Comparative Essay.

Written Expression IV
T: Margarita Villamil
S: Florencia Montoya

Cultural Alienation: a comparative commentary in “No Speak English” and

“Crickets”.

Parenting can be tough. In every part of the world, mothers and fathers constantly

question themselves the effectiveness of their parenting styles and the choices they make

every day to improve their children’s lives. Being an expatriate parent adds another

dimension to the matter. In the short stories “No Speak English” by Sandra Cisneros and

“Crickets” by Robert O. Butler it is possible to notice this. In “Crickets”, Thieu has come to

the United States hoping for opportunities to get a better lifestyle. Mamacita, the main

character in Cisneros's story, has also come to the U.S. with the promise of improving her

family conditions. However, both characters find it hard to adapt to their new environment.

While the characters in both short stories have arrived at the U.S. to start a new life,

they have gone through the experience differently. Thieu escaped the Vietnam war with

his bride, ending their journey in Louisiana, where their son was born. There, Thieu found

a community who accepted him even though he is a foreigner. In spite of this, Thieu still

fails to acculturate. All the noticeable differences between Americans and Vietnamese

men remind him he is different. Even the relationship with his son causes him a sense of

affliction, since it emphasizes how estranged Thieu feels from his native land and customs.

As a result, he worries about the Vietnamese heritage his son is not experiencing and how

he, as a parent, is unsuccessfully sharing. Mamacita is also an expatriate parent, who has

come to the United States. She is not only suffering from homesickness but she has also

another barrier in this unfamiliar context: language. Mamacita only speaks Spanish and in

it, she finds her own sense of resistance. She stays at home all the time listening to the

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 Comparative Essay.
Written Expression IV
T: Margarita Villamil
S: Florencia Montoya

Spanish radio, isolated from the rest of the world. Her interactions are limited as she only

knows some fixed sentences in English. Similar to Thieu’s situation, Mamacita feels more

dissociated from the place she is when she hears her baby boy singing a commercial from

the TV in English, reminding her of all the things she has lost when she left her home.

In both short stories, the characters yearn for their homes but they tackle the issue

in contrasting forms. For Thieu, his sense of displacement leads him to approach his son

with some entertainments of his own childhood. When he tells the story of the crickets to

his child, he experiences a feeling of enjoyment as he is able to share a piece of his

infancy. But as soon as they start looking for the insects and find nothing more than the

weak charcoal type, the father realizes he is no longer home and there is no point in

insisting on it. The “fighting crickets” at first seem to be a bridge to unite father and son

but, eventually, they make Thieu face the irrevocable reality that his son, Bill, is American

and, even if he despises many of the American qualities, he must accept him as such. For

Mamacita, the situation is different. She is unwilling to adapt and completely alienated from

the country she is in now. Unlike Thieu, as soon as she hears her baby boy repeating the

English words, she starts telling him “No speak English” as if the English language would

disengage her from her son making him a stranger, no longer sharing the same culture.

Everything considered, while both are expatriate parents who fail at acculturating

their new communities, their developments are dissimilar. Where Thieu found acceptance

of the different, Mamacita found refusal. Possibly what both short stories aim at is to

comprehend the difficulties which have to be faced when reaching a foreign place

permanently and how a home may be more than just a geographical spot.