Response to Rhode Island
Response
In the article of “Rhode island”, Jhumpa Lahiri draws a picture of her hometown, Rhode island,and describes the memory of her childhood that left impact in shaping her sense of identity. In the article, ‘ the Atlantic I grew up with lacks the color and warmth of the Caribbean, the grandeur of the pacific, the romance of the Mediterranean. It is generally cold, and full of rust-colored seaweed. Still, I prefer it. The waters of Rhode Island, as much a part of the state’s character, if not more, as the land never asked us questions, never raised a brow. Thanks to its very lack of welcome, its unwavering indifference, the ocean always made me feel accepted, and to my dying day, the seaside is the only place where I can feel truly and recklessly happy.’ Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London to Bengali Indian immigrants and grew up in Rhode Island, which means that she might have thought she was not belonged here at first. Besides, in this sentence from article shows that Rhode Island seemed to be not welcome to her because she was an immigrant. Moreover, I also notice that in this article Jhumpa pointed out that her parents’ difficulties when living and working here. According to that, a common conclusion should be that Jhumpa’s family hated Rhode Island and had lived disappointingly for many years. In the sharp contrast, I notice that Jhumpa still preferred Rhode Island and her parents even lived here for decades. Why this happened? In my mind, a place you live for a long time becomes your haven no matter what do you think from the beginning. Same as Jhumpa, I moved to a place unfamiliar when I was a little child because of my father’s job. Although I did not move to another country, I started to live in from suburban area and was not used to speaking in mandarin for the reason that I had spoken dialect for many years. At that age, I really hate the new “place” because I did not know how to spend my daily life and even was laughed by my classmates in school for my strange mandarin. As a result, I began to regard the city as unfriendly place that kept me away from other people. However, as time went by, everything went better. In fact, the city left me lots of memory and saw my growth from a child knowing nothing to a legal person going to America for undergraduate study. It is always difficult for immigrant to get adjusted to a new place, because he or she will not only receive others’ discrimination but also darkness, disappointment form his or her own mind. In addition, the less one person communicates with the society the longer time needs to get accustomed. But all things will go back to the proper track at last. I really believe that Jhumpa must agree with me about that and regard Rhode Island as one of most memorable places in her heart.
In the article of “Rhode island”, Jhumpa Lahiri draws a picture of her hometown, Rhode island,and describes the memory of her childhood that left impact in shaping her sense of identity. In the article, ‘ the Atlantic I grew up with lacks the color and warmth of the Caribbean, the grandeur of the pacific, the romance of the Mediterranean. It is generally cold, and full of rust-colored seaweed. Still, I prefer it. The waters of Rhode Island, as much a part of the state’s character, if not more, as the land never asked us questions, never raised a brow. Thanks to its very lack of welcome, its unwavering indifference, the ocean always made me feel accepted, and to my dying day, the seaside is the only place where I can feel truly and recklessly happy.’ Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London to Bengali Indian immigrants and grew up in Rhode Island, which means that she might have thought she was not belonged here at first. Besides, in this sentence from article shows that Rhode Island seemed to be not welcome to her because she was an immigrant. Moreover, I also notice that in this article Jhumpa pointed out that her parents’ difficulties when living and working here. According to that, a common conclusion should be that Jhumpa’s family hated Rhode Island and had lived disappointingly for many years. In the sharp contrast, I notice that Jhumpa still preferred Rhode Island and her parents even lived here for decades. Why this happened? In my mind, a place you live for a long time becomes your haven no matter what do you think from the beginning. Same as Jhumpa, I moved to a place unfamiliar when I was a little child because of my father’s job. Although I did not move to another country, I started to live in from suburban area and was not used to speaking in mandarin for the reason that I had spoken dialect for many years. At that age, I really hate the new “place” because I did not know how to spend my daily life and even was laughed by my classmates in school for my strange mandarin. As a result, I began to regard the city as unfriendly place that kept me away from other people. However, as time went by, everything went better. In fact, the city left me lots of memory and saw my growth from a child knowing nothing to a legal person going to America for undergraduate study. It is always difficult for immigrant to get adjusted to a new place, because he or she will not only receive others’ discrimination but also darkness, disappointment form his or her own mind. In addition, the less one person communicates with the society the longer time needs to get accustomed. But all things will go back to the proper track at last. I really believe that Jhumpa must agree with me about that and regard Rhode Island as one of most memorable places in her heart.
Response 2
I read Tuan’s “Space and Place” and Price’s “Place”. One of the things impressing me is that place is relevant to experience. Moreover, different experience will always leave people with different feeling and memory with place. The other thing is that the relationship between place and space in human experiential perspective.
In the article “Space and Place”, Tuan described the difference between Space and place. For example, “place is security and space is freedom”(Tuan, “Space and Place”, 3) points out that place is a place much more restrictive compared to space, and it can give people the impression of a small, protected and self-contained world. In general, place is more likely center of felt value where biological needs, but space is more abstract that sometimes can only be felt, seen, or heard instead of explaining. In fact, human infants have only very crude notions of space and place until they grow up, which proved that a feeling of place is connected with human beings’ own experience and able to be learned and improved. Tuan always pointed out that a key term in his book is “experience”. In addition, Tuan also stated that the organization of human space is uniquely dependent on sight and other senses expand and enrich visual space and, vice versa, space reflects the quality of the human senses and mentality. In my mind, what make space change to place are various senses related to human’s organs. Owing to more and more learning about the space around people, they start to come up with new understand about this place.
