(about Lucy,immmigration, and first exprience in USA : Essay first Draft)
Imagine coming to New York City for the first time in your life, how would you feel leaving your own native country , leaving your family and love ones behind & miles and miles away from home ?? How would you feel not knowing what to expect , not understanding the language ?? Not getting use to the food and not knowing the streets very well....how would you feel ?? Well I only asked you to imagine such senero, but some people actually have exprienced these kinds of feelings in reality. "Immigrants when leaving their country also leave everything familiar, their family, friends, support network, and culture. They also need to liquidate their assets often at a large loss, and incur the expense of moving. When they arrive in a new country this is often with many uncertainties including finding work, where to live, new laws, new cultural norms, language or accent issues, possible racism and other exclusionary behavior towards them and their family".(artical of encyclopedia : Immigration)
In the novel "Lucy " writen by Jamaica Kincaid, made us feel the unforgetable expriences of being a new immgrant in a new country throug the eyes of a girl named Lucy. When she first comes to U.S.A. her expectations were different ,It was her dream to come to America she use to think this is where dreams comes to reality. When Lucy first comes to America she realized that America is a lot different from where she came from. When she arrived here she began to see things differently.
She felt lonely like in the passage she say " a famous building, an important street, a park, a bridge that when built was thought to be a spectacle. In a day- dream I use to have , all these places were points of happiness to me; all these places were lifeboats to my small drowning soul , for I would imagine myself entering and leaving them, and just that entering and leaving over and over again - would see me through a bad feeling I did not have a name for. I only knew it felt a little like sadness but heavier than that. Now that I saw these places , they looked ordinary, dirty, worn down by so many people entering and leaving them in real life , and it occured to me that I could not be the only person in the world for whom they were a fixture of fantasy. It was not my first bout with disappointment of reality and it would not be my last."(Jamaica Kincaid:Lucy)
Lucy felt disrespected and disappointed by people who she was living with when she came to America .They didn't treat her like she is part of the family or she means something to them, and the house maid she was living with made fun of her english accent and told her that she wasn't likeable. She missed her family and the way she use to be treated very special in her own country. She use to feel more meaningful within her own people, her parents, her friends, and other people she grew up knowing. But here in America she was just known as a Baby sitter to the family she lived with and worked for, she had no close friends or relatives to support her in feeling that this is where she belongs. She also mentioned the season changes she wasn't use to it, that even though when it was sunnny the tempature was very cold. At the end of the novel Lucy meets a girl named Mariah they were like friends, she thought Mariah was kind of funny of how she discribes seasons in USA and how disaponinted Mariah was because the weather didn't live up to her expectations, becoming upset because of the weather changes was very new to Lucy . In my belief I think most of the immgrants who goes to another country without family ,relatives or friends supporting them ends up feeling like Lucy very lonly and disapointed and completely different from others around them.
When I first came to USA, I was 7 years old it was right after Christmas and three days after New Year's celebration. When I came to JFK airport I remembered the first thing I saw stepping out of the plane,was the Christmas tree . It was very beautiful and very exciting for me I never saw chrismas tree before and so many decorations everywhere and over all I was going to meet with my dad after 7 years, and more exciting then that was the snow, for the first time in my life I was playing with solid rain falling out of the sky. I never felt bad about comming to USA because I was with my family and all I wanted more was for my grandma to be with me but she wasn't. I had to leave many relatives and friends in my country. I missed them all the time especially when school started. I didn't know english, other students use to bother me all the time because they knew that I couldn't complain to the teacher. Worst of all was the lonliness that I felt, I had no friends but in my country I had lots of friends, I was very popular in my school , teachers and all students use to love me alot and everyone knew me but here in USA I didn't know anyone in school. I didn't like to eat anything because I was so use to my country food. I only slept during day time and stayed awake at night because I wasn't use to the time changes. In many ways I felt like how Lucy felt when she first came to USA. It took me about five years to get use to everything, the food , learn the language completely well ,the culture and more imporatantly I learned to interact with all different kinds of people who are also from different parts of the world. Now living in New York City for 13 years I realized that this is where I belong, my home and there no other place can feel like this.
It's just the matter of time and how we see ourself in a place and how we can relate to a certain kind of environment America in the world is how cultures and Ideas of America is distributed around the world and how cultures and ideas of other countries impact our lives in USA. These days it seems like everything is culturely defused, we can find Rap in almost all kinds of music and you can find indian or chinese resturansts in any local areas, and many people in other countries started dressing like how Americans do
and many of Americans started to watch bollywood movies and it goes on and on, it never end to how one country changes another country in various ways. America is a big change for new immigrants. People from all over the world comes to America for better life, sometimes when they arrive here they realize that America is not really like how they imagined, like Lucy. People comes here they work hard to get their self a better life and build up their self in this environment. Then their better life becomes inspirations to other people around the world to come to USA and when they come here they end up experiencing similar things Lucy had experienced, when she first came to USA. Through out history immigration have become increasingly associated with many countries, people from all over the world either migrate or visti a different country for many reasons. "Particularly in the 19th century, economic expansion of the U.S. increased immigrant flow, and in effect, nearly 20% of the population was foreign born versus today’s values of 10%, making up a significant amount of the labor force. Poor individuals from less developed countries can have far higher standards of living in developed countries than in their originating countries."(artical of encyclopedia : Immigration).
This is what so great about USA is that you are given chance to make your dreams in to reality and ours rights of making those dreams into reality and that is what makes life in America so rich.
