Two Ways To Belong In America Analysis

Do you sometimes have doubts about your perspective of yourself based on how society is or what is "popular", or even what someone tells you? Do you sometimes listen to them and sometimes not? Cultures do have a certain impact on our daily perceptions and how we view others, but we are still in control of our own being, our take on how people around us act, and how we choose to let them impact us or not. Outside judgment from society and our peers could also change or alter how we think of ourselves. One example of how cultures affect us is an Indian lady named Bharati Mukherjee sharing her experiences with people outside of her culture. In Bharati Mukherjee’s personal essay, “Two Ways to Belong in America,” she talks about the ups and downs of the American culture from her and her sister, Mira's, experiences. Since Bharati is more adaptive to the "American way of life," she really doesn't mind the
For his father, he took it a little harder than his son did, academically, because of the teacher’s lack of understanding of their culture’s way of teaching the children. But socially, the son, Wind-Wolf, took the criticism of his peers and his friend’s mother hard, because he was afraid to live his life according to his culture, publicly and privately, in which he’s altering his culture and what he does according to the judgement being passed and the “American beliefs.” His father states that,”He is not culturally disadvantaged, but he is culturally “different”(Lake 76). Being picked on at this of an age by other children, and even adults, it’s bound to tear him down, and that is very discouraging, fortunately for others, they aren’t phased by judgement. On the contrary, we come across a girl who was also exposed to harsh