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Debate about whether Gogol was right to change his name to "Nikhil" or not

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Debate about whether Gogol was right to change his name to "Nikhil" or not

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Arguments for Gogol to change his name to Nikhil:
- His parents wanted him to be officially Nikhil;
- Gogol is a Russian name and he didn't know about the context of his name until after changing his name, he could not connect with the cultural implications of his name;
- It is a way for him to acknowledge his Bengali roots and culture (he chose a Bengali name, not an American one);
- It made his life easier as he stopped worrying about what people would think about his name so much;
- It made him able to have new experiences and meet new people in life;
- He was able invest the time spent on worrying about his name on other things in his life;
- It's legal, he has the freedom and right to change his name.

Response to opposing points:
- Changing his name was a cathartic process to let go of this internalized anger towards his name;
- Who are you to decide for him? If he believed it was beneficial to him and he wanted to do it why should he be blamed? He was the one the most impacted bu this, why should he ask permission first, he was a grown adult, no significant harm was made;
- Most transgender people also change their name and this is a hard process to lose a piece of your identity, however, what you gain into being truer to yourself as well as more in line with who you are externally and internally is extremely beneficial, giving up the "created" identity of Gogol was important for his true identity as "Nikhil";
- Even though he wanted his name to be "Gogol" as a child doesn't mean he HAS to keep this opinion throughout his life; opinions are made to be challenged and a good opinion is always a well-thought-out one that is open to change, as well as flexibility.

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You are Ashoke. Explain why you didn't take your grandfather's advice and continue to see the world as an armchair traveler, only through books. Talk about the train accident and how your period of convalescence made you want to pursue your graduate studies abroad and see the world during your youth, as Ghosh had urged you to do, before it would be "too late" (16).

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You are Ashoke. Explain why you didn't take your grandfather's advice and continue to see the world as an armchair traveler, only through books. Talk about the train accident and how your period of convalescence made you want to pursue your graduate studies abroad and see the world during your youth, as Ghosh had urged you to do, before it would be "too late" (16).

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When one lives what I have lived, they cannot be satisfied with books anymore, however well they are written. There is a certain rebirth that happens after being face to face with death and this awakening shakes you, makes you think. Is the life I'm leading really the one that I want? Is this the kind of person I want to be? For a whole year of immobility, those questions flourished in my mind, watered by the words of Ghosh. While I was being fed by the hands of the ones who loved me, I decided, silently, to betray them, my own blood. I wanted to see the world, however selfish that was. I needed to. I wouldn't survive half a century of book reading and stability. I needed change. How strange that the words of a stranger who died a few hours after I met him sounded more powerful than the ones of my own grandfather, who had given me my adoration for books, my identity. I will never be able to explain why that was, but maybe, just maybe, he said something that I was secretly aching to hear, something crazy, something I've dreamt about doing before it was "too late"...

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1. Ashima tries to make her favorite Calcutta snack the right way in her apartment in Central Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

2. Ashoke takes Ashima to Mount Auburn Hospital. 

3. Ashoke and his parents meet Ashima and her parents in their home in Calcutta. 

4. Ashima finds out Ashoke’s name. 

5. Ashima Bhaduri marries Ashoke and becomes Ashima Ganguli. 

6. In the waiting room, Ashoke reads articles in the Boston Globe about the riots that took place during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and Dr. Benjamin Spock’s two-year sentence for having counseled draft evaders. 

7. Ashoke sets out on a journey to spend time with his grandfather.

8. Ashoke begins to read Nikolai Gogol’s short story, The Overcoat. 

9. Ghosh tells Ashoke about the importance of seeing the world. 

10. Ashoke is almost killed in a train accident. 

11. Ashoke has to learn how to walk again. 

12. Without telling his family, Ashoke applies to graduate schools abroad to continue his studies in engineering. 

13. Patty gives Ashoke the news of his son’s birth while he is thinking about how Nikolai Gogol saved his life. 

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Love and Marriage:
- Americans: Marriage is based on love, less pressure about inter-racial or inter-class marriage;
- Indians: Marriage is a means to get economic security but also to climb the social ladder, love is for your family, not your special other.

Religion:
- Americans: Majority Christian;
- Indians: Majority is Hindu.

Clothing:
- Americans: More free, girls can wear boys clothes;
- Indians: Men can wear Western clothes but women in traditional families have to wear Indian clothes.

Food:
- Americans: Less effort, fast food and the culture of eating out;
- Indians: Home made, time and effort, the wife's job.

Music:
- Americans: Music for enjoyment, with a message, but the first purpose of music is not to have fun or dance.
- Indians: Bollywood (mainstream) // religious (praying) music, more comfortable with dancing because it's a bigger part of their culture.

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1. What is it like to be an immigrant in an entirely different country and culture, and what are some obstacles that must be overcome?
2. What is it like to be a child of immigrants who is being pulled into different cultural directions?

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Dear Sonak,

When I came back to Mauritius this "summer" break, I was greeted by the cold and rainy weather of Floréal in the winter. Once I stepped in my house, I felt like I never left and I'm not sure if it felt good or not. Even though it took me around 3 days to get used to my parents and how they approached things, everything else felt like it was the same, except maybe a little bit more blank, with a bit more space to fill, somehow, as if there was a physical mark of my absence.

I only wanted to eat Mauritian food and my mom, not knowing me well, tried her best to feed me foreign meals, well prepared, convinced that it was what I wanted. It felt strange for people to start assuming what I wanted and who I was already, something that didn't really happen in MUWCI.

