Cultural Conflict

Another person’s culture is nearly impossible to fully understand without experiencing it firsthand. “A Father” by Bharati Mukherjee, “A Bedtime Story” by Mitsuye Yamada, and “The Path to the Milky Way Leads through Los Angeles” by Joy Harjo all demonstrate the idea of the importance and culture and how their own differently affects each individuals view of others.
In “The Path to the Milky Way Leads through Los Angeles”, Joy Harjo discusses how she thinks American culture is strange compared to her Native American roots. Even though she doesn’t discuss her heritage, she points out her own feeling of isolation even in the first line, “There are strangers above me, below me and all around me.” She gently pokes fun at the references to American culture, such as maps of stars’ homes, buying several different kinds of bottled water, and selling your soul to the music industry. While these things are commonplace in American culture, they are foreign and strange to her, like they would be to anyone else.
“A Bedtime Story” by Mitsuye Yamada interestingly displays the idea of culture with a story within another story. This is significant because it is symbolic of the idea of a person with their own story and their own culture in something like America, which also has its own history and culture. In this story, a Japanese father tells his son a Japanese parable of a woman being turned away from shelter from the night. The woman ends up being happy because she witnesses a beautiful sight in nature. The Japanese culture is trying to teach the lesson of things happening for a reason and that those who encounter hardships are rewarded, however, upon hearing the end of the parable the child is annoyed with the end of the story, thinking that it is meant to entertain instead of convey a message, which would be more common in Japanese folklore opposed to American.
“A Father” by Bharati Mukherjee presents a much different idea of combating cultures than the two poems. Mr. Bhowmick is an Indian man from Ranchi who almost unwillingly moves to American out of request for his wife. He is intimidated by his wife and especially by his daughter because she is much more Americanized than he is. When he discovers that his daughter is pregnant, he is secretly happy because he comes to realize that there is a man in her life, leading him to think that she will be getting married. However, as she does not confess that she is pregnant, he begins to realize that she is not going to get married. When she tells her father almost maliciously about how she wanted a baby without a father, something that would be much more common in America, this is when he loses control because she is altogether turning her back on her culture and disgracing the family, as well as denying her father a real daughter.
All of these clashes in culture show that the only people who can truly understand a specific culture is those that are born directly into it, and those who aren’t are forced to struggle with the incredible differences.