The Isolated Other in Contemporary America

As a country of immigrants, America's roots lie in its diversity, but what happens with the immigrants settle and have children of their own? And when their American-born children have children in America?

During the first three weeks discussing Crossing Cultural Borders, the border has always been a physical boundary which the protagonists cross. Yet with these American-born characters that look like The Other, the cultural boundary is no longer a tangible physical line like a country border. These novels deal with a meshing of two or more cultures within the characters' own life experiences. The protagonist's specialized private life of specific customs and values (education and filial piety for Chinese, language, and food often are completely different and alien compared to the mainstream American lifestyle ouside the home.

Especially true for immigrant families, often one or a few racial minorities living in a predominantly white society results in the Isolated Other.

Based on the author's childhood, The Year of the Dog by Grace Lin is about 10 year old Pacy's reclaiming of her Taiwanese heritage while living in upstate New York.

How Tia Lola Came to Stay by Julia Alvarez is about 10 year old Miguel adjusting to his parents' divorce and his new home in Vermont, so different from his old home of New York City. When his Spanish speaking aunt from the Dominican Republic visits and lives with them, Miguel reclaims his own Latino heritage.

In First Daughter: Extreme Makeover by Mitali Perkins, 16 year old Sameera is the adoptive South Asian daughter of a presidential candidate. To help her dad's campaign, she undergoes an extreme makeover to look more white. In the end Sameera rejects the makeover and embraces her South Asian culture.

In Girls for Breakfast, high school senior Korean-American Nick Park is "the only non-Anglo-Saxon student in suburban Connecticut," and he thinks his Otherness is the reason why girls won't date him.