DiaBlog #2: Chapters 3 & 4

"...this is a land where the earth melts into the sea and back again; where poeple sing the same songs and eat the same white fleshed hilsa fish, wherever they live." (19)

This sentence really told me a lot about Nadira. Even though she doesn't remember Bangladesh as much as her parents, she is so proud to be from there. The sentence was clear and graphic; I saw Bangladesh from her descriptions. Nadira is a descriptive person. In the two chapters we read, there were tons of tiny descriptions that showed the environment that she was in. Little details about the countryside and about her family. I could visualize the situations that she was in, like the greasy Providence mall, or the story about the drought in Bangladesh.

In the fourth chapter, Nadira talks about how Aisha does much to fit in and I thought that that was pretty interesting. Aisha, it seems, always tries to fit in. In the first two chapters, Nadira makes it sound like Aisha always is perfect, says the perfect things, and gets perfect grades. But I actually like the sound of the Aisha in this chapter because it makes her more like a human being, than a robot or a 'perfect' Barbie doll. Aisha tries so hard to become exactly like the American kids though, that it makes me wonder whether she's doing it to fit in, or to not seems like she's from another place. She does act like a mean older sister, which is normal. Nadira says in chapter 4, that Aisha is embarrassed by Nadira because she is fat and she's not perfect like Aisha. I think that Aisha likes to be in charge and have everything in her life be perfect, which means that she excludes Nadira. These two chapters showed me two things; that Nadira is very observant and probably sharper than her sister and that Aisha isn't the perfect daughter the first chapters claim her to be.