StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

The Hybrid Status of Immigrants - Essay Example

Cite this document
Summary
The Hybrid Status of Immigrants
Every human being belongs to a unique culture, acquiring certain traits and qualities that are inculcated into him or her by the tradition into which the individual is born. …
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER98% of users find it useful
The Hybrid Status of Immigrants
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "The Hybrid Status of Immigrants"

04 June The Hybrid Status of Immigrants Every human being belongs to a unique culture, acquiring certain traits and qualities that are inculcated into him or her by the tradition into which the individual is born. When a person happens to live in another community, which has different characteristics than the one he or she is born into, the individual becomes forced to accept some traits of that community and thus assumes a mixed personality. Immigrants, who migrate from their nation of origin to another country in the pursuit of education, job opportunities or business purposes, hence will become hybrids as they latently possess the characteristics of their original culture and absorb some aspects of the new culture.

While this transformation has its rewards, it plunges them into a state of belonging neither here nor there and forces them to live between two cultures and worlds. The essays, “Mother Tongue,” by Amy Tan and, “To the Border,” by Richard Rodriguez, deftly illustrate the torment of immigrants as they deal with the consequences and dangers of living between worlds. Amy Tan dwells on the issues that language creates for an average immigrant in the new land, where he or she migrates to. Most of the times either they are unable to understand the mechanics of the new language or they cannot completely eschew the nuances of their original language and its cultural impacts.

Tan, from her personal experience show that the people in America look down on immigrants, who are not capable of speaking the language as the natives do and hardly listen to them or assist them. Her mother, who speaks “broken or fractured English” in the US, confronts a lot of problems because she cannot converse with the natives in a befitting style (Tan, p.2). Her stockbroker ignores her demands and delays sending her the check because she is not able to talk to him properly. Similarly, when she approaches her hospital for her CT scan, the hospital does not show her any “sympathy when she told them she was anxious to know the exact diagnosis” (Tan, p.2). This, again, is due to the reason that her English is not good enough.

But when her daughter goes and explains the things, they apologize for the lost CT scan. Thus, it transpires in an English speaking country, the natives expect the immigrants also to speak perfect English, to receive attention. Some of the immigrants, however, are not able to adapt totally to the new language due to constraints of culture and remain in a world in between. Thus, they are forced confront many challenges due to their status of being hybrids, who are neither “here” nor “there.

” On the other hand, in his essay, “To the Border,” Richard Rodriguez shows how cultural differences make the immigrants struggle in the land of their dreams. According to the author, the transit of Mexicans to Los Angeles is not merely “a journey from Spanish to English” but is also one from “the familiar, the erotic, the intimate” to the “repellent usted of strangers’ eyes” (Rodriguez, p.401). Here the author is emphasizing the anguish of those immigrants who feel alienated in the new land as the natives look down upon them with hostility.

On the one hand, they need the money to send back their home by living in most minimal comforts as in the case of Fidel, who sends “everything else” “back to Mexico” to his family. Thus, he remains, in a true sense, belonging neither to America nor to Mexico. In the same vein, the author’s mother believes that though Mexico is a poor country, “the ice cream (there) is creamier than here” (Rodriguez, p.402). However, she puts up with living in America, while cherishing the memories of her motherland.

This disposition, of being neither here, nor there, is due to the reason that she is forced to live in the US due to her peculiar circumstances. Thus, it becomes obvious that immigrants always live in the host nation with a sense of anguish and they are not able to remain uniquely loyal to one culture. Once they migrate to a new land, they are compelled to adapt to a new situation, speaking a language which is not their own, accepting a culture to which they do not belong. Thus, they remain torn between the two worlds, accepting part of each, but belonging to none.

Works Cited Tan, Amy. Mother Tongue. Three Penny Review. 1990. Web. 04 June 2012. http://shawnashapiro.com/courses/wrpr0102a-s10/Tan_MotherTongue.pdf Rodriguez, Richard. How TV Stole Rock’s Soul. Mexico’s New Revolution: Mother Jones. Mega Food. 1988. Web. 30 April 2012.

Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“The Hybrid Status of Immigrants Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words”, n.d.)
Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/other/1399459-writer-s-choice
(The Hybrid Status of Immigrants Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 Words)
https://studentshare.org/other/1399459-writer-s-choice.
“The Hybrid Status of Immigrants Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 Words”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/other/1399459-writer-s-choice.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF The Hybrid Status of Immigrants

Dominican and Puerto Rican Artists in NYC

As Mary Schwartz puts it: Visual manifestations for public consumption, such as graffiti, banners in demonstrations, and murals, play an important role in cultures now recognized as a hybrid because these materials coexist with neon signs and modern architecture, and intersect with transportation systems and urban planning projects....
7 Pages (1750 words) Essay

Pluralism and Assimilation: Two Ways of Looking at the Same Coin

Evidence of such a long-standing problem is of course seen in the hundreds and even thousands of conflicts between new immigrants and slightly older immigrants throughout the many cities on the Eastern seaboard and beyond.... Rather than being greeted by an idealistic society that placed a strong emphasis on cooperation, the immigrants were invariably greeted with the understanding that action required political power and the critical mass of the people to bring about....
5 Pages (1250 words) Essay

Multiple Culture Identity: Comparison of Two Stories

nbsp; The immense inferiority complex of immigrants is portrayed which help in understanding the dilemma of the identity crisis.... The hardships of Chinese immigrants are envisaged in the most peculiar way.... Her son investigates the word hybrid; this makes a series of events to unchain....
9 Pages (2250 words) Essay

Mass Migration in Europe - a Threat or Benefit to Host Countries

 … Europe now compares to North America in its magnitude of immigrants.... Germany, which experienced an exceptionally high inflow of immigrants in the early 1990s, for the same reason, saw a decrease in inflow since the early 1990s (Boswell 2005, p.... More immigrants are entering European countries than leaving them.... According to a study by the German Ministry for Business and Technology, there is a worsening situation of skills shortage in Germany “as more highly skilled Germans leave the country and fewer immigrants arrive” (the UK split into costs and benefits 2007)....
11 Pages (2750 words) Coursework

Emigration in the Last 30 Years in Mexico, Cuba and El Salvador

(Cornelius, Borger, Sawyer, Keyes, Appleby, Parks, Lozada and Hicken, 2008) In general, the US is home to approximately 35 million legal and illegal immigrants, 2.... (United Nations, 2002) The difficulty for the US is the large numbers of Mexican immigrants arriving in the US with no legal immigration status as well as low education....
12 Pages (3000 words) Case Study

Dreamers of Undocumented Immigrants

According to the definition given above illegal immigrants, children who immigrate into the United States at a young age, alongside their illegally immigrating parents, are also considered illegal immigrants.... Every year, tens of thousands of undocumented students graduate from high school, but they lack a clear way forward because they aren't certain of their citizenship or immigrant status....
10 Pages (2500 words) Term Paper

Dominican and Puerto Rican Artists in NYC

This coursework "Dominican and Puerto Rican Artists in NYC" seeks to explore specifically the innovations in the art that these two migrant groups have brought about in New York City.... It explores a few representative individual artists and then draws larger, thematic conclusions from their work....
7 Pages (1750 words) Coursework

Immigration Studies on Korea Town Los Angeles

Initially, the Chinese immigrants disembarked through San Francisco as workers with railroad companies and silver and gold mining.... The Korean immigrants were facing increasing competition and hostilities with native laborers.... Until the 1920s, it was an exclusion era for the Southeast immigrants who were lacking rights of property ownership and citizenship as well.... He argues that if historians followed the struggles of the Koreans, Latinos, and Chinese immigrants to Los Angeles and built their histories, the society as a whole would have seen a history of lives that were well-lived and stories that were worth telling about the town and its immigrants (Yu 542)....
7 Pages (1750 words) Term Paper
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us