Ideas for Writing (Group Ong Li Yuan)

“Sometimes you’re the life, sometimes the sacrifice.”

This quotation from the poem Turtle Soup by Marilyn Chin means that sometimes we are the one that giving hope to move on and sometimes we will become the one that need to sacrifice and that lead to despair. The speaker describes her mother’s voice that can’t comprehend the thought about having to sacrifice a lot in order to gain a better life in a foreign land.

In an immigrant family of course there just a lot of hardship that they must gone through, it started with what they must sacrificed back in their home land; they must leave behind their family and friends, to be apart for a certain number of months or years, but usually those who left the country for a better life didn’t usually will ever going back home. Another thing that they will lose is their mother culture and tradition, having to mix with a new community, language and even religion. For example, in one of the local novel written by K.S Maniam; In a Far Country, he seriously portrays about how an immigrant family will lose the sense of their own identity and the feeling of belonging.

While in the same time they will gain something by moving into a new land, though it depends on the intention of their migration. In the poem “Turtle Soup”, the speaker seems to gain a better life maybe from the one that the family had back in China. Having to lose the ancient culture from the mother land, it was replaced by a new modern culture, and a fresh thought about life. Usually such countries that become the dominant attraction for the immigrant all over world like America, having a good economical state, stable in politics and most of all is a better opportunity for education. This is what an immigrant family usually looks for; they wanted their children to have a better education and able to strive for a better future and life.

It is not mention in the poem about what the speaker’s family gain by migrating from China to America but in the novel In A far Country, the immigrant family that coming to Malaysia all the way from the India gaining a better insights about community relationship. The antagonist; Rajan, learn that he need to appreciate the country that now he is living, he need to feel that he belong to this new country and in the same time, he still can preserve his own believe and traditional cultural value.

In conclusion, I believe it is a huge decision for one to migrate into a foreign land and when they did so, they must be ready for any obstacles and hardship as the results of their action. But it will not always be a bad things, for many reasons I also believe that migrating to a new land will also give you a new hope and a better future ahead, especially for those who is willing to sacrifice.