scholarly journals A Tornado Hitting the Homeland: Disturbing American Foundational Myths in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 112
Author(s):  
Henriette-Juliane Seeliger
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Bharati Mukherjee ◽  
The West ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
American Midwest ◽  
Virgin Land ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Female Immigrant ◽  
American National Identity ◽  
The Ideal

Historically, the United States has always been a country of immigration. Yet, in light of recent political events, a form of nativism and sedentarism is re-emerging that seeks to preserve what is generally perceived as essentially American: an ethnically white and male identity that has its origins in the foundational myths of the pastoral, the frontier, and the West. The American Midwest is where the allegedly “real” America lies: it is what Anthony D. Smith has termed an 2ethnoscape”: a landscape imbued with historical and cultural meaning that has come to represent true “Americanness”. In her 1989 novel Jasmine, Bharati Mukherjee uses the figure of Jasmine, an undocumented female immigrant from India, to disrupt this traditional trope of “the West” as the perceived location of American cultural identity. She liberates the land from its national, historical, and ethnic inscriptions by subverting the very foundational myths of the pastoral, the frontier, manifest destiny, virgin land, and the melting-pot, that are so crucial to the justification of this exclusive as well as exclusionary identity… This article analyzes the processes and mechanisms through which Mukherjee liberates the landscape: Firstly, she satirizes the ideal of the American pastoral and exposes the assumption of a stable, uniquely American landscape as purely imaginative. She then subverts the notion of the global city as the ideal location of immigrants, where “the other” can be safely contained outside the homeland and instead makes the Midwest ethnoscape the space where her protagonist uproots American national identity. Through her presence in the American heartland, Jasmine disturbs and challenges naturalized notions of America and constructs a new homeland that is open for all immigrants following her. Mukherjee thus shifts the perspective away from seeing the American homeland as a pre-existing place in need of defense, and proposes a fluid understanding of home that has acquired new relevance in light of recent political events.

scholarly journals Refugees in our Own Land

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-136
Author(s):  
Ariege Muallem
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Refugee Camp ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The World

Refugees in our Own Land narrates the author’s life between October andDecember 2000, when she was married and living in the West Bank’sDheisheh refugee camp. The book creates a new respect for the refugeesamong whom she lived and gives the reader a glimpse of the incredible difficultiesof their everyday lives.The book is divided into two parts. The first part chronicles Hamzeh’slife during October 4-December 4, 2000: her personal life and that of herfriends in Dheisheh, as well as current political events and how they affectthe life of the refugees in the camp. These almost daily entries were actuallye-mailed to a large number of people while she was still living inDheisheh. The second half of the book is a series of short unrelated storiesand articles, written between 1988 and March 2000, that highlight eventsthat brought her to Dheisheh and explain other events and people in her life.Their order is a bit odd. After the reader gets used to Hamzeh’s life in thecamp, she abruptly ends her entries by describing how she left the camp andthen, just when the reader wants to know what happened next, she startsrelating the events that transpired 2 years ago prior to her journey to theWest Bank. There is no mention of a husband there, and then all of a suddenshe goes from living in the United States to ending up in Dheisheh.How she got there, unfortunately, is never explained. The lack of detailsconcerning such important transitions is quite frustrating. Although shemay have considered them “too personal” to include, it resulted in frustrationon the reader’s part.One success, however, is her exposure of the humanity of people whoso often are dismissed by the world as “refugees.” She mentions their namesand describes their faces and personalities, thereby giving the reader an ...

Africa and the American West

1977 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael McCarthy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
American West ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Virgin Land ◽  
National Symbols ◽  
Buffalo Bill ◽  
Sitting Bull ◽  
Western Experience

The American West has traditionally held a special appeal for the imagination of the citizens of the United States because it has come to represent so much for them. Not only has the vast expanse of land lying roughly to the west of the Mississippi River been the home of a number of America's most celebrated figures — Buffalo Bill and Billy the Kid, Sitting Bull and General Custer — and many of the country's national symbols — the six-gun and the Stetson hat, the homesteader and the pioneer, the cowboy and the Indian — but the “ western experience ” itself has also been looked upon as a basic theme in American life. From Frederick Jackson Turner's now-famous essay of 1893, which served to move discussions of Western America into academic circles, to Henry Nash Smith's analysis of 1950, which examined the mythical and symbolic dimensions of America's “ virgin land,” the story of the West has been viewed as one of the most enduring organizing concepts for understanding America's development and the characteristics of its people. While much of this matter is well-known today and common to the study of the United States, it is but little known that the cluster of ideas associated with the American West has also had implications for what might seem, at first mention, a somewhat unlikely place: Africa.

