An American Brat

In Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel, An American Brat, a story is told of a girls voyage to America and how she became embedded into a community that changed her views that ultimately broke the relationship she had with her family. “Feroza hugged the adventure of her travel to America to herself throughout the flight. As she hurtled through space, she became conscious also of the gravitational pull of the country she was leaving behind. Her sense of self, enlarged by the osmosis of identity with her community and with her group of school friends, stayed with her like a permanence -- like the support that ocean basins provide the wind- and moon-generated vagaries of its waters. And this cushioning stilled her fear of the unknown: an unconscious panic that lay coiled somewhere between her navel and her ribs and was just beginning to manifest itself in a fleeting irregularity of her heartbeat”(52). We see that through Feroza’s journey from Pakistan to America, the American culture and community change who Feroza is. The goal for the voyage was to help Feroza understand and realize her morals as a woman as being respected. When she reached America though, it did the opposite and in a way corrupted who she was. Feroza’s roommate, Jo, who was free spirited with her sexuality showed Feroza the American culture. This tore Feroza further and further away from her Pakistani culture. With her ways of breaking away from her traditional lifestyle by getting jobs and dating people that her community would not approve of. One relationship in general with David Press really disappointed her family. Being Jewish and not part of their culture he was seen as a terrible influence on Zareen and Cyrus’s daughter. The story is about Feroza’s coming of age. She is growing out of her traditional Pakistanian ways of being a woman and enters into the American lifestyle. She creates her own identity and embarks on her own voyage of life to her own decisions and trusts that they are the way to live.