One time one of my white friends went to the dollar store to apply for a job, but when we dropped his resume there, a lady told her that they only hire brown people or more like Indian and Pakistani people.
I can make a connection from this stort story as the author mentioned "Mentally, I converted dollars to rupees and thought how many people in India each envelope could feed for a month" (Baldwin 1). I can make a connection to this text as when ever someone from our family buy a really expensive thing, we always convert the money from dollars to PKR (currency of Pakistan) to annoy them. Also when we go shopping, we look at the total bill and convert it and then we would never think of spending that kind of money back in our home country.
A muslim female in Hijab/Burka (burka is a cloth that cover the full body and is mostly in colour black).
Connection to Text
The connection to text that I can make from this text is there a Indian movie and name "My Name Is Khan" and in that movie there was a muslim guy in India and when he went to America when 9 11 happened. Then they showed in the movie how muslim people were forced to change for e.g they were shaving their mustaches and breads so they can be accepted by the society and so that they dont get beaten up. Also the people were destroying a muslim guys T.V shop. People thought that the terrorists are only muslim but its not true. They also showed a hijabi female being harrased and made fun of just because she was wearing hijab.
Connection to World
The world connection that I can make from this story is that even today sikh people wearing turban or muslim females wearing hijab in some countries are not being treated the same way as the society and they are also being judged by their dressing and also some politicians are given hatred just because they are wearing a turban/hijab. You cant just tell somebody to get rid of a thing thats means the most to them just to fit in the society.
A Sikh polititian being told by a person to take his turban off and cut his hair to look like a canadian.
Diction
I took the "silk" back to our basement apartment (Baldwin 1).
I think the author called her saris "silk" in a sarcastic way as stated in the text "Today I took one of my wedding saris to the neighbourhood dry cleaner and a woman with no eyebrows held it like a dishrag (a dishcloth) as she asked me, “Is it a bed sheet?” “No,” I said. “Curtains?” “No.” I took the silk back to our basement apartment" (Baldwin 1). The author started naming her saris to other things like silk and bed sheet because she wanted to be sarcastic or maybe shes just mad on that lady with no eyebrows and the way she treated her saris.
Denotation: A fine, strong, soft lustrous fibre produced by silkworms in making cocoons and collected to make thread and fabric.
Connotation: "Silk" is what the author is calling a sari and saris are wore by desi (a person of Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi birth or descent who lives abroad) females in weddings, parties and more.
Just a few months ago they called us "exotic" new Canadians, new blood to build a new country (Baldwin 1).
I think the word "exotic" is a really good word choice that the author chose to put in the story to tell the readers that she was literally infuriated by how the society was not helping her and her husband and the benefits they were told about coming to Canada were a lie as she said "This was not how they described emigrating to Canada'' (Bladwin 1), and the amount of racism and discrimination they faced was disappointing, but they didn't give up and kept going on. The author also showed her love and respect to the turbans by saying "My hands will tie a turban every day upon your head and work so we can keep it there" (Baldwin 3). This tells us how much the turbans mean to her and her future family.
Denotation: Someone or something that is foreign or unusual in an interesting way or originating in a distant foreign country.
Connotation: The meaning that the word "exotic" tells us who someone who is not native, or is introduced from abroad, but not fully naturalized.