Transpacific Worlds: Visualizing Asian America in Chan is Missing and Dim Sum

Prospects ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 569-593
Author(s):  
Edward Tang
Keyword(s):  
Asian American ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian Immigrants ◽  
Bharati Mukherjee ◽  
Asian America ◽  
The West ◽  
Cultural Experiences ◽  
Cultural Order

In a 1990 interview for the Bill Moyers television series A World of Ideas, the Asian-American writer Bharati Mukherjee assessed the cultural experiences of Asian immigrants in the Americas. Playing on the rhetoric of 19th-century Manifest Destiny, she asserted that Asian immigrants should come to America to “conquer” it, to possess the nation and make its ideals their own. After all, she argued, many of the original Euro-American pioneers and settlers had been “hustlers” capable of great violence in their westward conquest of the land and native peoples. Arriving from the East, Asian immigrants metaphorically would have to do battle to make the nation more inclusive, and actively overthrow their colonized images as “outsiders” or “Orientals” that have dominated American culture to this day. Doing so, however, requires that these newcomers to the West also “murder” their old selves. In her novel Jasmine (1989), Mukherjee elaborates: “There are no harmless, compassionate ways to remake oneself. We murder who we were so we can rebirth ourselves in the images of dreams.” Because America represents a “stage for transformation,” as she tells Moyers, these dreams of hope, of having choices and opportunities, are being claimed and reinvented continuously as different waves of new arrivals modify or challenge the rules of interaction. Asian immigrants must therefore cast off their stifling Old World traditions, ones that perpetuate “cynicism, irony, and despair” when reconstructing and negotiating through a cultural order now altered by their very presence in the United States.

Gerald H. Thayer's ornithological work in St Vincent and the Grenadines, Lesser Antilles

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Wiley
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Lesser Antilles ◽  
American Museum ◽  
The West ◽  
Comparative Zoology ◽  
North And South America ◽  
North And South

Gerald Handerson Thayer (1883–1939) was an artist, writer and naturalist who worked in North and South America, Europe and the West Indies. In the Lesser Antilles, Thayer made substantial contributions to the knowledge and conservation of birds in St Vincent and the Grenadines. Thayer observed and collected birds throughout much of St Vincent and on many of the Grenadines from January 1924 through to December 1925. Although he produced a preliminary manuscript containing interesting distributional notes and which is an early record of the region's ornithology, Thayer never published the results of his work in the islands. Some 413 bird and bird egg specimens have survived from his work in St Vincent and the Grenadines and are now housed in the American Museum of Natural History (New York City) and the Museum of Comparative Zoology (Cambridge, Massachusetts). Four hundred and fifty eight specimens of birds and eggs collected by Gerald and his father, Abbott, from other countries are held in museums in the United States.

Mafias on the Move

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Varese
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Market Expansion ◽  
The North ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
At Will

Organized crime is spreading like a global virus as mobs take advantage of open borders to establish local franchises at will. That at least is the fear, inspired by stories of Russian mobsters in New York, Chinese triads in London, and Italian mafias throughout the West. As this book explains, the truth is more complicated. The author has spent years researching mafia groups in Italy, Russia, the United States, and China, and argues that mafiosi often find themselves abroad against their will, rather than through a strategic plan to colonize new territories. Once there, they do not always succeed in establishing themselves. The book spells out the conditions that lead to their long-term success, namely sudden market expansion that is neither exploited by local rivals nor blocked by authorities. Ultimately the inability of the state to govern economic transformations gives mafias their opportunity. In a series of matched comparisons, the book charts the attempts of the Calabrese 'Ndrangheta to move to the north of Italy, and shows how the Sicilian mafia expanded to early twentieth-century New York, but failed around the same time to find a niche in Argentina. The book explains why the Russian mafia failed to penetrate Rome but succeeded in Hungary. A pioneering chapter on China examines the challenges that triads from Taiwan and Hong Kong find in branching out to the mainland. This book is both a compelling read and a sober assessment of the risks posed by globalization and immigration for the spread of mafias.

