American Assimilation

The short story "A Father," by Bharati Mukherjee, the poem The Path to the Milky Way leads through Los Angeles, by Joy Harjo, and the poem A Bedtime Story, by Mitsuye Yamada each take place in America, but derive influences from the character's native country. Being able to combine the two nations in each of the characters is handled in different ways.
Mukherjee's story "A Father" is about a man, Mr. Bhowmick, and his family. His wife is an agnostic and his daughter doesn't care too much about her religion, so the father stands alone in his prayers and worshipping. Mr. Bhowmick moved to Detroit to please his wife, and was able to find a better job there. He was also a very superstitious man and didn't take the signs from his worshipping figure and heritage lightly. "Mr. Bhowmick was also a prudent enough man to know that some abiding truth lies bunkered within each wanton Hindu superstition." (pg 661) After his neighbor sneezed he knew something was going to happen, and it turned out he found out that his daughter was pregnant when he went back in the house to re-start his trip. Both Mr. Bhowmick and his wife were very traditioned in their customs. When their daughter, Babli, fessed up to being pregnant she also told them that there was no man involved. In America this is a rising custom for women who want a family, but don't necessarily want or need a man to do it. Mr. Bhowmick was fine with the fact that she was pregnant, but when he found out their was no father the idea was just unacceptable. The mother referred to her daughter "like an animal"(pg 665) and "Mr. Bhowmick lifted the rolling pin high above his head and brought it down hard on the dome of Babli's stomach."(pg 665) In this story the combination of the father's old Hindu heritage and the new American lifestyle did not mix well. Sometimes cultures are so different that people can never fully assimilate.
Harjo's The Path to the Milky Way Leads through Los Angeles is about an immigrant moving to the city of Los Angeles. The reader gets this from the first line where "there are strangers above me, below me, and all around me and we are all strange in this place of recent invention." The poem is about coming to a new place, not knowing where to go or fit in, and waiting for someone to guide you. "We must matter to the strange god who imagines us as we revolve together in the dark sky on the path to the Milky Way," (line 11-12) gives the image that this guide is a god and that everybody is a part of this galaxy and feels this way at some point in their lives. This city is so strange to the speaker not only because they aren't familiar with it, but they aren't familiar with its customs and ideas of profit seeking souls. In America people will do almost anything to make money, because it is so important to Americans. So when people come here, especially to a huge city like Los Angeles, they don't expect it's fast paced and crude behavior, and when you aren't accustomed to it you feel like you'll never fit in.
Yamada's A Bedtime Story is a poem where a parent is telling their child, who are from Seattle, a story about an old Japanese woman. In this story the woman is shut out by everyone when she is trying to find a place to sleep for a night. In the end of the story the woman thanks these people, because if they didn't shut her out she wouldn't be able to see the beautiful sight that was outside at night. The last stanza of the poem explains the significance of the story. It says "Papa paused, I waited. In the comfort of our hillptop home in Seattle overlooking the valley, I shouted "That's the end?"(lines 40-45) From this stanza the reader understands how much things have changed in America. We look for excitement in the everyday and don't like to accept anything less. We don't really care about people we don't know, even if we are related to them by heritage.
These two poems and the short story explain the differences in American culture and the difficulties of assimilating to it. We forget that our families were immigrants at one time too and our culture now is based on their heritage.