link to culture websites

http://www.avclub.com/
  http://www.pajiba.com/
http://gofugyourself.com/

Home at Last - summary

Summary of a text – Home at Last by Dinaw Mengestu

This is the story of Dinaw Mengestu. He was born in Ethiopia and moved to America with his family when he was two years old.

He had never been able to feel belonged to the Ethiopian culture since he left Ethiopia at a very young age.

His parents never integrated into American culture and continued to dream of returning to Ethiopia and the culture they left behind.

When he grew up he tried to find a place where he belongs. He moved with his family to Peoria - one of the suburbs of Chicago.

Peoria was surrounded by all white schools and churches, and he did not feel a sense of belonging. From there he moved to Washington DC, and he found a large community of immigrants from Ethiopia, which he could not fit into.

Throughout that period, his parents continued to think all the time about the family they left in Ethiopia and they could not fit in because they clung to the past. For him and his sister it was very difficult because they did not belong to the past of the family in Ethiopia.

When he was 21 years old he moved to Brooklyn to a neighborhood called Kensington. In this neighborhood live many immigrants from different countries. He describes the neighborhood and lives there. He says that at first even in this neighborhood He did not belong.

The change came one night when he saw Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants laugh together outside one of the restaurants. It reminded him of meetings of Ethiopians who were meeting to speak their language, and tell their jokes.

At that moment he realized that the community can be part of it even if people come from different countries. The common denominator is that they are not in their home country anymore.

He felt that you can build and belong to the community as well in a new place.

He ends the story when he says he went every night and watches the people in Kensington because he enjoys the fact that he felt for the first time that he belongs to something.

 

 

 

 

pop star - Mark zuckerberg

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New Visual Project - Magazine Cover

Reflection about the course

This course on pop culture helped me understand a lot of things about my life here in America. Mostly he helped me to stop fighting with my reality. Sounds confusing? I will explain. We have a wonderful life here in America. My husband has a thriving career, my daughter is in excellent day care, and we definitely live a comfortable life. However, I did keep a very great effort not to mingle with the local culture. I did not refer local holydays and customs, and most of my friends were of course Israelis. I told myself all the time that we do not belong here. We are guests who enjoy the options that America can offer. I can say the last two years I'm going through the process of acceptance, acceptance of the new culture which in many ways has become my home. This is of course related to the fact that my daughter has grown and understands more, and we cannot ignore what is happening around us. We have to go out of our bubble. And I opened up. I have American friends ,and I am very unconcernedly everything that happens around me. We of course continues to celebrate the Jewish holidays but also making room to the local holidays. And it feels good. We will always be foreigners here but the feeling of temporariness in our life has passed. This is our home now. And we take the good things of both worlds and give place to new things. At the beginning of the course we talked a lot about this subject, and I searched all the time where the text relates to my life, what it is that I can identify with. There were a lot of things. The text that most touched me was “Home at Last” by Dinaw Mengestu Ethiopian author. I have not experienced the things he talked about them since I came here as an adult with a family, but I really identified with his pain. When you talked about the stages of culture shock it really took me back. I went through them all! I identified with each step there. The name of the book is accurate and symbolic of our life in America. I enjoyed reading the texts in the book, and wishing I had time to read more. Throughout the course I looked at the process I'm going through and I was glad to see I'm not alone in many of the processes. In ssues with which we began the course I had more interesting than the units on movies and music. Of course you can learn a lot about pop culture through music and movies, but the issues that we focused less talked to me. The technological projects in the course was very significant and I got lost. It's really not a subject I am good at, and I'm probably not not going to improve in the near future.... I prefer to focus on reading and writing and not waste so much time on technology. Maybe it's a bit outdated but it is definitely one of the things I know for sure that I'm no good at them. In conclusion, I know that I was not an outstanding student, and I apologize for that. It was hard to fit the interaction of class and a lot of little issues I lost interest. I'm sorry mainly on the fact that I feel I have missed you as a teacher and as a person can learn a lot from him.