Immigrant Experience: Literary Comparison Flashcards
‘_________ he shares a ______ not a ___’
‘Whom he shares a name not a life’
The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
‘_____ she had _____ been __________ else’
‘Even she had once been someone else’
Americanah - Chimamanda Adichie
‘______ enough to have ____ their ______ in the _____ from which they had ___________’
‘Long enough to have lost their place in the society from which they had emigrated’
Sour Sweet - Timothy Mo
‘It _____ him ____ like a ____________’
‘It made him feel like a gatecrasher’
Sour Sweet - Timothy Mo
‘____ was a _________ here’
‘She was a nobody here’
Brooklyn - Colm Toibin
‘They had ______ to be ________ with ________ __________’
‘They had begun to be viewed with blatant hostility’
Girl, Woman, Other - Bernadine Evaristo
(Amma reflects on experience of hijabi women following 9/11)
‘The new ________ were still _______ it, ____ in _______’
‘The new emigrants were still tasting it, lost in wonder’
The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
‘Nothing _________ to the ________ she had of ______’
‘Nothing compared to the picture she had of home’
Brooklyn - Colm Toibin
Context : Brooklyn - Colm Toibin
- Protagonist: Eilis
- Urged by her parents to migrate to Brooklyn from a small town in rural Ireland
Context: The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
- Protagonist: Jurgis
- Backdrop of early 20th-century industrialization (meat-packing)
- Follows Rudkus family, immigrants from Lithuania to Chicago
- Idealistic vision of America is quickly crushed by grinding poverty/dangerous work
Context: Girl, Woman, Other - Bernadine Evaristo
- Polyphonic novel
- Follows the struggles/experiences of 12 Black British women who are interconnected
Context: Sour Sweet - Timothy Mo
- Married couple Chen and Lily who migrate to London from Hong Kong
- Lily manipulates her
traditional role in order to take control of their restaurant (Idealistic ambitions)
Context: Americanah - Chimamanda Adichie
- Protagonist: Ifemelu
- Nigerian woman who immigrates to the US from Nigeria to attend university
- Experiences identity crisis (seeks to assimilate into American culture e.g speaking ‘American-English’)
- Eventually embraces her Nigerian accent, natural hair, and returns to Nigeria
Context: The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
- Protagonist: Gogol
- First-generation immigrant who’s parents migrated to US from Calcutta
- Feels disconnected from his origins, changes his name to ‘Nikhil’
- mother (Ashima) is subservient/adheres to traditional Indian values
‘Land of ________’
‘Land of promise’
Sour Sweet - Timothy Mo (Chen refers to England)
