book review

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Your second assignment is a 6 page book review. For it, you will read and compare two novels, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer. Your task, in comparing the novels, is to consider and discuss the diversity of experiences that may, or may not, count as “Asian American.” The novels, for instance, present two different frameworks, immigrant and refugee, within which to understand how Asians came to the United States and the types of connections they do, or do not, maintain with and how they understand their homelands. In another sense, both novels present the experiences of Asian groups, South and Southeast Asians, who are not necessarily representative, or seen as representative, of “Asian Americans” – who many people in the United States implicitly consider East Asian. These groups are more recent, post-1965 arrivals and do not feature prominently in most accounts of Asian Americans historically. Your paper should focus on the details of these novels, but relate them to these broader issues and concerns. How, for instance, would an immigrant and/or a refugee think of their relationship to the United States, the country where they find themselves residing, but may not necessarily have allegiance to? Although you have a specific task for your paper, you may take it in a direction of your choice. Don’t try to address the question in all the ways it might be addressed, but choose one aspect of the issue that stands out to you, or alternatively, choose aspects of the novels that you found striking or interesting and relate them to the question. In other words, avoid being overly general – because it often leads to vagueness and lack of clarity – and instead, be specific, in the details you discuss, the examples you give, and the arguments you make about them. Among the issues you may address are the issues we’ve been discussing in class: race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, interpersonal relationships (like family, friends, and community), cross-cultural communication/translation, age, generation, and life cycle, and what it means to be political or cultural.

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Explanation & Answer

Attached.

Torn Between the Asian And American Culture – Outline
Thesis: The immigrants who reside in the United States fail to integrate and develop full
allegiance because they remain torn between two cultures, the native and host country.
1. The novels give an insight into the historical context of how Asian Americans arrived in
the US as either immigrants or refugees in the late 1980s and 1990s.
2. Both authors present the idea that all immigrant identifies with different cultural
practices, beliefs, values, and principles from that of the host country.
3. While Lahiri writes the novel from the perspective of her personal experience of living in
America as one born to Bengali immigrants, Viet presents it as a Vietnam immigrant.
4. The novels present the idea that the cultural identity of individuals influence their social
life in the society regarding how the characters struggle with the relationship with names,
families, and future choices.
5. Both authors present Asian American characters torn between the American culture they
dwell in and their Asian American parental heritage.
6. The characters come to realize that while their culture seems to have less relevance in the
host country, it is the symbol of their identity, heritage, and upbringing hence remains
worth appreciating.
7. Consequently, immigration is here to stay and probably will put the future generation in a
situation where they have to choose between sticking to the culture of their forefathers or
forgoing it to integrate into one global society.
Conclusion: Overall, both novels present the reasons why the assimilation and integration of
Asian Americans into American society remains hard because of their cultural differences. The

immigrants who reside in the United States need to develop the full allegiance to facilitate
integration and evade the existing issues brought by cultural differences.


Surname 1
Name
Professor
Course
Date
Torn Between the Asian And American Culture
Over the past decades, the rate of immigration has been increasing with the primary
motivation of individuals escaping the socio-economic and political condition of their native
countries. The feeling of being a migrant in another country leaves individuals torn between two
cultures with each pulling them in a different direction. It the same situation presented in the two
novels “The Namesake” and “The Sympathizer” written by Lahiri Jhumpa and Thanh Nguyen
Viet respectively. Lahiri explores the connection between the Asian and Indian world by
presenting the life and experience of a Bengali family who decides to travel to the United States
to stay permanently. Viet presents the story of a communist spy who has to live a dualistic life
and faces the socio-political conflict based on his beliefs. Therefore, the immigrants who reside
in the United States fail to integrate and develop full allegiance because they remain torn
between two cultures, the nati...


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