Cultural Duality in Julia Alvarez's Novel: Beyond Coping with Differences

Cultural desire is for many people understood solely as an intention to cope with cultural features on a new place without making much harm to one’s personal cultural belonging. Tracking the leading precursors in a cultural versatility, the novel by Julia Alvarez presupposes the reality of a new life on a new place where former high values appear to mix up with the “melting pot” of the United States. While reading this book, I have learnt that the cultural gap is beyond disagreement.

It is a matter of how a person can deal with new people and new features under different circumstances.

As a matter of fact, Alvarez managed to show the face of an immigrant who can lose many precious things of hi/her own for the sake of personal survival. This prerequisite of the discussion maintained by the author pushed me on the issue of my personal values in life. It seems that people do not pay attention to these subtle features until they are threatened to have no such values at all.

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I cannot just confess in the fact that I can demonstrate such behaviors and be of the same kind. However, the book by Alvarez (1992) provides an overall representation of gender and race issues as being interwoven into a mutual symbiosis of a man’s nature.

It also spreads over the workplace where individual communicates and spends much time. To say more, it is impossible to separate this unity into pieces. This is why I try to keep a strict eye on the problem of personal cultural identity and the way it should appreciate my personal feelings about everything around (people, education, government, services, etc.

). Losing accents is dead-end for a person. It is a so-called start for self-destruction and decline. Most of all, it considers one’s inability to rationally and objectively perceive the gist of values that your culture gave you by birth.

One should take notice of the fact that those cultural precursors and adjustments are usually nurtured by the community of people where an individual grew up and developed figuratively into a person. By now, I assume culture to be an inseparable part of any individual including me as well. This incorporation of a sound mind reflects on my realistic viewpoints as of community, public opinion, society, and socialization. Culture and everything related to it corresponds to one’s ability to grow rich in thoughts, business, and self-esteem, of course.

Thus, I feel like shaping the difference between what I supposed to be true about culture prior to completing my readings. This comes out to be as a result of an alleged revelation which grounds on the experience of people living in America and trying their best at finding out the most convenient “place under the sun. ” In most cases I see the difference as a reflection of peoples’ being misunderstood or invisible for the majority within the society where they live (Rubin & Melnick, 2007). This issue is a real impediment, as I see now, for people to adjust to the new cultural environment.

Hence, it needs no additional proof to gain momentum about the cross-cultural justification in evidence. Nevertheless, one should keep it in mind that there is nothing to provoke cultural misbalance, unless people of majority. This cornerstone assumption leads toward broader discussion of the subject matter insofar. It provides a collision of general assumptions on what I thought of culture previously to reading the book by Alvarez. Delivering care to a member of culture is a sticking point for most Americans and people living in a multinational society on the whole.

To keep it clear, one should be attentive to those being in need regarding the human viewpoint. It means that all people are to be justified through the so-called “orifice” of humane. This mentions the ideal balance of experience and personal aptness at communicating with different people. This simple step is not a big deal for anyone. It becomes challenging if not setting oneself free from bigotries about immigrants and people of different cultural background. In turn it liberates people in appealing to this or that culture.

Thus, I can identify humane, as the main weapon for enforcing innermost willingness to help people and deliver care to them, despite their racial or cultural identities. I cannot fail to agree that humanity and humane should go hand in hand while providing help to people of different culture. It is not just a matter of social stability and spiritual growth. First of all, it is all about how a person feels like about life and surroundings, the same as Yolanda could feel when in New York (Alvarez, 1992). On the other side, different attitudes turned to the positive part of communication and assistance is an asset having a contrasting shape.

This is why people face struggle and contradiction. They just cannot perceive and further estimate cultural differences of one another. Hence, they are helpless to be united. I would recommend the example of Abraham Lincoln who was the first to make white people of America look at the former slaves and other immigrants in the same way as they do toward themselves. As an advanced practice nurse, I would like to be more patient to people with whom I should work. It is a preliminary action that the staff conceives you correctly and its members could defer you in everything regarding the work.

In this respect I would continue on applying traditional medical practice, but along with some more skills to be developed in the course of medical implementation. Some experts may think of it, as just by enforcing themselves to be more careful and attentive toward patients. However, a set of appropriate steps should be as follows: • Developing listening skills; • Making thorough observation; • Being on the same level with a patient, but still a bit higher; • Being ready to provide new things in practice; • Keeping in mind one’s own cultural features and assumptions;

• Working out an intention to point out cultural aspects out of the community; • Recognizing frustration and alienation as having reference to culture (Andrews & Boyle, 2008). Summing all these points up, I would never pay attention solely to some few of them, but I would rather take them all into account to become proficient in shaping cultural aspects while working with patients. In fact, it would help reach out better results concerning a patient’s recovery. Nonetheless, it goes without saying that people do not want to sacrifice their cultural features for the sake of disparities and unfairness taking place in the society.

Medical practice can be said to have international roots as well as cultures pertaining to different nations. Hence, more humane and patience would save more points to assume cultural features referred to an individual without any bias at all. Reference Alvarez, J. (1992). How the Garcia girls lost their accents. New York, NY: The Penguin Group. Andrews, M. M. , & Boyle, J. S. (2008). Transcultural concepts in nursing care (5 ed. ). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Rubin, R. , & Melnick, J. P. (2007). Immigration and American popular culture: an introduction. New York, NY: NYU Press.