In “Rhode Island”, the writer Jhumpa Lahiri describes, “One day, after she’d been working at the school for a decade, she started to receive anonymous hate email. It came in the form of notes placed in her mailbox at school, and eventually in her coat pocket. There were nine notes in total. The handwriting was meant to look like a child’s awkward scrawl. The content was humiliating, painful to recount” (Lahiri 107). In other words, from this paragraph, we can see that even the writer’s mom had been a resident of Rhodes Island for twenty-seven years, some local still have prejudice to her and she sometimes would still get some cold welcome from the people on the island.
Throughout the passage “ Rhode Island”, the writer writes something about his parents who originally came from India and lives on the Rhode Island for many years. Their life really resonates with me, because it really reminds me of what my parents experienced about twenty years ago. My parents’ hometown are all in the northern part of China and they went to the same college in north China. Because in China at that time, if you did well at school, school will arrange job for you, after graduation, my parent were both arranged a job in Guangdong, a highly developed province in the southern part of China. Because of some historical reasons and it is very close to Hong Kong and Macau, almost all the people in Guangdong speaks a language which is quite different from mandarin, called Cantonese. My parents had never lived in Guangdong before, so they did not know even a little bit of Cantonese at that time. What is more, because the Cantonese culture in many aspects are quite different from that of the rest of China. My parents found it very difficult to get accustomed to when they first came to Guangdong. Even after they have settled there for several years, now when they go to some places where it is quite local, they may still get some special treatment just because of their accent and living styles. However, just like Lahiri’s parents, during these years in Guangdong, my parents also have set up many good relationships with local people and gradually have become familiar with the local culture. My mother is a teacher as well. She taught accounting in a local university. She is loved and respected by many of her students. Both of my parents really like their jobs and quite enjoy their life in Guangdong right now.
In the last paragraph of Lahiri’s article, he told us that “Due to my parents’ beliefs, whenever they do die, they will not be buried in Rhode Island soil…There will be no longer be a reason to break the journey in Little Rest. Like many others, we will pass through without stopping” (Lahiri 111). Here, we are talking about a sense of belonging. Just like Lahiri’s parents, even having lived in Guangdong for a lot of years, my parents would now still identify themselves as northern people. They still like speaking mandarin at home and are more comfortable with northern style food and living style. I think that this is something that is in the blood of them. No one can change that in them. It is their own sense of belonging and how they identify themselves.
Works Cited
Jhumpa Lahiri. “Where Are You From? Notions of Identity &Place.” Rhode Island. 101-113. Print.