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The Immigrant Experience

The international system is characterized by the nation-states as its basic units. People live with their nations in their own specific geographical locations. Being stateless is a fate no one wants in this modern international system. Nevertheless, millions of people still live as immigrants in foreign countries. Being an immigrant is a bitter experience as varied circumstances often compel people to opt for this option of migration. The immigrant experience is the theme of these two short stories that highlight how people suffer when they become immigrants in foreign lands. The Boundary by Jhumpa Lahiri and the story “For What They Shared” is an exact description of this troubling experience.

To begin with, immigrants are not welcomed in foreign lands, and they are viewed as outsiders ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"6ERuMuj0","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Hua)","plainCitation":"(Hua)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":515,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/ZD9MNZ2P/items/4KARB6N2"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/ZD9MNZ2P/items/4KARB6N2"],"itemData":{"id":515,"type":"book","title":"Deceit and Other Possibilities: Stories","publisher":"Willow Books","number-of-pages":"147","source":"Google Books","abstract":"In this powerful debut collection, Vanessa Hua gives voice to immigrant families navigating a new America. Tied to their ancestral and adopted homelands in ways unimaginable in generations past, these memorable characters straddle both worlds but belong to none. These stories shine a light on immigrant families navigating a new America, straddling cultures and continents, veering between dream and disappointment. From a Hong Kong movie idol fleeing a sex scandal, to an obedient daughter turned Stanford pretender, from a Chinatown elder summoned to his village, to a Korean-American pastor with a secret agenda, the characters in the collection illustrate the conflict between self and society, tradition and change. In \"What We Have is What We Need,\" winner of The Atlantic student fiction prize, a boy from Mexico reunites with his parents in San Francisco. When he suspects his mother has found love elsewhere, he fights to keep his family together. With insight and wit, she writes about what wounds us and what we must survive. Deceit and Other Possibilities marks the emergence of a remarkable new writer. Vanessa Hua is an award-winning journalist and writer, and a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. For nearly two decades, she has been writing about Asia and the diaspora, filing stories from China, Burma, Panama, South Korea, Abu Dhabi, and Ecuador. Her fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, ZYZZYVA, Guernica, and elsewhere.","ISBN":"978-0-9971996-2-8","note":"Google-Books-ID: IKi3jwEACAAJ","title-short":"Deceit and Other Possibilities","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Hua","given":"Vanessa"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2016"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Hua). They have a huge problem in the assimilation process, and they often at the brink of being a "Marginal Man" in those foreign cultures. This ill-side of being an immigrant is highlighted from the quote in “For what they shared” where the author stated, “she knew her people were targets in America” (Hua, 6), so it is how often immigrants are treated in other countries. Then the storied Boundary ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"PMPZBBCw","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Lahiri)","plainCitation":"(Lahiri)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":513,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/ZD9MNZ2P/items/JIAQB8YK"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/ZD9MNZ2P/items/JIAQB8YK"],"itemData":{"id":513,"type":"article-magazine","title":"“The Boundary”","source":"www.newyorker.com","abstract":"“After just a few hours, it’s as if they’d always lived here. The things they’ve brought for a week in the country are scattered all over the place.”","URL":"https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/29/the-boundary","ISSN":"0028-792X","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Lahiri","given":"Jhumpa"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2018",1,22]]},"accessed":{"date-parts":[["2019",7,10]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Lahiri) also highlights also native people become envious of other foreigners and their lifestyles. Here Lahiri states that “hear everything as they eat. The laughter and chatter are louder tonight. The family relates all their mishaps in the country: the tomato-eating crickets, the funeral under the plum tree, the sheepdog, the fox that carried off the flip-flop. The mother says that being in touch with nature like this has been good for the girls (Lahiri,5). In this way, native people do not feel good about visitors and the become jealous of their own patterns of life.

Thus, immigrants in foreign lands often encounter different kind of experiences. Nevertheless, they remain a constant target for native people without a shadow of a doubt.

Works Cited

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Hua, Vanessa. Deceit and Other Possibilities: Stories. Willow Books, 2016.

https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=IKi3jwEACAAJ&dq=deceit+and+possibilities&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj3wJy3-6njAhUVtXEKHZ-HDgYQ6AEIKDAA

Lahiri, Jhumpa. “The Boundary.” Jan. 2018. www.newyorker.com, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/29/the-boundary.