Jhumpa Lahiri and Christopher Soto, in their respective plays "Hell-Heaven" and "Winter Sundays", discuss restrictions on groups' cultural expression minorities. The assertion of both authors is that there is a unique cultural identity for each person and that society has always attempted to regulate it in an illegitimate way. Both Lahiri and Soto use the disparity in cultural tolerance between generations to explore the forced conformity suppression of individual identity by traditional authority figures. Both authors' respective characters embrace open sexuality, both in terms of orientation and promiscuity, triggering violent negative reactions and revealing society's rejection of anything outside of cultural norms. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In the story “Hell-Heaven,” the mother, Boudi, refuses to accept change. For example, when the family moved to Natick, they continued to live in the house as if they were renters, closing the blinds in the afternoon and never repainting the walls. Thus, she symbolically rejects American culture as radically different from her Bengali upbringing by refusing to let the sun into her house. And because she is a housewife, controlling and staying within the domestic sphere, she rejects everything American from her family and her life. When the narrator, Usha, enters adolescence and is exposed to the relatively uninhibited American culture of sexuality, Boudi attempts to impose her beliefs on her. Usha recalls: “My mother must have understood something, because she forbade me from attending the dances that took place on the last Friday of every month in the cafeteria, and it was an unwritten law that I was not allowed to go out. “Don't think you can get away with marrying an American, like Pranab Kaku did,” she said. . . and I felt his grip on me tighten. Boudi describes marrying an American as a way of “getting away with” something, as if it were a terrible sin. To avoid this, she establishes a "hold" over Usha, seeking absolute control over her activities. Different societies reject different forms of sexual expression. The hormonal stresses of co-ed activities in middle and high school are anathema to restrictive Bengali culture, while any form of homosexual activity is vilified by American culture, as exemplified in Soto's poem "Winter Sundays." » The speaker of this poem is gay and cross-dressing, and his father resists the rising cultural movement for his acceptance. The speaker describes: “My father hated queers. The way my cock looks under a dress. The gap between his irritated knuckles and my cut cuticles. A jostling of the hands. I was still running. Mascara. Massacre. My mother would wash the red paint off my nails and face. She would hold me like the frame of a house. No, the bars of a prison cell. Comparing the house to a prison cell reveals that the speaker, and the gay community as a whole, are trapped in their own home by their own family, unable to express themselves openly. The mother symbolically holds the bars of the prison cell, unable to enter and truly understand her son. To smoke, the speaker is forced to make a pipe out of plastic bottles and aluminum foil in the park in the middle of the night, just as the gay community is forced to hide their identities and repress their sexual urges. The homosexuals in this poem are delegitimized by their representationas societal anomalies. They say that men don’t have “fingernails”. . . [to] paint,” so when the speaker describes her red nail polish, they seem to come out of nowhere, categorizing homosexuals as anomalies that need to be eliminated. The author criticizes this sentiment, arguing instead that there is a deep discontent and genetic basis for these openly homosexual people, and that they are justified in their sexual identification. The “Mascara. Massacre."" recalls the Stonewall Riots of 1969, an embodiment of the widespread anti-gay violence of the era. Similarly, the speaker's father tries to physically force him out of his homosexuality. The bildungsroman accounts of Lahiri and Soto reveal that the characters in both works are categorized from birth into a certain cultural identity and societal role by previous generations, whether it be national identification, religious affiliation, or family relationships. In “Winter Sundays,” the speaker reflects on the death of his friend Rory: “But that can’t be the truth . child; fold the hands of your church like dirty laundry [fold them well]. No one needs to know us, neither my father nor yours. an oath or covenant The speaker believes that as a homosexual, and therefore a member of an ostracized and oppressed group, his covenant of acceptance with God, his covenant of love with his father, and his covenant of protection. with the company were severed. The joined “church hands” contain the “dirty” truth of homosexuality that exists within society. The use of a hyphen in the last line equates the speaker's father with God, the spiritual father of all, thus extending the message of exclusion and persecution to the entire gay community. The speaker compares his new role to that of a “mule”; just as a mule is a courier of illegal drugs, he takes responsibility, after Rory's death, for carrying the illicit message of open homosexuality. The etymology of the insult “faggot” means a bundle of sticks, or something cumbersome that must be carried. The speaker undertakes to be the beast of burden, bearing the responsibility for absorbing insults and harassment. The use of the ampersand in this poem implies a closer relationship between adjacent phrases than the word "and." In the third stanza, through the analogy of the hammer and the nail, the ampersand reveals that the father's violence towards his son is an attempt to eradicate his homosexuality, like the Japanese proverb. The author seeks to legitimize the claim that there is a distinct cultural identity that is equally acceptable to each person. Similarly, in “Hell-Heaven,” the narrator describes the conflict between her Bengali roots and her American upbringing: “Mother and I had further made peace; she had recognized in detail that I was not only her daughter, but also an offspring of America. The story chronicles Usha's identity crisis as she grows up, rebelling against the idealized version of what her parents want her to be. Just as “Hell-Heaven” are two opposites separated by a hyphen, so is the concept of a Bengali-American, according to Boudi. The hyphen is a symbol of the divide between immigrants and their children, as well as with dominant American culture. The story's title derives from Pranab Kaku's sudden transformation from a helpless Bengali immigrant to a married, Americanized man, as radical as the contrast between heaven and hell. In Boudi's eyes, America corrupts people like Pranab Kaku, letting them stray from their identity.