Immigrant Experience: Literary Comparison (Unseen)

Question 1

‘_________ he shares a ______ not a ___’

Answer 1

‘Whom he shares a name not a life’

The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri

Question 2

‘_____ she had _____ been __________ else’

Answer 2

‘Even she had once been someone else’

Americanah - Chimamanda Adichie

Question 3

‘______ enough to have ____ their ______ in the _____ from which they had ___________’

Answer 3

‘Long enough to have lost their place in the society from which they had emigrated’

Sour Sweet - Timothy Mo

Question 4

‘It _____ him ____ like a ____________’

Answer 4

‘It made him feel like a gatecrasher’

Sour Sweet - Timothy Mo

Question 5

‘____ was a _________ here’

Answer 5

‘She was a nobody here’

Brooklyn - Colm Toibin

Question 6

‘They had ______ to be ________ with ________ __________’

Answer 6

‘They had begun to be viewed with blatant hostility’

Girl, Woman, Other - Bernadine Evaristo
(Amma reflects on experience of hijabi women following 9/11)

Question 7

‘The new ________ were still _______ it, ____ in _______’

Answer 7

‘The new emigrants were still tasting it, lost in wonder’

The Jungle - Upton Sinclair

Question 8

‘Nothing _________ to the ________ she had of ______’

Answer 8

‘Nothing compared to the picture she had of home’

Brooklyn - Colm Toibin

Question 9

Context : Brooklyn - Colm Toibin

Answer 9

• Protagonist: Eilis
• Urged by her parents to migrate to Brooklyn from a small town in rural Ireland

Question 10

Context: The Jungle - Upton Sinclair

Answer 10

• 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

Question 11

Context: Girl, Woman, Other - Bernadine Evaristo

Answer 11

• Polyphonic novel
• Follows the struggles/experiences of 12 Black British women who are interconnected

Question 12

Context: Sour Sweet - Timothy Mo

Answer 12

• 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)

Question 13

Context: Americanah - Chimamanda Adichie

Answer 13

• 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

Question 14

Context: The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri

Answer 14

• 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

Question 15

‘Land of ________’

Answer 15

‘Land of promise’

Sour Sweet - Timothy Mo (Chen refers to England)

Question 16

What is the perspective/narrative of ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’?

Answer 16

• First person narrative
• Written in the form of a letter from a Vietnamese American son (Little Dog) to his illiterate mother (Rose)

Question 17

Describe the immigration in ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’

Answer 17

• Immigrated from Vietnam to America, Connecticut
• Spent months in a refugee processing camp in the Philippines awaiting immigration to the USA

Question 18

‘Palms already ________ and __________’

Answer 18

‘Palms already callused and blistered’

• His mother has sacrificed her own well being by working in the nail salon
• Motivated by need to provide for her son

Question 19

‘Your ______ are _________ and I hate ___________ that made them that ____’

Answer 19

‘Your hands are hideous and I hate everything that made them that way’

• Idea of sacrifice in the host country in order to survive
• Immigrant parents sacrificing for their children, enduring pain/hardship for opportunities

Question 20

‘What I ______ of work I know _______ of ____’

Answer 20

‘What I know of work I know equally of loss’

• Immigrants work to achieve/access the opportunities of the host country, but lose themselves as a result
• Immigrant parents sacrifice of hard-work means they are less present in their child’s life