Besides, in the article “Place”, Price introduced an amount of definition about space and place trying to explain them in a logical way such as “A place cannot be too enormous or it ceases to be a place”(Price, “Place”, 124) and so on. However, these two terms seem not such easy to replace with other words. To be honest, places can only be experienced through bodies, Something I really agree with in his article is that no two people will have exactly the same experience of place and place is frequently portrayed as a weaving together of diverse individual experiences. According to that, each person should have different thinking about the places and a place may be meaningful to one person but not a group. So I think place should be understood as an actively crafted entity.
Tweet: The first article talks about the difference about space and place, and the second give more definitional explanations about this two terms.
These two articles really interact well with each other. Basically, they both agree with that Place related to experience tightly is quite different from the space. Furthermore, space is likely a much more abstract term with bigger scale and more unstable movement, and, on the contrary, place is stable and relatively restrictive, which also is proved by “ A place cannot be too enormous or it ceases to be a place, nor can it be too tiny…”(Price, “Place”, 124). Tuan and price, they both used their own way to describe the place and space in either definition or human senses, concluding that space is always right here but things seen, heard, smelled by human build up the feeling of place. In my mind, we need to consider space and place in a perspective of experience, which means that things you undergo leave you the impression of a place. For me, I always think that I cannot forget a place and regard it as memory that change me in any way just because I lived here for a long time and had lots of stories with people, buildings here. Overall, it is one of human being’s internal personalities that they should usually be afraid to a new place but comfortable to stay in a place they familiar with, so in a short word this kind of feeling can be described as “experience”.
Tweet: “Space and Place” tells about the difference about space and place, and “Place” provides the definitions of them, but they both agree with that experience is important.
All of three articles are talking about the influence of place. And Tuan’s “Space and Place” and Price’s “Place” proved the reason why Lahiri got such impression about Rhode Island. Rhode island was meaningful to Lahiri and made a significant value in her life. When she first came to Rhode Island, she felt really uncomfortable and even lonely for the unfriendliness of this new place, because human is always afraid of an unfamiliar place more or less in internal, which is explained by Price’s “place”. And after a relatively long time, Lahiri started to get along well with her new “home” and even regarded Lahiri as one of most important things in her life. In my mind, all of them provide me with a new understanding of place. For example, place is related with experiences and space is different from place, leading me to a position where I get some resonance from my own hometown and new environment.
In the article “Space and Place”, Tuan described the difference between Space and place. For example, “place is security and space is freedom”(Tuan, “Space and Place”, 3) points out that place is a place much more restrictive compared to space, and it can give people the impression of a small, protected and self-contained world. In general, place is more likely center of felt value where biological needs, but space is more abstract that sometimes can only be felt, seen, or heard instead of explaining. In fact, human infants have only very crude notions of space and place until they grow up, which proved that a feeling of place is connected with human beings’ own experience and able to be learned and improved. Tuan always pointed out that a key term in his book is “experience”. In addition, Tuan also stated that the organization of human space is uniquely dependent on sight and other senses expand and enrich visual space and, vice versa, space reflects the quality of the human senses and mentality. In my mind, what make space change to place are various senses related to human’s organs. Owing to more and more learning about the space around people, they start to come up with new understand about this place.
Besides, in the article “Place”, Price introduced an amount of definition about space and place trying to explain them in a logical way such as “A place cannot be too enormous or it ceases to be a place”(Price, “Place”, 124) and so on. However, these two terms seem not such easy to replace with other words. To be honest, places can only be experienced through bodies, Something I really agree with in his article is that no two people will have exactly the same experience of place and place is frequently portrayed as a weaving together of diverse individual experiences. According to that, each person should have different thinking about the places and a place may be meaningful to one person but not a group. So I think place should be understood as an actively crafted entity.
Tweet: The first article talks about the difference about space and place, and the second give more definitional explanations about this two terms.
These two articles really interact well with each other. Basically, they both agree with that Place related to experience tightly is quite different from the space. Furthermore, space is likely a much more abstract term with bigger scale and more unstable movement, and, on the contrary, place is stable and relatively restrictive, which also is proved by “ A place cannot be too enormous or it ceases to be a place, nor can it be too tiny…”(Price, “Place”, 124). Tuan and price, they both used their own way to describe the place and space in either definition or human senses, concluding that space is always right here but things seen, heard, smelled by human build up the feeling of place. In my mind, we need to consider space and place in a perspective of experience, which means that things you undergo leave you the impression of a place. For me, I always think that I cannot forget a place and regard it as memory that change me in any way just because I lived here for a long time and had lots of stories with people, buildings here. Overall, it is one of human being’s internal personalities that they should usually be afraid to a new place but comfortable to stay in a place they familiar with, so in a short word this kind of feeling can be described as “experience”.
Tweet: “Space and Place” tells about the difference about space and place, and “Place” provides the definitions of them, but they both agree with that experience is important.
All of three articles are talking about the influence of place. And Tuan’s “Space and Place” and Price’s “Place” proved the reason why Lahiri got such impression about Rhode Island. Rhode island was meaningful to Lahiri and made a significant value in her life. When she first came to Rhode Island, she felt really uncomfortable and even lonely for the unfriendliness of this new place, because human is always afraid of an unfamiliar place more or less in internal, which is explained by Price’s “place”. And after a relatively long time, Lahiri started to get along well with her new “home” and even regarded Lahiri as one of most important things in her life. In my mind, all of them provide me with a new understanding of place. For example, place is related with experiences and space is different from place, leading me to a position where I get some resonance from my own hometown and new environment.