Heritage: Too Much or Too Little?

The three works: Mukherjee’s “A Father,” Harjo’s “The Path to the Milky Way Leads through Los Angeles,” and Yamada’s “A Bedtime Story” all focus on people whom are struggling with how to integrate American culture into their lives, while still appreciating their own heritages.

In “The Path to the Milky Way Leads through Los Angeles,” the speaker criticizes how materialistic modern societies (particularly Los Angeles) are these days. He notes how easy it is for one to get lost in the immense sea of strangers, and commercialism. On the outside, L.A. is beautiful – sunny, and full of celebrities and riches. But it lacks the inner beauty, which contains real value. It is also lack’s God’s gift of nature: “stripped of anything resembling the shaking of turtle shells” (3-5). In L.A. – people will do anything for wealth and riches, but they are missing the real value. Finally, he concludes by speaking with a crow; an animal that just watches the people while laughing at them; he tells the speaker to just wait and see.

“A Bedtime Story” consists of a father telling his daughter a legend. The story has it that an old, poor, Japanese lady had nowhere to sleep, and went through an entire village asking the people to sleep in their homes. When everyone turned her down, she resorted to sleeping on the top of a hill. As she was laying their, she was able to admire the beautiful moon. She even went as far as to thank the townspeople – for if they had not denied her shelter, she would have missed the opportunity to view such a “memorable sight.” The Father told his daughter this tale as a way of urging her to firstly appreciate her heritage/culture, and secondly find good in all situations, as the old lady did.. Sadly the young girl clearly did not understand either message; this was shown in her response; “That’s the end?”

“A Father” is the story of an Indian family living in Detroit. Mr. Bhowmick, the father, is attached to his heritage – he says his daily prayers in Sanskrit, has a shrine for his goddess, and missed his homeland. His wife and daughter on the other hand were much more “American.” Babli, Mr. Bhomick’s daughter, particularly adapted well; she had a successful career and good friends. Yet she was missing one piece – a relationship; when it became clear that she would never find someone whom her parents would accept, she saw that her only option in terms of having children was to be artificially inseminated. Ultimately, this upset her parents more than even marrying a white man would have, and ended painfully for her. It was ironic how Mr. Bhowsmick was willing to accept that his daughter was impregnated out of marriage, but that he took such drastic measures as to kill the baby when he learned that the father of the baby was “a bottle and a syringe.”

These authors all showed the difficulties that immigrants show with accepting their new lives, while also maintaining their culture and values, and recognizing their ancestry. Mr. Bhomick in “A Father” would have benefited from opening his eyes more fully to the world he was living in. The daughter in “A Bedtime Story” does not realize the value of embracing her ancestry – and the valuable life lessons she will learn from doing so. One’s background and cultureis an integral part of he/she as a person, and finding a healthy balnce of how much to value it is necessary to lead a complete life.