Indledning
Struggling to adapt is a comprehensive superior sensation. Many, especially immigrants, find it difficult to feel comfortable in a new country, and we, as a society, needs to realize what struggles they go through.
Most carry a feeling of being an outsider; being different, and don’t blend in with the status quo.
Like little Joy in the short story “How two Pronounce Knife” by Souvankham Thammavongsa 2020, which thoughtfully explores the inner lives of immigrants and their children.
Optimer dit sprog - Læs vores guide og scor topkarakter
Uddrag
This quote shows that although if Joy knew, how to pronounce the word; "knife", her love, faith, and loyalty to her father and her innate culture, prevents her from accepting that others; a classmate knows better than him.
Her feelings and love are an overriding sign of how difficult it can be to be an immigrant in a new country.
The story's extensive and external conflict is thus between two vastly differently cultures; an Asian and an American.
The American is represented by the school and generally the whole community, while the Asian is represented by her parents, her primary relationships.
Joy is trapped between these two cultures, and she does not know in which she belongs. This also becomes the cause of an extensive internal loyalty conflict:
For on the one hand, Joy wants to be loyal to her parents and theirs, as well as her own innate culture, but on the other hand, she also wants to be loyal to the new Western culture. She fights to fit into society and keep up with school.
She struggles to fit in and is also bullied because of her differentness: “When she took these dishes to school, other children would tease her about the smell.
She shot back, “You wouldn’t know a good thing even if five hundred pounds of it came and sat on your face!”” (p. 1, l. 14-16).
Because of her her Asian roots, and the food she eats, she stands out from the norm in society, and is therefore kept out.
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