UERJ 2014 Inglês - Questões

Tehmina Sethna’s beloved husband has died this past year and she is visiting her son, Sorab, in his suburban Ohio home. Now Tehmina is being asked to choose between her old, familiar life in India and a new one in Ohio with her son, his American wife and their child. She must decide whether to leave the comforting landscape of her native India for the strange rituals of life in a new country. This is a journey Tehmina, a middle-aged Parsi$\ ^{1}$ woman, must travel alone.

The Parsis were let into India almost a millennium ago because of their promise to "sweeten" and enrich the lives of the people in their adopted country. This is an ancient promise that Tehmina takes seriously. And so, while faced with the larger choice of whether to stay in America or not, Tehmina is also confronted with another, more urgent choice: whether to live in America as a stranger or as a citizen. Citizenship implies connection, participation and involvement. Soon destiny beckons in the form of two young, troubled children next door. It is the plight of these two boys that forces Tehmina to choose. She will either straddle two worlds forever and live in a no-man’s land or jump into the fullness of her new life in America.

If today be sweet, novel by Thrity Umrigar, celebrates family and community. It is an honest but affectionate look at contemporary America - the sterility of its suburban life, the tinsel of its celebrity culture, but also the generosity of its people and their thirst for connection and communication. Eloquently written, evocative and unforgettable, If today be sweet is a poignant look at issues of immigration, identity, family life and hope. It is a novel that shows how cultures can collide and become better for it.

(goodreads.com)

$\ ^{1}$Parsi - antigos persas que, para escapar às perseguições muçulmanas, emigraram e se estabeleceram na Índia.

As resenhas têm o propósito de descrever e avaliar os livros para possíveis leitores.

Indique os parágrafos da resenha de "If today be sweet" que apresentam o enredo desse romance para os leitores. Indique, também, o principal dilema vivido por sua protagonista, Tehmina Sethna.

Tehmina Sethna’s beloved husband has died this past year and she is visiting her son, Sorab, in his suburban Ohio home. Now Tehmina is being asked to choose between her old, familiar life in India and a new one in Ohio with her son, his American wife and their child. She must decide whether to leave the comforting landscape of her native India for the strange rituals of life in a new country. This is a journey Tehmina, a middle-aged Parsi$\ ^{1}$ woman, must travel alone.

The Parsis were let into India almost a millennium ago because of their promise to "sweeten" and enrich the lives of the people in their adopted country. This is an ancient promise that Tehmina takes seriously. And so, while faced with the larger choice of whether to stay in America or not, Tehmina is also confronted with another, more urgent choice: whether to live in America as a stranger or as a citizen. Citizenship implies connection, participation and involvement. Soon destiny beckons in the form of two young, troubled children next door. It is the plight of these two boys that forces Tehmina to choose. She will either straddle two worlds forever and live in a no-man’s land or jump into the fullness of her new life in America.

If today be sweet, novel by Thrity Umrigar, celebrates family and community. It is an honest but affectionate look at contemporary America - the sterility of its suburban life, the tinsel of its celebrity culture, but also the generosity of its people and their thirst for connection and communication. Eloquently written, evocative and unforgettable, If today be sweet is a poignant look at issues of immigration, identity, family life and hope. It is a novel that shows how cultures can collide and become better for it.

(goodreads.com)

$\ ^{1}$Parsi - antigos persas que, para escapar às perseguições muçulmanas, emigraram e se estabeleceram na Índia.

A resenha faz referência a uma antiga promessa que permitiu a permanência dos Parses na Índia. Identifique essa promessa e a forma como Tehmina a encara nos dias de hoje.

Tehmina Sethna’s beloved husband has died this past year and she is visiting her son, Sorab, in his suburban Ohio home. Now Tehmina is being asked to choose between her old, familiar life in India and a new one in Ohio with her son, his American wife and their child. She must decide whether to leave the comforting landscape of her native India for the strange rituals of life in a new country. This is a journey Tehmina, a middle-aged Parsi$\ ^{1}$ woman, must travel alone.

The Parsis were let into India almost a millennium ago because of their promise to "sweeten" and enrich the lives of the people in their adopted country. This is an ancient promise that Tehmina takes seriously. And so, while faced with the larger choice of whether to stay in America or not, Tehmina is also confronted with another, more urgent choice: whether to live in America as a stranger or as a citizen. Citizenship implies connection, participation and involvement. Soon destiny beckons in the form of two young, troubled children next door. It is the plight of these two boys that forces Tehmina to choose. She will either straddle two worlds forever and live in a no-man’s land or jump into the fullness of her new life in America.

If today be sweet, novel by Thrity Umrigar, celebrates family and community. It is an honest but affectionate look at contemporary America - the sterility of its suburban life, the tinsel of its celebrity culture, but also the generosity of its people and their thirst for connection and communication. Eloquently written, evocative and unforgettable, If today be sweet is a poignant look at issues of immigration, identity, family life and hope. It is a novel that shows how cultures can collide and become better for it.

