Marios 4th Entry

For my last post, I had a hard time finding other blogs that were relevant to the topic that we are discussing, so I looked over some of the postings that people in this group have made. It seems that all four of us are from different backgrounds, and all face the issue of a "hyphenated life" After reading some of their descriptions on how their lives are i noticed once again that a lot of similarities can be found in seemingly different cultures. I also found it comforting that a lot of different people throughout the school and the community are facing similar issues as I am in the respect of trying to balance two different types of lives, one within their home and one outside of it. I also came to notice that there are basically two different ways of handing these types of situations one is to be the exact same inside your house with your family as you are outside of the house even if surrounded by people that wont necessarily understand everything about your personal life. And then the type of person who tries to balance the lives and acts a little different inside the house then he or she does outside, i guess this is kind of the easy way out as you kind of lose some individuality and sort of conform to the perceived "normal" ideas, but it also seems to keep things a little bit more simple, at least from my personal experiences. The great thing about Canada is that it is home to a number of different cultures and creeds and posses a lot of ethnic diversity, and I believe that remaining and individual and staying true to certain beliefs is important but I guess that needs to be decided by the individual based on their feelings and individual circumstances. Either way culture is good. Stay unique. This project has been great, really informative and it helped me to learn a lot about different cultres, the way people handle the idea of a "hyphenated life" and reinforced the cultural diversity that Canada has and the importance of that.

Marios Blog Analysis

I was reading through some blogs trying to find something that i could relate to the idea of a hyphenated life. In doing so i managed to come across a blog written by a Asian-Canadian who’s family migrated to Canada. In the blog she talked a lot about how life was i her family and the kinds of morals and virtues that were important to her family. While reading this i thought a lot about some of the stories in Vancouver Short Stories, such as "Broken Teeth" and "The Jade Peony" even though when i first read those stories they seemed a little stereotypical after reading some of the postings on this girls blog i realized that maybe they were more realistic then i originally perceived them to be. I also noticed that even in two seemingly completely different cultures; Italian and Japanese I was able to pick out a lot of strong similarities. For example she talked about a strong emphasis on both family values and religion, which is something that I am more then familiar with coming from an Italian background. It was interesting to see how someone from a different background also faces a lot of the same issues in her everyday life and a lot of the same problems when it comes to the idea of a "hyphenated life" and balancing a her life at home with social life outside of the house. So in a nutshell i found it interesting how two seemingly completely different cultures have a lot of the same values and learned that the stories from Vancouver Short Stories may not have been as stereotypical as i had originally thought them to be.

Marios Experience Balancing Two Types of Cultures

So im back again to make another postin, last time I made a post about some of the examples of how life from an Italian perspective differed from a common North American perspective, so Im just going to go a little further into that. When facing these differences I am kind of forced to also make some adjustments, to my behaviour and this is how the idea of a hyphenated life comes into play. I need to act differently around my friends then I do around my family and relatives. Certain things are parts of life that my friends and even myself would consider normal, my family has a hard time processing, so when Im around them everything changes. I have to talk differently around them, pretend im more focused on the aspects of life that they are interested in, and sometimes even leave out certain things abuot my life when they ask me questions. I know it seems like that is a little bit fake but to me it seems like whats necessary in order to kind of keep everything in a somewhat harmonious state. Parrallel to that i also sometimes need to keep my family life separate from my friends, I have a lot of Italian friends living in similiar situations so with them we all understand eachother and can talk openly but I also have a lot of friends who are native to North America for 3 or 4 generations and with them it was clear that i sort of need to separate out my family life and maybe not get into too much detail because even though they are all open minded and willing to listen it was clear early on that they didnt totally understand all of the things and aspects of the culture, so to keep things simple i just try to cut it out. So thats the last post ill make about my life.

