This week we have discussed The Reluctant Fundamentalist. This is really an interesting book. We have spend a lot of time on discussing the anti-America thought. And I am pretty sure that this is what most of readers focus on. But I want to discuss that the change of identities of Changez.
In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, author writes Changez’s trip back to Pakistan during his Christmas. When Changez backs to his homeland, Reluctant, he finds that he can’t see his home in the perspective he used to have. He begins to judge his own homeland in a American way. But at the same time, in America, he can’t get the sense of identity from American as well. This internal conflict of identity also can be found on a lot of international students. Their different identities conflict and mix together. Finally, they have their own new identity. As an example, when I came back to China, I was unavoidable to judge my own culture in the western perspective. Even though I am not really a western and I only has a little part of western perspective, I still will judge my homeland which is a eastern developing country in a different perspective.
In my opinion, what really makes international students feel difficult to come back to their own culture is that the different common sense between the society and themselves. Since they have been educated in a different culture, their common sense has been manipulated into a way that more suitable to that culture. But because the aboard study is only a small part of their whole life, they can’t be really accepted by the foreign culture. So if there is a gap between different cultures, international students are fallen into that gap. When we come back to the reality, the gaps among western countries are smaller. But the gaps between eastern developing country and western developed country is big enough to make those students lose themselves in the conflicting identities. They are hard to find their own sense of belonging. So may be the only solution of this conflict is the identity of Global citizen, which has a more broad sense of identity. But dose it mean that the whole world’s common sense will be mixed up or replaced by one kind of culture ? It still need more time to discover what can be the real harmony.
