In the TED talk, Why children of immigrants experience guilt and strategies to cope by Sahaj Kaur Kohli, Sahaj talks about how immigrants can feel guilty about their past experiences and also that they don’t deserve what they have.
In the novel, “Exit West” by Mohsin Hamid is about two main characters who are lovers and they experience the hardships of living in a war zone city. And eventually they find magical doors that help transport them to different parts of the world. The main characters Saeed and Nadia deal with guilt with the fact that they are more fortunate than others because they have survived the warzone and are still together and the fact that they left people they cared about behind.
“. . . but that is the way of things, for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind.” (Hamid 98) This quote connects to Why children of immigrants experience guilt and strategies to cope because when you have sacrificed big parts of your life like family to be safe it will lead to a lot of guilt. “There’s also this sense of a thriver’s guilt or this guilt of growing, healing, accessing resources and opportunities that maybe our parents didn't have or our family and other parts of the world don't have access to.” (1:06 Kohli)
Has anyone in your novel felt guilty with the fact that they have a better life than people that experienced the same things as them?
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