Response Paper

This is a response paper to the story "Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs". In the story Jayanti comes to the United States and has a certain expectancy of how life should be and finds herself in a place that she eventually realizes is a cruel and unforgiving environment.
I think the moment that shows the actual transition of what her expectantcies were and her actual impression of her new life was when she got off the luxurious plane and stepped into a life with a drunken mechanic and his wife that can't stand up for herself, not the life she expected for so long.
She expects to come to a home like the ones she saw in the magazines "The apartment is another disappointment, not at all what an American home should be like. I've seen the pictures in Good Housekeeping and Sunset..." (40).
One of the main parts where she realizes that the place she has come to call home is a hostile environment is when she and her aunt go for a walk. They walk for a bit, all the while talking about India, even though she'd rather ask about America. When they finally decide they need to get home her aunt forgets which street its on, because her husband doesn't like it when she leaves. The one street they go to they find some kids on the street that seem harmless enough but they begin to ridicule them, "The boys bend their heads together, consulting, then the tallest one takes a step toward us and says, 'Nigger.'" (50). "
In the end she wishes she would of just listened to her mother and stayed in India. She came to America with the thought that it would great and instead was handed a life in a run-down part of the city where she was ridiculed for just being a different race.