2. Group A--mspencer26

The Namesake is a Novel that talks about a girl named Ashima Ganguli who’s from Calcutta and she's married to Ashoke and moved to America. She gives birth to a son and she and her husband decided to name him Gogol after Ashoke's favorite author Nikolai Gogol. Ashoke was in a train crash which nearly took his life. During this train ride he was reading Nikolais' book.  The novel goes on and the novel mostly follows Gogol's life while he grows up. Ashima and Ashoke have a daughter named Sonia. In the novel Gogol struggles a lot with his identity and wishes to fit in more as an American child. Ashoke gives Gogol the book written by Nikolai Gogol but doesn’t explain why he gave it to him. Gogol puts away the book and forgets about it. Later when Gogol moves to Yale for college, he officially changes his name to Nikhil. Ashoke died from a heart attack and Ashima and Sonia lived in Boston and Nikhil created a life in New York. Nikhil comes back to his childhood home to celebrate a holiday and finds the book Ashoke had given him. Ashima spends her time in both Boston and Calcutta and Sonia stays in Boston with her husband Ben. The novel ends with Nikhil promising to read the book, given from his father.

A quote that shows us that they might feel guilt for not fitting in is, “They would have felt lonely in this setting, remarking that they were the only Indians.” (Lahiri 155). So the main characters are having a hard time feeling guilty for not fitting in the American standards.

When you wrote about not having a lot of contact with the family back home, I found our Novels relatable because Ashima moved away from her family in Calcutta. 

Out of Nowhere by Maria Padian, the story follows Tom Bouchard, a popular high school soccer player, and his cousin Franny Powers, who is more independent and outspoken. Tom goes to an upscale prep school in Maine, where he navigates his life as a teenager and tries to fit in too much. We also meet Abdi, a Somali refugee who recently moved to the area. He struggles to fit in at the school due to language barriers and racism. Some students are nice to him, but others, like Hank, treat him bad. There was a soccer game with Toms team against Ishmaels team and he is targeted by Toms team because of his background. Tom starts to get to know Abdi, and stats to understand about the struggles he is going through. 

Adbi feels some type of guilt for his role in the community and people being very rude and harsh to him. Making him feel like he dosent belong. ¨Kids spray-paint ´Go back to Africa!´ in the bathroom¨ (Padian 187), this quote is an example of one way they make him feel like he dosent belong.  

Why do you think Adbi feels guilt even thought he isn't doing anything wrong?

Girl In Translation By Jean Kwok is about a young Chinese girl immigrating to the U.S from Hong Kong, trying to accustom to the new morals and ways of life. Kimberly and her mother live in a very run down, bad apartment in the projects of New York, a place that was basically abandoned. Kimberly has to attend public school, where she has some challenges in the beginning, but eventually makes a good friend named Annette. Annette shows her the ways of life in the U.S and eventually Kimberly gets the hang of school there, and gets very high math tests scores, and was able to be a candidate to go to a private school. On top of school, Kimberly has to go to the factory where her mother was employed after school to work very long hours, sometimes being there all night with her mother.

Although Kimberly's mother experiences guilt for taking them both from their good life in Hong Kong, to live a miserable live in New York, working for her older sister, Kimberly also experiences much guilt for not "working" hard enough. Kimberly alleviates this stress by working even harder in school, and at the factory, earning herself a scholarship and getting amazing test scores and grades at said private school. One quote where it shows guilt is when Kimberly gets made fun of for the clothes she was wearing at her new school, during gym class, and her mother refused to buy her new clothes because of their economic situation, until she was guilt-tripped into doing it by Kimberly. "My pain from all the teasing cracked open like a rice pot from the heat. 'I told you, everyone changes together and everyone looks at each other! This isn't China, Ma!' She was silent. Then she said, "We can go shopping on Sunday" ( Kwok 140 ) 

In my book, Out of Nowhere, by Maria Padian, is about a high schooler and varsity soccer player named Tom Bouchard and he goes through a lot of changes of perspective when some Somalian refugees come to his school. He starts to understand the Racism around him and how badly they treat them. Tom occasionally witnesses the racism himself and sees how hard down they have it. One of the refugees named Abdi goes through major racism and one of his encountrments of racism is when he walked into the bathroom and found grafity of racism, "Kids spray-paint´Go back to Africa!´ in the bathroom" (Padian 187), he reads that and feels like his community and school and everyone around him doesn't want him and none of them like him.