Ideal body position for epinephrine autoinjector administration

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qing Wang ◽  
Luke Pittman ◽  
Andrew Healey ◽  
James Chang ◽  
T. Ted Song
Keyword(s):  
Body Position ◽  
Vastus Lateralis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Thigh Muscle ◽  
First Line ◽  
Medical Treatment Facility ◽  
First Line Therapy ◽  
Epinephrine Autoinjector ◽  
Ideal Body ◽  
The Ideal

Background: Epinephrine is the first-line therapy for patients with anaphylaxis, and intramuscular (IM) delivery is shownto be superior to subcutaneous (SC) delivery. There currently is no consensus on the ideal body position for epinephrine autoinjector (EAI) administration.Objective: We designed this study to investigate whether SC tissue depth (SCTD) is affected by body position (e.g., standing, sitting, supine), which can potentially impact delivery of EAI into the IM space.Methods: Volunteer adults (ages >/= 18 years) from a military medical treatment facility in the United States were recruitedto participate in this study. SCTD of the vastus lateralis was measured via ultrasound at standing, sitting, and supine bodypositions. Subjects’ age, sex, and body mass index (BMI) were collected. Statistical analysis was performed to compare averageSCTD between body positions, sex, and BMI.Results: An analysis of variance of 51 participants (33 men and 18 women) did not reveal statistically significant differencein SCTD among standing, sitting, and supine body positions. It did show a significantly greater SCTD in women than in men (2.72 +/- 1.36 cm versus 1.10 +/- 0.38 cm; p < 0.001). There was no significant association observed between BMI and SCTD in this study.Conclusion: Body position did not seem to significantly change the distance between skin and thigh muscle in adults. Thiswould suggest that there might not be an ideal body position for EAI administration. Therefore, in case of anaphylaxis, promptadministration of epinephrine is recommended at any position.

Problems of military-political interaction between the countries of the West and Central Asia at the turn of the XX–XXI centuries

2020 ◽  
pp. 27-33
Author(s):  
Boris G. Koybaev
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Bases ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
The West ◽  
Regional Environment ◽  
Western Influence ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Political Interaction ◽  
The Military

Central Asia in recent history is a vast region with five Muslim States-new actors in modern international relations. The countries of Central Asia, having become sovereign States, at the turn of the XX–XXI centuries are trying to peaceful interaction not only with their underdeveloped neighbors, but also with the far-off prosperous West. At the same time, the United States and Western European countries, in their centrosilic ambitions, seek to increase their military and political presence in Central Asia and use the military bases of the region’s States as a springboard for supplying their troops during anti-terrorist and other operations. With the active support of the West, the Central Asian States were accepted as members of the United Nations. For monitoring and exerting diplomatic influence on the regional environment, the administration of the President of the Russian Federation H. W. Bush established U.S. embassies in all Central Asian States. Turkey, a NATO member and secular Islamic state, was used as a lever of indirect Western influence over Central Asian governments, and its model of successful development was presented as an example to follow.

The Rise and Fall of Great Powers

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geir Lundestad
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
The West ◽  
Economic Modernization

There are no laws in history. Realists, liberals, and others are both right and wrong. Although no one can be certain that military incidents may not happen, for the foreseeable future China and the United States are unlikely to favor major war. They have cooperated well for almost four decades now. China is likely to continue to focus on its economic modernization. It has far to go to measure up to the West. The American-Chinese economies are still complementary. A conflict with the United States or even with China’s neighbors would have damaging repercussions for China’s economic goals. The United States is so strong that it would make little sense for China to take it on militarily. There are also other deterrents against war, from nuclear weapons to emerging norms about international relations. It is anybody’s guess what will happen after the next few decades. History indicates anything is possible.

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