Stranger in America
16 October 2013
From the Outside Looking In What does it mean to be an “American”? To each individual person it means something very different. For the writer Bharati Mukherjee, who wrote the essay, “American Dreamer”, to be a true American someone has to want to be an American, not just prove that they merited citizenship. Her essay “American Dreamer” goes in depth into this idea and her opinion that as an American one should believe in bringing together the cultures in America. “We must think of American culture and nationhood as a constantly reforming, transmogrifying “we” (Mukherjee 438). For the author James Baldwin, who wrote the essay “Stranger in the Village”, an American is a person who is integrated with other cultures, and will never be a strictly “white” culture. “This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.” (Baldwin 449) There are vast differences in the cultures of the world and to be integrated into a new culture can often be troublesome. These two essays have agreeing opinions on both of the authors’ predictions for the future of America and the refusal of the American culture to accept cultures other than their own, however they contrast with the authors’ own personal experiences in a culture other than their own. The main difference between the two essays “American Dreamer” and “Stranger in the Village” is the author’s experiences in being immersed in a culture entirely different from their own. In her essay, “American Dreamer”, Mukherjee discusses her transition between three different cultures: Indian, Canadian, and American. In India she claimed that she knew herself and that her identity was “fixed”, but when she moved to the United States she was thrust into this new culture where she no longer had set guidelines for who she was. However she took pride in her American citizenship. Conversely James Baldwin’s essay, “Stranger in the Village”, he discusses how he felt as an American coming to a remote Swiss village,
From the Outside Looking In What does it mean to be an “American”? To each individual person it means something very different. For the writer Bharati Mukherjee, who wrote the essay, “American Dreamer”, to be a true American someone has to want to be an American, not just prove that they merited citizenship. Her essay “American Dreamer” goes in depth into this idea and her opinion that as an American one should believe in bringing together the cultures in America. “We must think of American culture and nationhood as a constantly reforming, transmogrifying “we” (Mukherjee 438). For the author James Baldwin, who wrote the essay “Stranger in the Village”, an American is a person who is integrated with other cultures, and will never be a strictly “white” culture. “This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.” (Baldwin 449) There are vast differences in the cultures of the world and to be integrated into a new culture can often be troublesome. These two essays have agreeing opinions on both of the authors’ predictions for the future of America and the refusal of the American culture to accept cultures other than their own, however they contrast with the authors’ own personal experiences in a culture other than their own. The main difference between the two essays “American Dreamer” and “Stranger in the Village” is the author’s experiences in being immersed in a culture entirely different from their own. In her essay, “American Dreamer”, Mukherjee discusses her transition between three different cultures: Indian, Canadian, and American. In India she claimed that she knew herself and that her identity was “fixed”, but when she moved to the United States she was thrust into this new culture where she no longer had set guidelines for who she was. However she took pride in her American citizenship. Conversely James Baldwin’s essay, “Stranger in the Village”, he discusses how he felt as an American coming to a remote Swiss village,
Cited: Mukherjee, Bharati. “American Dreamer.” The McGraw-Hill Reader; Issues Across the Disciplines. ed. Gilbert Muller. 11th ed. Custom ed. for Wake Tech Community College. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 434-439. Print. Baldwin, James. “Stranger in the Village.” The McGraw-Hill Reader; Issues Across the Disciplines. ed. Gilbert Muller. 11th ed. Custom ed. for Wake Tech Community College. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 440 - 449. Print.