1. In the beginning of the book, the first difference that can be observed is the cultural crash between the families that adopted the Korean girls. The contrast between the families was clear.The Donaldsons arrived with balloons and cameras, a huge amount of people, they were totally Americans, had all the costumes(food, culture way of living) and traditions from the United States. The Yazdans family, on the other hand, were not noticed, they were waiting quietly with few people the baby arrival.
They were different, they followed their habits and costumes with strictness. What would probably happen is a cultural shock between both families, because each country, has its own religion, habits, and for persons to live in a convivid atmosphere, everyone must respect its choices… The families will probably suffer different types of daily situations when they start educating their children.
The Donaldsons kid might be a typical American girl, with all the thoughts, desires that an girl who lives in America has. The Yazdans family will have a way of educating their kid in their culture patterns, fact that may cause some problems for them in the future, because its very hard to maintain a tradition of a home country living in another, who will probably suffer the most is Susan, not finding her identity in this situation.
2) Dave Dickinson was a recent widowed man, his wife Connie died with cancer3. The significant event that happened was when he began dating Maryam Yazdam. He was feeling awful after his wife death, he couldnt think of anyone else. But then, he started feeling lonely in his big house and began finding excuses to be near to Maryam, an Iranian woman, very in touch with her culture. She had difficulties to attach to people, she had her own independent life. But they became very close, he was impressed by her, he wanted to know more about her costumes, he wanted to be with her, sometimes he caught himself thinking of her in a different way. After a while, he realized was in love with her, and then, they began a relationship with the culture conflict, but love won after all
3) The book shows how the United States became a melting pot, with different people of distinct countries in the same environment. At the same time, it relates how dificult is to understand other peoples costumes , it shows that everybody must respect and learn how to deal with the others . Of course its hard for people who learnt things in a way, see others acting on the exact diferent way, it´s hard to accept in the beginng, but with pacience and open mind, convive with other cultures is a way to expand knowledge and life experiences, exchanging informantions, daily costumes and life stories…
I can totally understand the situation, in the deep inside we are all the same, and we must respect each other no matter what choices of culture we have. 4)The author was successful. Anne Tyler is known around the globe for writing daily routine novels, what is amazing about that, is that even when she writes about normal things, her books still interesting and very unique. They have deep descriptions of the characters, it is shaprly observed , fact that makes the reader enter deeply in the story, materializing the characteristics and personalities of each characters in the novel.
She brought on her novel a very controversial theme, in which any persons has lots of diferente thoughts and disagreements, what makes the book very discussable. Despite the fact that reading this piece is incredible, we cant see time passing during it. Since the beginning of the story, we can see the differences between the cultures. The kids arrival celebrating party for example showed the differences of food and people, because there was a mix of cultures such as Korean, american and iranian.
