How will people react on you, your culture and your colour of skin? Will they help you settle down? How will you fit in? Will you get a better life than before? Can or will you forget your past? These must be some of the questions, which must plague the mind of the persons who are fleeing their own country and now stands by the border of a new one. .
Maria must have been standing face to face with all these questions when she fleet Guatemala with only tree of her children and without a housebound. .
?But still she managed to start a new life in New York and with success. Maria has a job, which.
many foreigners don't have and her children go to school. Maria is described as some kind of role.
model for every foreigner even though she has lost her housebound and two of her children. .
The American people will see Maria in the television and feel sorry for her but they would also be very satisfied with her because she seems to have forgotten her past (even though she still speaks Spanish at home). She has started a new life similar to their life (the American way of life). She talks like them and looks like them so she must be one of them.
The pretty Chinese woman, Ling, who Maria took English lessons together with is almost the opposite of Maria. Ling hasn't managed as well as Maria in her new country even though she slave just as hard as Maria. Ling has great trouble with her English and you feel sorry for her in a way you don't for Maria. .
Imagine how humiliating it must be for Ling not to be able to speak English very well. That is also why Ling isn't the one who is going to receive the award even though she might need it more than Maria. You wouldn't put a person on television which the American people cannot identify themselves with. People would undoubtedly feel sorry for Ling but they would start asking questions about how hard she works at becoming "one of them? In Denmark the foreigners must work very hard at becoming "one of them?in the small communities otherwise they get the blame of almost every crime in Denmark according to the media.