Summary Of Gary Shteyngart's Sixty-Nine Cents

Short yet Complicated Story of Immigrant's Experience
In the short story "Sixty-Nine Cents" Gary Shteyngart, a Jewish writer who was born in Soviet Russia and emigrated to the USA at the age of seven, depicts one of his first experiences of attempted assimilation in the American society. This short autobiographic story shows the dubious nature of any immigrant's life, where not even an ethnic identity but the internal feeling of belonging to a certain culture creates obstacles to quick assimilation and makes a person to feel an outsider.
In "Sixty-Nine Cents", Shteyngart tells the story about his first American vacation to Florida with his family at the age of fourteen - when he "lost [his] Russian accent" (Shteyngart, np) and was eager to
(Shteyngart) At the same time, stereotypes about Jewish/Russian culture are also used to emphasize the ethnical roots of Gary's family: "My parents didn’t spend money, because they lived with the idea that disaster was close at hand, that a liver-function test would come back marked with a doctor’s urgent scrawl, that they would be fired from their jobs because their English did not suffice", "my parents, getting up to use free McDonald’s napkins and straws", "My father... in his red-and-black striped imitation Speedo", "Let me guess: mechanical engineer?", "My parents believed that going to restaurants and buying clothes not sold by weight on Orchard Street were things done only by the very wealthy or the very profligate". (Shteyngart) This helps create the contrast between Gary's family and the community they find themselves