Buy an essay on “The multicultural aspects of life of immigrants in the essays from the book “50 Essays” by Samuel Cohen”

The three essays of the book “No Name Woman” by Maxine Hong Kingston, “Silent dancing” by Judith Ortiz Cofer and “Two Ways To Belong In America” by Bharati Mukherjee are related with the stories of immigration and life of people in diasporas.

The essay “No Name Woman” by Maxine Hong Kingston touches the topic of differences between cultures and traditions. It reveals to the reader particularly traditional Chinese culture, the differences between Chinese culture and American culture.
The story is told by different characters and so reflects their attitude to everything happening in the story, their opinions and views. The author shows differences and similarities in the three different narratives, and this approach helps to explore the peculiarities of traditional Chinese culture, to show them from different points of view.
“No-Name Woman” is really very interesting to study the multi-cultural society, because it touches such aspects as the place of women in traditional Chinese society, and the difficulty of growing up as a Chinese-American “those in the emigrant generations who could not reassert brute survival died young and far from home”. (Cohen 2006)
It is known that this essay is written from the point of the author, who showed the old customs and traditions which she knows from her mother: “Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested our strength to establish realities”. (Cohen 2006)
So the “No-Name story” is an author’s experience in growing up as a Chinese-American as “those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America”, to show the torn between the world of Chinese customs and traditions that surrounds immigrants. (Cohen 2006)
At last it is important to mention the attempt of Maxine Hong Kingston to maintain a dialogue between both the Chinese and American societies.

The second essay that touches upon the multicultural aspects of immigration and life of people in diasporas is the Judith Ortiz Cofer’s “Silent Dancing”: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood. First of all, it is Cofer’s autobiographical work that focuses on her attempts to discuss her life between two cultures, American and Puerto Rico, and how this process informs her feelings as a writer. It is a personal narrative about growing up in two worlds, each with its own language, customs, and contrasting definitions of womanhood. But the author states in the book’s preface, that the text is not an autobiography but her memory of childhood, and a product of the creative imagination.
Like the creator of “No Name Woman” Kingston, Cofer is also examining the people in immigration through stories told to het or her own experience and observations. She is in search of the role of woman in the societies and also the ways to overcome the double oppression as a woman in Puerto Rico and as an American woman.
Her work also addresses topics such as racism and sexism in American culture, male and female powers in the Puerto Rican culture and the challenges of diasporas immigrants face in the new culture, shows the lives of a Puerto Rican-American community. “Silent Dancing” is also a story of experiences of “alienation, isolation, and survival racial discrimination, and hard economic realities, including stories of people who were oppressed and marginalized by society”. (Cofer 12)
It becomes evident that Cofer in her stories about Puerto Rica and Puerto-Rican Americans try to show her own experience in developing the topics of biculturalism of her life and multiculturalism of her country.
“Two Ways To Belong In America” by Bharati Mukherjee touches the topic of multicultural life in America, since so many people immigrate to this country every year. Since many different nationalities immigrate into this country each year, they have to adapt to a conventional American culture, so the author illustrates this process and also the place of the person’s identity in this multicultural American society. Also the author points that some risk their lives and travel thousands of miles on foot and car just to find a job in this country, but at the end their living conditions in the country are very difficult. Immigrants are very difficult to adapt to life in America and become a worthy member of the society.
One of the important questions that the author identifies – is the question of decision whether to have a U.S. citizen or resident, or “to keep true to their birth of origin and love their national territory till the end of their time”. (Mukherjee 1996)
Works cited

Cohen, Samuel. 50 Essays: a portable anthology. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2nd edition, 2006
Cofer, Judith Ortiz. Silent Dancing. Houston: Arte Publico, 1990.
Bharati Mukherjee. Two Ways To Belong In America. New York Times, September 22, 1996