Marios Hyphenated Life

Ok so I'm not sure if I am even doing the right thing but I’m going to make an attempt. I have personal experience with the idea of a hyphenated life. I myself am 100% Italian. One of my parents was born in Italy as well as all four of my grandparents. I Know this might not be an excellent example a lot of people probably wouldn’t think that there is a huge difference or much of a hyphenated life, but I would beg to differ. Experiencing it first hand there is a lot of differences and I often come across a lot of circumstances that would my life "hyphenated" For example needing to be able to speak and understand a separate a good majority of my family, either speaks none, or very little English therefore in order to communicate properly with them I needed to learn Italian, or at least the basics of it so that I would be able to at least partially communicate. Another thing that becomes clear, especially when talking other people is that my family places different emphasis on certain parts of life for example religion, and a big one of up-keeping personal appearances within the community, there is also a certain responsibility placed on women, this is obvious when I look at some of my female cousins and see for example that none of them are allowed to bring any guys around unless they are in a totally serious relationship. These are just some of the examples about how my life, coming from Italian background my seem hyphenated to the common conception of a North American lifestyle.

still trying...

So I'm still trying to understand what this concept of hyphenated life is or what it is. I even tried googling it with minimal results but did find a couple things that helped me to believe that this isn't an imaginary concept.

First-http://shiksafrommanila.blogspot.com/2007/03/hyphenated-life.html
This person talks about the hyphen and its significance as to who he is or as she puts it:
A hyphen is a small bar that looks like a minus sign. The dictionary further describes the hyphen as a punctuation mark used to divide or connect two words; to describe a person who performs more than one function; to describe a unit of mixed or diverse backgrounds.
Understanding the actual term helps as it helps to clarify what the the term means and n relation to this blog. So I'm not sure really struggle with hyphenated life in my own life other than previously mentioned and this concept is to "deep" for me because i would rather keep things simple and be me and do what i want to do rather than have to juggle between different parts of me.
Obviously i can see why people find this important trying to maintain the different parts of them and trying to act based on cultural or ethnic expectations which i guess is fine but i would rather not ave to do that and rather make my own expectations to live by.
So i guess this is all for now by the way this is Shafin again, thought i would mention it again so people would know who is speaking.

Furthermore...

I am glad that things are getting done in our blog, but for more clarifications, I would like to shed some light on what is still not understood:
1. The hyphenated living is not necessarily just a question or dilemma of cultural race, but it can also be of being torn between beliefs, between opinions, from yourself and what is commonly acceptable, or what is expected to be done. Relating to the post prior to this, the hyphenated issue in it is the writer's decision of being different, which is I expect, not that acceptable for their respective belief. The writer is in between that unchartered space of acceptance and individualism. -That is what can be one of the many faces of hyphenated living.
2. It is our goal as well to find this issue in the fiction stories we tackle at class. recently, I was able to find a good one, the matter involving Jason at "Hey Nostradamus!". Jason, in short lingo, can be identified as: believer-pessimist. Just comment if further elaboration is wanted.
Again, I am willing to aid for more clarificatons regarding this theme. And so far, we are doing a great job.

Not to sure if this makes sense but i'll try...

So I’ve finally gotten around to posting here but I guess its better than never right? This is Shafin by the way, but this whole idea of hyphenated life still has me confused but from I gather on reading the entries and what I was told it was is the cultural expectations or expectations of living as a culturally integrated person in Canada. I my self am Ismaili Muslim and my parents grew up in eastern Africa but I was born in Canada. My parents expected me to follow my religion; I even had to go to religious school. I guess I don't follow up because I don't even follow my religion except for the fact that I don't eat pork, although I have tried it and didn't like it. I'm pretty sure my parents are disappointed but its not a rebellion thing its more of a I don't care about religion aspect and I personally I don't like organized religion, maybe its because of having it forced upon me when I was young and having to go to mosque. I'm not necessarily sure where I am going with this right now its just me typing here and thinking that why follow cultural expectations? For me I would rather live life and find out about it on my terms and make mistakes rather than have to conform to a set belief value. I really hope grammar and spelling don't count.