Rebika Chatterpaul funny in farsi PDF

Preview

Summary

Reaction paper #1 about Frioozeh Dumas “Funny in Farsi Chapter 1- Leffingwell Elementary School....

Description

Rebika Chatterpaul February 1 2017 Reaction paper #1 Frioozeh Dumas “Funny in Farsi Chapter 1- Leffingwell Elementary School” Frioozeh and her family just moved from Abadan Iran to Whitter California. They moved because Frioozeh father Kazem, had been assigned to the national Iranian oil company for about two years. Frioozeh father enrolled her to start school at Leffingwell Elementary. A few days before school was supposed to start, she met with her new teacher, Mrs.Sandberg. Her father was the only one talking to the teacher because Frioozeh and her mother doesn’t know how to speak English that well. On the first day of school, Frioozeh’s mother Nazireh went with her to school. When class started Mrs.Sandberg asked Nazireh to go to the map and point out Iran. After a few tries Nazireh couldn’t find it and both Frioozeh and Nazireh were embarrassed. After school was done, Frioozeh and her mother walked home but ended up getting lost even though they were a few blocks away from their new home. They were then helped by a young girl and her mother, who let them borrow their house phone and walked them to their house. In “Hot Dogs and Wild Geese”, Frioozeh comes to find out that even though her father still knowledge of the American culture and the English language he still had trouble dealing with the Americans. In college, her father didn’t get out much and his only friend was his roommate, a Pakistani. They both bonded over curry. Wanting to know the American language and cultural, he began to read. As the chapter starts, I can see that Frioozeh faces many struggles in American. From the very start she runs into difficulties with no easy way of overcoming them. She knows little to none English and from what I see is that she feels like any outcast in her second grade class. “Now all the students stared at us, not because I had come to school with my mother, not because we couldn’t speak their language, but because we were stupid. She also thinks that everyone thinks that she is stupid because her mother couldn’t find Iran on the map. She was embarrassed because her mother couldn’t find Iran on the map. Frioozeh father made the impression on his family that he knew how to speak English very well and also the impression that he was similar with the ways of the “Americans”. When they moved to Whitter, Frioozeh and her family came to learn that her father didn’t know the English language that well and he had a hard time in college. When they came to find this out they thought he was making up all the things he had told them about his years in America. “Once we reached America, we wondered whether perhaps my father had confused his life in America with someone else”. From everything her father told them is completely different how they experience things with him now that they are living in America. When I first read this part of the chapter, it reminded me on several occasions when I went to Guyana on vacations in 2010 after 10 years of living in America. In Guyana the people spoke English but not so well. The English that they speak is called “broken down English”. It was kind of of hard for them to understand what I was saying and also hard for me to understand what they were saying. Many times, they would ask me to slow down when I talk and times where I would say “I don’t understand what you are trying to say or what do you mean by that”. There are many struggles that Frioozeh overcame when she came to America. She had difficulties with the language barriers, self-identify, discovering a new place and cross-cultural misunderstanding. With hard work and dedication, Frioozeh overcame all of these struggles she faced when she first came to America....