Cultural Encounter: "Martha, Martha"

Cultural encounters seem to become routine daily in our globalized world. They can
shake our certainty, question our sense of identity and change us. So they stir mixed
feelings: excitement, attention, but also concern. However, cultural encounters are not
a recent phenomenon, but they are part of human history from the beginning. Culture
is a slippery concept everywhere. At first, culture was associated with the concept of
civilization. "Culture" means the complex of traditional behavior that has been
developed by the human race and is taught by each generation, respectively.
However, there was a need for the specificity of the concept of culture in relation to a
specific human society to study other societies. Therefore, culture can mean
traditional forms of behavior that characterize a particular society, group of societies,
a particular gender, a particular field, or for a certain period of time. "Cultural
encounters" occur when a culture meets another culture. https://books.google.jo/books?
id=IPtRAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=cultural+encounter+in+literature&hl=en&sa=X
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%20encounter%20in%20literature&f=false

The story of "Martha, Martha" speaks in short about Martha, a Nigerian girl, who is
looking for an apartment, and Pam, real estate agent, who is trying to find her a
suitable apartment. At first glance, from the title, the story seems to be talking about
Martha, but actually talking about Pam. All the characters in the story seem to know
the meaning of "cultural encounters", due to the skilful author Zadie Smith. Where
she employs both language, characters and scriptures to emphasize this concept.
Pam, "a Mid-Western by birth", is the main focus of the story - at first - the story
revolves around her description and how she works, a real estate agent who works to
find suitable apartments for clients, and one of her clients is Martha, a Nigerian girl.
Her story begins in the office, where she listens to Latin songs, but sings in English
wrongly. Pam takes her freedom in her office, she can sing and even toss the slipper
out of her foot, hearing a noise from outside the office, she goes out to greet her guest,
but she is able to see a man "large, dark, and bearded". When he speaks to her, she
knows from his accent that he is from the Middle East, "a heavy accent, quickly
identified by Pam as Middle-Easterny. A Middle-Easterny scarf, too, and a hat". Pam
can distinguish the accents, since she also distinguish the accent of Martha which is
English "and her accent, to Pam’s ears very English", but she cannot guess whether
this accent means rich or not, since Pam has a conviction that the accent indicates a
person's social status, but she cannot distinguish the English accent precisely. Also,
Pam does not like to mix with others, and it seems obvious every time Martha opens
the windows, something else, she does not like to be interrupted, but because she is an
employee she works hard to mute her anger. Pam talks a lot, most of her dialogues are
very long, and can be short only in the case of interruption by someone. Pam cannot
hide her wondering for the men of the Middle East who make a snowman,
sarcastically commenting that they "see snow for the first time!" Now, Pam does not
behave well with everyone, Yousef is a special case, because she thinks he is
handsome. We see that she attaches importance to Yousef and his family while
visiting them. Pam cannot hide her anger anymore when Martha grin her teeth while
talking with Amelia, she really does not know what Martha thinks or what her
concept of a natural conversation between people, she sarcastic Martha, but she
remains for the end of the story confused about her. Pam shows her knowledge of
"cultural encounters" when she learns people from their dialect. She was able to
distinguish Martha's clothes as an attempt to look older, and she characterized those
with "heavy accent" because they were from the Middle East, specifically "Egyptians,
Iranians or something."
Martha, on the other hand, is a Nigerian girl looking for an apartment to live in. It
seems like she likes snow and cold weather, where she takes advantage of any chance
to open windows or play in the snow. The first impression that Martha leaves to Pam
is that she is trying to look older, "A cheap-looking grey trouser suit and some fake
pearls were conspiring to make her older than she was". She also uses short sentence
to reply "Yeah", may be limited answers "The lift’s broken, it don’t work", the
interruption of Pam's speech significantly in conversations. It is clear from Martha's
actions that she wants to change, change for the better, she has a special list to do, her
best idol is her friend, lawyer Kara, she wants to become like her, "she definitely took
it to the next level—as a young black woman". It seems that Martha cares about other
cultures, she wants to listen to classical music, wants to acquire books, and she does
not care too much for the sardonic talk of Pam. What distinguishes Martha is that she
is sometimes incomprehensible, no one can know what she is thinking, seems to be
mindless most of the time, "Martha. Martha?’ ‘Yeah? Sorry, what?’". Martha shows
her knowledge of "cultural encounters" by criticizing Yousef, she believes he is the
worst because he thinks he is superior by marrying a white woman.

The "color / skin" theme is evident in the story. The first description of the man whom
Pam encounters is "dark," as it is the first description of Martha, "Her face, very
black, could not blush." On the contrary, Martha believes that her "dark" skin is a
blessing from the Lord and thanks him, "She came close up to the mirror and gave
thanks to God for her secretive skin that told nobody anything". Pam is characterized
by dark skinned people from the Middle East, as well as their location "Egypt, Iran,
others". Not only does Pam describe people by their dark skin, but also call the
Chinese and Indians "people of color," "Lots of Chinese young people too, and
Indian, many. Many! Oh, there’s plenty, plenty of people of colour here". Pam derides
the actions of the "Middle East" men, and is surprised by their talk, "emptying out a
demotic mystery language into the stairwell". Although Yousef has a dark
complexion like Martha, she thinks he is bad, because he married a white woman,
which makes him think he is better, "those ones that marry white always feel even
more superior". https://books.google.jo/books?
id=VOckQn8KX6QC&dq=smith+zadie+and+martha+Pam+
+analysis+pdf&source=gbs_navlinks_s

In conclusion, "cultural encounters" mean the collision of two different cultures

together, and this is evident in the story of "Martha, Martha" by author Smith, where
she used the term effectively. The author illustrated the cultural clash between
Nigerian culture and English culture, through the heroines of the story Pam and
Martha. She also used the "skin / color" theme to illustrate the term. In many
civilizations, people may have to adopt new identities to live with the new culture
imposed on them. Martha at the beginning of the story shows that she wants to
embrace the new culture, but at the end of the story the author does not show that she
has taken on a new identity.