(goodreads.com)

$\ ^{1}$Parsi - antigos persas que, para escapar às perseguições muçulmanas, emigraram e se estabeleceram na Índia.

De acordo com o segundo parágrafo, a protagonista, Tehmina Sethna, precisa fazer uma escolha relacionada à sua cidadania.

Retire, em inglês, o fragmento que explicita a escolha a ser feita. Em seguida, com base no texto, cite dois elementos que caracterizam a cidadania.

Tehmina Sethna’s beloved husband has died this past year and she is visiting her son, Sorab, in his suburban Ohio home. Now Tehmina is being asked to choose between her old, familiar life in India and a new one in Ohio with her son, his American wife and their child. She must decide whether to leave the comforting landscape of her native India for the strange rituals of life in a new country. This is a journey Tehmina, a middle-aged Parsi$\ ^{1}$ woman, must travel alone.

The Parsis were let into India almost a millennium ago because of their promise to "sweeten" and enrich the lives of the people in their adopted country. This is an ancient promise that Tehmina takes seriously. And so, while faced with the larger choice of whether to stay in America or not, Tehmina is also confronted with another, more urgent choice: whether to live in America as a stranger or as a citizen. Citizenship implies connection, participation and involvement. Soon destiny beckons in the form of two young, troubled children next door. It is the plight of these two boys that forces Tehmina to choose. She will either straddle two worlds forever and live in a no-man’s land or jump into the fullness of her new life in America.

If today be sweet, novel by Thrity Umrigar, celebrates family and community. It is an honest but affectionate look at contemporary America - the sterility of its suburban life, the tinsel of its celebrity culture, but also the generosity of its people and their thirst for connection and communication. Eloquently written, evocative and unforgettable, If today be sweet is a poignant look at issues of immigration, identity, family life and hope. It is a novel that shows how cultures can collide and become better for it.

(goodreads.com)

$\ ^{1}$Parsi - antigos persas que, para escapar às perseguições muçulmanas, emigraram e se estabeleceram na Índia.

Observe a escala de avaliação abaixo:

• excellent

• averege

• poor

Considerando a opinião do crítico, expressa no terceiro parágrafo, transcreva o item da escala que avalia If today be sweet. Em seguida, destaque dois comentários sobre a obra, presentes na resenha, que justificam essa avaliação.

Leia, agora, um fragmento do mesmo romance, If today be sweet, para responder à questão. Neste fragmento, os leitores têm acesso aos sentimentos e pensamentos do filho de Tehmina, Sorab, a respeito da esposa (Susan, uma americana), da mãe, da infância em Bombaim e da vida como imigrante na América do norte.

Sorab felt the familiar rush of heat in the back of his neck that he felt each time Susan said something critical of Tehmina. He heard the frustration in his wife’s voice, but behind his eyes there was another, older image - of his mother bent over the kitchen counter chopping onions, her face flushed from the steam from the pressure cooker and the sting of the onions. Do you realize that my mother spent - wasted - her entire youth cooking and taking care of five other people? he wanted to say to Susan. (...)

It’s just that ... there are some things, some thoughts so elusive that they wiggle like fish out of the web of words. Some differences were so great that they were beyond language, beyond explanation. How envious Susan had been when he had first told her that his mother had always had servants. That the fisherwoman and the newspaper boy and the baker and the butcher all made their morning rounds to the house, delivering their wares. How easy, how luxurious Susan had imagined his mother’s life to be. And yet that’s not how he remembered her life, at all. What he remembered of his childhood was a blur of ringing doorbells and raised voices and his mother’s tired, flushed face and the complaints of neighbors and the haggling with the vendors and the arguments with the servants and the chain of unexpected visitors and demanding relatives who dropped in without calling first (1). And somehow, like the conductor of a mad orchestra, his mother had to manage it all (...). He had never asked and his mother had never said, but Sorab knew that Tehmina would have willingly traded in the servants and the vendors who carne to her door for a dishwasher that didn’t complain, a vacuum cleaner that didn’t ask for a raise, a supermarket where the prices were fixed, a clothes dryer that didn’t talk back, a food processor that chopped onions without leaving a trail of tears in its wake.

He looked at Susan, trying so hard to understand him, and he felt the gap between them as enormous as the distance between Bombay and Ohio. How to explain to his wife the rift that opened up in his heart each time there was a conflict between the two women he loved most in the world? How to describe to her his first few years in America, when he had felt that rootlessness that only immigrants feel, so that he felt as if his head was touching the skies of America while his feet were rooted in Bombay, as if he was straddling two continents. (...) Sorab wanted to tell Susan about how, for years, he had longed for his life to be seamless, how he yearned to have all his loved ones under the same roof. And how, after his mother and father began to visit him in Ohio, he had finally felt whole, complete, seamless.

(Thrity Umrigar. If today be sweet. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.)

Por meio do narrador, os sentimentos e pensamentos de Sorab são apresentados aos leitores. Retire do primeiro parágrafo, em inglês, o fragmento que indica como os sentimentos do personagem se manifestam fisicamente. Em seguida, traduza a pergunta que ele pensou em fazer a sua esposa.