Meeting up with my friends was not the most pleasant experience, to put it nicely. In fact, they seemed so shallow and far away from me. None of us made a real effort to reach to each other in the first place, and when we did meet, our ideologies seemed completely opposing, even though they claim to be open-minded and think that they are interesting and smart, when all they say is only said because it it sounded like what mainstream media was saying.

This summer, I found out that my country felt like it wasn't mine anymore. That my people were really just strangers. But I also learned that you can meet other people and rediscover a place in a new light, even when it has been your home for 16 years.

Love,
Sonak

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That Moment Your Immigrant Parents Seem Less Weird

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That Moment Your Immigrant Parents Seem Less Weird

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A first generation immigrant from Vietnam talks about the struggles she has with connecting with her parents as an American-born person not feeling like she belongs because of her appearance and how she discovers that her parents feel like they don't belong in Vietnam anymore, which finally creates a bond between them.

I can personally relate to this as many of my family members who are 2nd or 3rd or even 1rst generation immigrants from India still identify as Indians before identifying as Mauritians while I have spent a large part of my life being ashamed of this origin in order to fit in the dominantly Westernized culture in my country today that shames non-Western/European origins.

This, to me, could be showing the importance of taking the responsibility of finding out more about one's own origins especially in order to avoid the single story people have of places like India, especially because it is often talked about from a Western point of view, not an Indian one. However, I feel like she did not address the importance of connecting and accepting one's origins but rather talked about how one should live in peace with alienation.

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That Moment Your Immigrant Parents Seem Less Weird

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My glares burn through her.
And I’m sure that such actions aren’t foreign to her
because the essence of her beauty is, well, the essence of beauty.

And in the presence of this higher being,
the weakness of my masculinity kicks in,
causing me to personify my wannabe big-baller, shot-caller,
God’s gift to the female species with shiny suit wrapping rapping like,
“Yo, what’s crackin shorty how you livin’ what’s your sign what’s your size I dig your style, yo.”

Now, this girl was no fool.
She gives me a dirty look with the quickness like,
“Boy, you must be stupid.”
so I’m looking at myself,
“Boy, you must be stupid.”
But looking upon her I am kinda feelin’ her style.

So I try again.
But, instead of addressing her properly,
I blurt out one of my fake-ass playalistic lines like,
“Gurl, you must be a traffic ticket cuz you got fine written all over you.”
Now, she’s trying to leave and I’m trying to keep her here.
So at a final attempt, I utter,
“Gurl, what is your ethnic makeup?”

At this point, her glare was scorching through me,
and somehow she manages to make her brown eyes
resemble some kinda brown fire or something,
but there’s no snap or head movement,
no palm to face, click of tongue, middle finger,
roll of eyes, twist of lips, or girl power chant.
She just glares through me with these burning eyes
and her gaze grabs you by the throat.

She says, “Ethnic makeup?”
She says, “First of all, makeup’s just an anglicized, colonized, commodified utility
that my sisters have been programmed to consume,
forcing them to cover up their natural state
in order to imitate what another sister looks like in her natural state
because people keep telling her
that the other sister’s natural state is more beautiful
than the first sister’s natural state.
At the same time,
the other sister isn’t even in her natural state,
because she’s trying to imitate yet another sister,
so in actuality, the natural state that the first sister’s trying to imitate
wasn’t even natural in the first place.”

Now I’m thinking, “Damn, this girl’s kicking knowledge!”
But, meanwhile, she keeps spitting on it like
“Fine. I’ll tell you bout my ‘ethnic makeup.’
I wear foundation,
not that powdery shit,
I wear the foundation laid by my indigenous people.
It’s that foundation that makes it so that past being globalized,
I can still vocalize with confidence that i know where my roots are.
I wear this foundation not upon my face, but within my soul,
and I take this from my ancestors
because I’ll be damned if I’d ever let an American or European corporation
tell me what my foundation
should look like.”

I wear lipstick,
for my lips stick to the ears of men,
so they can experience in surround sound my screams of agony
with each lash of rulers, measuring tape, and scales,
as if my waistline and weight are inversely proportional to my value as a human being.
See my lips, they stick, but not together.
Rather, they flail open with flames to burn down this culture that once kept them shut.
Now, I mess with eye shadow,
but my eyes shadow over this time where you’ve gone at ends to keep me blind.
But you can’t cover my eyes, look into them.
My eyes foreshadow change.
My eyes foreshadow light.
and I’m not into hair dyeing.
but I’m here, dying, because this oppression won’t get out of my hair.
I have these highlights.
They are highlights of my past atrocities,
they form this oppression I can’t wash off.
It tangles around my mind and twists and braids me in layers,
this oppression manifests,
it’s stressing me so that even though I don’t color my hair,
in a couple of years it’ll look like I dyed it gray.
So what’s my ethnic makeup ?
I don’t have any.
Because your ethnicity isn’t something you can just make up.
And as for that crap my sisters paint on their faces, that’s not makeup, it’s make-believe.”

I can’t seem to look up at her.
and I’m sure that such actions aren’t foreign to her
because the expression on her face
shows that she knows that my mind is in a trance.

As her footsteps fade, my ego is left in crutches.
And rejection never sounded so sweet.

This spoken word poem talks about the changes non-white people have to go through in order to "fit" in a society praising a certain type of physical appearance highly influenced by colonization and often unreachable for most people.