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America today is omnipresent, but take us back 100 years and you find much more defined straight and narrow socio-cultural boundaries. Those who came to America during the earlier immigration waves were forced to experience a much different reality than they anticipated with the American way of life including different cultural values than the rest of the world like individual equality, personal freedom, and a desire for capital that can undermine more traditional family structures and gender biases, especially women's assumed inferiority. Nevertheless, the prevalent courses of learning to assimilate through conflict across all cultures, especially traditional, are the same, as culture shock has a custom formula that the immigrants in our essays all have to deal with.
In “Raising Delia” the narration of ethos in Delia’s mom's experiences when the ethics around her drastically change, the exposition of logos in Lee Chew’s struggle to start a business in America due to cultural bias in “The Life Story of a Chinese Business Man,” and the description of pathos in Carlos’s pursuit to find a place in American culture that he feels a belonging in “My Education” - all three of these examples demonstrate the message that adjustment to a new environment is difficult when involving cultural conflict.
For instance, in “Raising Delia” The mother's loyalty to her Ibonese culture makes it difficult for her to accept the modernity of her Ibo-American child’s identity when her husband and mother are strictly traditional. With the ethos of Ibonese and American culture, she uses an equal part of narration and exposition to discuss the inner and environmental turmoil of her situation. As she gets deeper into the differing cultural values she’s confronted with, she begins to wonder if holding her daughter to their cultural standards makes her a bad mother. The breaks or change in continuity from one generation to the next being in one culture to another creates conflict for the family. “The traditional cultures continue doing what their parents and grandparents did on both sides, tradition means belonging, while modernity is liberation.”(1) Delia’s mother comes to realize as Delia ages that her daughter deserves to be taught the traditions of the Ibonese culture but not be held back by it’s limitations to female ability.
Another story that describes the “nebulous,” racist, and dynamic qualities of the culture clash is Carlos’s “My Education”. Carlos describes his inner turmoils by narrating his immigration to this country, “My departure from the Philippines was the breaking up of my grounds, the tearing up of my roots” (Pg. 166) and experts agree, describing the basic cause being that “culture shock is the “abrupt loss of the familiar, which in turn causes a sense of isolation and diminished self-importance.”(2) Carlos comes to America at a young age from the Philippines naive and inexperienced. He is forced to take low-paying jobs and experiences a great deal of difficulty adjusting to the American lifestyle. His previous culture is about community, so coming to vast America leaves him in search of a personal feeling of belonging, or a common faith he could put hope in. With exposure to the economic recession and the collective era, he puts faith in the collective era, the driving force of togetherness that creates hope. After this, he can fully adapt and feel like he belongs to the American culture.
Similarly, Lee Chew describes the hardships of leaving home and entering a world of constant discrimination. He uses logos to effectively recount the consequences of being thrown into the American melting pot. When Lee Chew first arrives in America, he reveals that he wouldn’t “eat the provisions of the barbarians” (Pg 54) although he does not expand on why he thinks this, it’s reasonable to believe that he arrived with predisposed cultural conflict set by his traditional family upon leaving China and doesn’t think the food is safe. Then he explains how the Chinese quarters made him feel better which prompts the perception that he experienced culture shock fresh off the boat. Through his essay he narrates his story with an exposition of the problems faced by the Chinese immigrants, he justifies to the reader why he does not feel a part of the society or mixed racist culture. This is tied into his traditional standing expressed in the words his grandfather sent him off with, he, “told me to remember and live up to the admonitions of the Sages, To avoid gambling bad woman and men of evil minds And so to govern my conduct that when I died my ancestors might rejoice to welcome me as a guest on high” (Pg 61). By the end of his story it's clear that although he adjusted to the lifestyle and lessened his prejudices against the American people, he never assimilated with America’s dominant Western culture, and instead held his predominantly engrained Chinese values, as explained in his closing sentence, ”Under the circumstances How can I call this my home and how can anybody blame me if I take my money back to my Village in China.” (Pg 63) remained until his departure.
In conclusion, America wouldn't be nearly as fantastic or diverse as it is today if not for people like our immigrant characters who continuously struggled to learn how to deal with their cultural changes and decide if they wanted to adopt or reject the values of American life. From these three essays discussed in our “Essays on Immigration,” you can understand how much difficulty immigrants personally dealt with from their personal culture clash. My stories generally use pathos to recount their narratives and effectively appeal to the immigrant’s feelings in adversity. The use of narration in these stories helps to place the reader in the shoes of the author and subsequently, makes the things that go unsaid easy to hear. History gives context, without it, the pain, the reason for their outcry, is lost and forgotten.
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