Case Study On The Course

Shakespearian dilemma in the U.S.A.: “To be or not to be?”
The divisive issue of immigration in the United States does not come as a huge surprise. Especially when the illegal immigrants are concerned, it is perpetually surrounded by the heated discussions, threatening rhetoric, protests, political manipulation, and so on. However, reading Bharati Mukherjee’s article, “Two Ways to Belong in America,” made me realize that this controversial topic can tear even loving members of the same family apart, at least ideologically. The dividing line between Bharati’s and her sister’s positions is nothing more than unequivocal. What made these two sisters to take such diametrically opposite positions, I wondered.
Was it the fact of marrying an Indian man that made Mira to preserve her “Indianness”? If Bharati didn’t marry an American of Canadian parentage, would she be different? After all, the intercultural marriages tend to weaken traditional ties and make people to adjust to the new way of life. Also, I could not help but notice that Bharati was too judgmental toward her sister – she pitied Mira “for the narrowness of her perspective.” At the end, I was trying to imagine myself as being one of the sisters, with two of us growing up in the same narrowly defining tradition of the caste system, moving abroad to pursue an intellectual aspiration under the umbrella of the American Dream, and finally settling down in our new motherland. Whom would I become – Bharati or Mira? While, in my mind, I knew that I would accept the way my sister wants to belong, I also realized that I would become the former, a maverick of a sort, who breaks the centuries-imposed family mold and embraces the new country as my own.