Unseen Immigrant fiction context/ wider reading

Question 1

What tropes are displayed in The Thing Around Your Neck by Adichie?

Answer 1

• trope of nostalgic immigrant - ‘They spoke Igbo and are garri for lunch and it was like home’ (narrator feels at home with family doing their cultural practices)
• sense of sacrifice - ‘you gave up a lot but you gained a lot too’
• ‘a mixture of ignorance and arrogance’ from the host community about immigrant’s cultural practices - college girls ask Akunna if there are houses in Africa
• discomfort with host community’s cultural practices - hates hot dogs
• disillusionment with host community - ‘In a month, you will have a big car’, hoping for more opportunities
• hard working / ambitious immigrant

Question 2

What tropes are displayed in Brick Lane by Monica Ali?

Answer 2

• feelings of displacement, looks different (Anderson’s imagined communities) - ‘The women had strange hair’
• communication barriers with host community - ‘She had spoken one word, in English, to a stranger, and she had been understood’
• resilient immigrant - Nazneen hurts her ankle, can’t cross the road at first but keeps going
• adopting host communities cultural practices to assimilate - Nazneen crosses the road with a British woman ‘like a calf with its mother’
• unfamiliar/ overwhelming new setting - ‘kingdoms of rubbish’ ‘ to get to the other side of the street without being hit by a car was like walking out in a monsoon and hoping to dodge the raindrops’

Question 3

What key immigrant experiences are highlighted in Riz Ahmed’s Airports and Auditions

Answer 3

• on being detained at airports - ‘the situation itself is infantilising’
• three stages to portrayals of ethnic minorities:
stage 1- the two dimensional stereotype (minivan driver, terrorist)
stage 2 - subversive portrayal, challenging stereotypes
stage 3 - the Promised Land - you play a character who is not intrinsically linked to his race

Question 4

What key immigrant experiences are highlighted in On Going Home by Kieran Yates?

Answer 4

• issues with communication barrier - ‘language is a great battle to fight, and for many it’s a war you always feel like you’re losing’
• hybrid identity - ‘I have a stake in two worlds and this makes me able to love and respect them and absorb the details which simultaneously empower and disempower me’
‘My attempts to align with the traditional Punjab identity fall flat and I’m getting it wrong over and over’

Question 5

What key immigrant experiences are highlighted in The Wife of a Terrorist by Miss L?

Answer 5

• communication barriers/ ignorance, in drama school asked to do an ‘immigrant accent’
• stereotyping - ‘my terrorist casting is down to my skin colour and my slightly unpronounceable name’

Question 6

Upton Sinclair’s ‘The Jungle’

Answer 6

• Immigrant characters herded like cattle from place to place without freedom, only knowing one word ‘Chicago’ in English

Question 7

Americanah by Adichie

Answer 7

• Aunty Uju believes she has to take her braids out before her interview to be a doctor to present a more acceptable version of herself
• Ifemelu, her niece, misses home, connected to the community through her boyfriend Obinze who lives in Lagos still
• Ifemelu strives to go to college and create a new life for herself

Question 8

Sexy by Jhumpa Lahiri

Answer 8

• from the perspective of host community member Miranda
• recalls the Dixits, who were Indian immigrants in America, bullied and othered by their white neighbours
• objectifies her Indian boyfriend Dev’s culture, imagining ‘deserts’ ‘elephants’ and marble pavilions when she is with him

Question 9

The Road Home by Rose Tremain

Answer 9

• perspective of Eastern European immigrant Lev
• Lev is trying to access London toilets, doesn’t understand turnstile, physically barricaded and prevented from entering, symbolic of difficulty assimilating
• trying to present a Westernised, approachable and friendly version of himself, asking stranger politely to help him use the turnstile but still rejected

Question 10

Jews Without Money by Micheal Gold

Answer 10

• narrator Mike is born and raised in London by a family of Jewish immigrants, exploring how the community within their family and the slum they live in allows them to survive
• Fyfka the Miser does 13 hour factory shifts, aspiring for a career in business
• Mike’s family help other immigrants to move to America, housing and feeding them whilst they assimilate
• however are taken advantage of e.g by Fyfka the Miser (inter immigrant conflict)

Question 11

Monica Ali Brick Lane

Answer 11

• trope of arranged marriage, Bangladeshi narrator Nazneen moves to London at age 18 to live with husband Chanu
• Their flat is furnished to give the illusion of grandeur with too many ‘end tables’, soulless and performative which Nazneen hates
• Nazneen works nonstop mending clothes to save for their return to Bangladesh, where her and her husband Chanu hope to make a fresh start
• Nazneen has two young daughters: Shahana, who refuses to accept or associate with her parents’ Bangladeshi heritage, whilst Bibi tries to please everyone

Question 12

My Dead Brother comes to America by Alexander Godin

Answer 12

• short story, perspective of a young immigrant boy coming to America for the first time, father is already there, left to work when narrator was 5
• detailed description of industrial, urban setting of New York, highlights unfamiliar and disorientating nature of the host community