Have you ever though what does the word "culture" means? Well, throughout life people refer to this word as art, beliefs, behavior, ideas or activities relating to literature, art, and music of a particular society or group of people. However, that is only the simply definition that appears in the dictionary. I chose two different stories to clearly identify and understand the meaning of culture, such as, “A Country Boy Withdraws from School,” by Lao Hsiang, and “Living in Two Worlds," by Marcus Mabry. Culture involves other important subjects that describe deeply this word, issues such as, family, language, identity, stereotyping, raising, expectations, economic situation and so on. Therefore, family is the place in which society begins, but in many cases families are part of different cultures, and the ones that are affected by this situation are the kids. These children are the ones who have to fight day by day against these two different worlds. Each of these stories reveals and illustrates the conflicts children have to confront in the adjustment in a foreign culture, such as, having to adapt between two different cultures and the roles that family play such as

, forcing their children to be ignorant about other cultures.

First of all, the importance of the experiences of these children is to define their identity by learning and being introduced to different civilizations. Therefore, for children that belongs to two cultures is not easy to find their identity, especially if they come from immigrant families. In the story "The “Country Boy Withdraws from School,” by Lao Hsiang a Chinese boy is being described as someone who loses their identity. The young Chinese boy was sent off to school, and he returned with books that did not have pictures of Chinese people in it. His family started to complain about the pictures inside the book that were of foreigners. They tried to make it clear to the boy that you should not learn anything else besides the Chinese culture; everything else to them was abnormal. “This woman at the spinning wheel is also a foreigner, we use the right hand to spin but she uses her left” (Hsiang 12). The young boy is caught between two cultural identities, the identity he is learning in school and the identity his family members tell him to be. His family has the right to teach him the Chinese culture traditions as well as allowing him to experience new cultures. Without the experiences and education of a new culture this boy will be ignorant to many aspects he will soon approach in life. The affect that this family has on this poor boy relates to why it is very important to define their identity throughout understanding, for the boy will be unaware of new civilization. Secondly, poverty is unfortunate but is the true reality that many individuals have to face. For example, the country boy came from a poor family who did not want to send him to school because they thought “he gets to be at least half as useful as a grown-up by the time he is eight or nine years old,” but were forced due to proclamation. The country boy has to face the reality of living in poverty and he has to find his own individuality. He needs to learn how to get out of the same mind set his family has. They are stuck believing that beca

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