3. Group G---ksmith27

The short story, From Scratch by Susie Castellano, is about an Indian mother and her daughter, Priya, in the kitchen making gulab jamun while Priya reflects on her experience in America, first thinking of the bright supermarkets of it, the brightly coloured snacks and sticky jars of peanut butter that the kids at her school bring for lunch, while she brings in Indian food, which embarrasses her knowing it’s different. After getting tired of PB&Js, she starts ordering from the school cafeteria, getting no meat products because of her religion, and a classmate named Lindsay asks about this, who looks like the blonde hair, blue eyes American stereotype, but at home, Priya finds out she’s Muslim, and she thinks that she might have been trying to connect with someone of a similar culture. When the gulab jamun is done, Priya asks her mother if she could take some to school, which she says yes to.

In the book, Throwback by Maurene Goo, Samantha, or as she’s called through the book, Sam, is the daughter of a first-generation Korean immigrant, Priscilla, with whom she has a… troubled relationship to say the least. After a fight with her mom that leaves her stranded in the mall parking lot over her not trying for homecoming queen, she orders a ride share service called Throwback Rides, after a talk about what happened with her mom with the driver, Samantha is thrown back to when her mom was in the running for Homecoming Queen, and now has to help her mom achieve said title to get back to her place in time and make amends with her mother, who she discovers tries/tried to hide the fact she’s from Korea to be popular. Over this time, Sam realizes why her mom is like how she is in the modern day: because of her mom.

In both the book Throwback  by Maurene Goo and the story From Scratch by Susie Castellano, a main character either tries to hide that they’re not exactly from America, or deal with someone doing the same thing. In From Scratch, Priya tries to hide that she’s from India by first hiding her indian dishes her mom makes her for lunch behind her paper bag, then gets peanut butter sandwiches from the grocery store, then when she gets bored of those, she gets vegan options from the cafeteria, while in Throwback, Sam has to deal with Priscilla who does a similar thing, pretending she isn’t from the US of A by acting as part of the popular crowd, into which she made it in. While the motive for Priya is undefined, Priscilla does it for both to sort of fight against the general prejudice, and because she perceives it as the only way to achieve the “American dream”.

Does your character try to hide the fact that they aren’t from America? If so, why?