Orozco, in their essay, “How Immigrants Became ‘Other’” explore the topic of immigration. They argue that Americans view many immigrants as criminals entering America with the hopes of stealing jobs and taking over, but that this viewpoint is not true. They claim that immigrants give up a lot to even have a chance to come into America and will take whatever they can get when they come. The Suarez-Orozco’s support their argument using authority figures to gain credibility as well as exemplification through immigrant stories.
The father tried to teach his daughter the culture through rice cooking, but she fails to replicate the method; whereas the brother avoids the cultural lessons by integrating himself into the local culture. This heavily suggests the brother rejects speaking the language and the culture, compared to the daily exposure of the Canadian culture and speaking English. The story “Simple Recipes” masks itself as a family having internal conflicts on the dinner table. While analyzing the story, it suggests the difficulty of integrating the local and origin culture in multicultural immigrant families.
Ultimately, “How Immigrants Become ‘Other’” is more credible than Cohen 's “Monster Culture (7 Theses)” because the authors have more authority to write about the subject of their source and this source
Challenges of Immigration: The Shimerda’s Struggle Willa Cather’s novel, My Ántonia sheds light on the topic of immigration. Immigrants have many different reasons for why they might migrate to the United States. Some were trying to escape something from their old country such as avoiding a war, trouble with the law, or shame as is the case of the Russians Pavel and Peter. Reasons for immigrating could also relate to chasing the American dream as is the case with the Shimerdas.
The immigrants entering the United States throughout its history have always had a profound effect on American culture. However, the identity of immigrant groups has been fundamentally challenged and shaped as they attempt to integrate into U.S. society. The influx of Mexicans into the United States has become a controversial political issue that necessitates a comprehensive understanding of their cultural themes and sense of identity. The film Mi Familia (or My Family) covers the journey and experiences of one Mexican-American (or “Chicano”) family from Mexico as they start a new life in the United States. Throughout the course of the film, the same essential conflicts and themes that epitomize Chicano identity in other works of literature
The Namesake Essay Melody Su A Block Immigration is when people leave their original homelands for various reasons, carrying their distinct cultures, religious beliefs, and live permanently in the new land. In the book The Namesake, Lahiri uses the Ashima and Gogol’s experiences to suggest the dark sides of the immigration, which involves the lost sense of belonging, loss of identity, presensence of microaggression, and the generation gap between the first-generation immigrants and their children.
Even better, was that I felt confident enough in my skill that I could use it with my closest living Italian relative, my father’s mother, la mia nonna. More than speaking the language, I discovered my family’s past. In conversing with her and my father, I discovered that I will be only the third person in my paternal grandparents’ family to attend college, that my grandmother had only a sixth-grade education, that my grandfather, despite never holding a degree in mathematics or physics, worked for three decades on CTA train cars as an electrician. The marriage of my grandparents in 1952 represented a synthesis of the culture of northern and southern Italy and
First, nativism can be against “multiculturalism” and quickly want the process of the Catholic “Americanizers” toward new immigrants. The document reminds American Catholics that “their ancestors spoke different languages and worshiped in different ways not too long ago.” Second, competition for resources in multicultural parishes can be harmful to community life. Third, cultural fears prevent people from communicating and collaborating with each other for the sake of the multicultural community. The document emphasizes, “No culture is either permanent or perfect.
Similarly, “Naturalization” by Jenny Xie is the story of a family who recently immigrated to America going through gauntlet of assimilation. In this paper I am going to analyze, discuss, compare and contrast the authors attitudes towards their parents according to perseverance paternalism and passivity with society. In Martin Espada’s “The Sign in My Father’s Hands” the central theme to the poem is social justice. His father is fighting for equal employment opportunities.
I have grown up in Florida which is a diverse area which makes my personal culture contain numerous influences. Both my maternal and paternal sides of my family are pure Italian Americans. There is not much known about my great grandparents but they are believed to be peasants who migrated from Sicily into United States in the 1800’s. Traditions, influenced by beliefs, rituals and values are passed down or inherited by one generation to another (Inglehart & Baker, 2000). Many Italian Americans try to carry on traditions and cultures that their grandparents and parents had.
Immigrants that are new to the American society are often so used to their own culture that it is difficult for them to accept and adapt to the American culture. The language that is spoken, as well as the various holidays and traditions that Americans entertain themselves with, aren’t what most immigrants would deem a neccessity for their life to move on. Nonetheless, they still have to be accustomed to these things if they have any chance of suceeding in a land where knowledge is key. The story “My Favorite Chaperone” written by Jean Davies Okimoto, follows the life of a young girl who along with her brother Nurzhan, her mother known as mama, and her father whom she refers to as Papi have immigrated to the United States from Kazakhstan, through a dating magazine. Throughout the story each family member faces problems that causes them to realize just how different their life is know that they’ve immigrated..
The family members were greatly affected when the children lost their sense of the cultures language. At around the age of sixteen, the children went home as their “duties” and “obligations” were done. The families tried to communicate with them but the children were brain washed Europeans. As younger siblings came into residential schools, they attempted to speak their language to the older ones and the older ones had forgotten the language. The parents were also confused how the children believed in such strong European worldviews.
Over time generations have been influenced by others, yet there has been a sense of embarrassment or self-disgust when pointing out each of the generation’s roots. Throughout “Always Living in Spanish” written by Marjorie Agosin, she shares the passion she has for Spanish. She reveals her strong relationship with it and how she would not want to give it up, it was hers. She does this to give off the impression that roots are beautiful no matter where they are from and that there should be a sense of pride when one does use the language of their past or performs a cultural tradition. In author, Yang’s, “American Born Chinese” he also gives off a similar moral.
Everyday food Abstract The article discusses the role of food as an instrument of identity and a channel of contact through cultures. This is discussed drawing from three cases of Italian food culture hybridization spanning from the early 20th century to the first decade of the 2000s: the role of Italian food in Italian-American identity as depicted in Leonardo Coviello’s work; the meeting of Southern and Northern food cultures following the Italian internal migrations in the ‘50s and ‘60s; the food practices of international migrants in the context of the global flows of people and commodities in present day Italy. In this regard, food plays an essential role in the rebuilding of a familiar context in which migrants can feel temporarily