Women without a Voice: The Paradox of Silence in the Works of Sandra Cisneros, Shashi Deshpande and Azar Nafisi

Women of every culture face a similar problem: loss of voice. Their lives are permeated with silence. Whether their silence results from a patriarchal society that prohibits women from asserting their identity or from a social expectation of gender roles that confine women to an expressive domain-submissive, nurturing, passive, and domestic-rather than an instrumental role where men are dominant, affective and aggressive-women share the common bond of a debilitating silence. Maria Racine, in her analysis of Janie in Zora Neale Hurston\u27s Their Eyes Were Watching God, reaffirms the pervasiveness of this bond: For women, silence has crossed every racial and cultural boundary (283). Indeed, Elaine Mar, a Chinese-American writer, in her memoir, Paper Daughter, elucidates the implications of silence for women, Like Mother I was learning to disappear. Frequently, I sought refuge with her in the basement room, in the silence of empty spaces. But I was also learning to vanish in full sight of others, retreating into myself when physical flight wasn\u27t possible. My voice withered. Silent desire parched my throat (48). Silence and loss of voice debilitate and stifle women, as they are forced to sublimate their identity in order to survive in their worlds

STRESS, ADJUSTMENT AND SOCIAL RELATIONS OF FOREIGN STUDENTS

This study examines some social and psychological effects of international study in a population of foreign students studying at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Data collected from 285 foreign students attending the same University were analyzed to examine cross-cultural differences and their impacts on stress, adjustment and social relations. Contact with citizens of the host country is an important variable and the greater the contact the foreign student has with the host country, the lower the level of his/her stress and anxiety. Those students who perceive themselves to have greater cultural similarity with the host country are likely to enjoy more social contacts within the host country