Advanced Essay #2 / Americas Inability to Connect

Intro: If and when people read my paper I want them to read with a mindset that can reflect on what is being read and then be able to continue to correlate it to themselves throughout the writing but to also connect it to how it might also affect immigrants. I want this essay to sort of be a reminder as well. Essay: Everyone born into this world at the core is human. No matter who you are, or what you look like everyone is and always will be a human. Although we are all humans and the same, it seems everyone easily forgets that, even myself at times. We are so quick to judge others who do not seem to be like us or come from similar backgrounds as us. That is why I think those who come to America as immigrants get the feeling of not being able to belong. I also feel that a part of what is now the American culture is that no one seems to have that obligation towards people or to connect with people. We wrongfully see others not to be human as we are, when in fact we are all the same, and all on the same path, no matter where we are individual human beings, everyone feels the same, bleeds the same, and we all forget that at times. I think at the root of it all, America from the start was heavily influenced by the Western or European way of life and culture. When someone or something is influenced by something and it has continued to be influenced by that thing for hundreds of years, it is hard to get out of the habit of thinking, that this way is superior, or to look at it as this is what everything should be rather than being able to understand the diversity that you can find all around the world and then respecting it as others natural background. I also think that this issue we face as a country, it all starts in the mind. Individually we all forget who we all are and that again, we are the same. This thinking started from the beginning of humankind, so in a sense, this is an issue that doesn’t stop with America. Just by knowing the history of our country we know that America’s culture tends to be very critical and stubborn, critical as in what it seems like everything should be and how we express it and or enforce it. The severity gets to the point where the only place that immigrants and anyone coming from outside the country can only feel comfortable with themselves and around those who are also from the same background. On page 106 in Exit West, it says “in this group everyone is foreign, and so, in a sense no one was”. This quote is coming from inside the head of an immigrant. There is nothing more and nothing less to this quote than exactly what it says. This book was written by someone who was an immigrant at the age of three and then later came back to the country when he was 18. This gives this credibility and a deeper understanding of what it is in there head. Circumstances are usually never perfect for anyone who is coming to the country. It could be money or safety and it gets even more difficult for them to have to adapt to the new culture that America sort of presents to them. Something I think that we are all able to relate to growing up is as we were going to school, and meeting new people, there are kids we know whose name we say, and it isn’t their actual name from birth. It seems as if the reason why they create a more Americanized name is to simply avoid the possibility of embarrassment or difficulty in pronunciation just because we don’t give the time too. There is a quote in the book “Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri” that you can find on page 198 that reads “ Nikhil” says she as he sits down on the stool beside her, and orders a single malt. “yes” As opposed to Gogol “yes.” It had annoyed him, when he ́d called her, that she hadn't recognized him as Nikhil” in this scene Gogol is called by is the actual name. As said in the book this annoys him because he has created another name for himself that was more American. A glimpse is given here at what may go through every kid's head when they arrive in America with their culture and background and it doesn’t line up with our country’s. What I believe is that we need to start putting into perspective what other people may be going through. What if we were the people who were traveling across the world, running from the financial crisis or away from danger. Then on top of worrying about that now we have to worry about whether or not this new culture and society that we have inserted ourselves into purely out of survival that we will be judged, and then conform to the culture of that place although you lived somewhere else for around ten, twenty, or thirty years. As Americans and even just people around the world, we need to start realizing that we are all the same. NewsHour, PBS. “' Exit West' Author Mohsin Hamid Answers Your Questions.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 30 Mar. 2018, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/exit-west-author-mohsin-hamid-answers-your-questions