1. Why does Mengestu consciously try to make the Kensington section of Brooklyn home?
2. What had been previously missing in his life?
3. Why can’t he acknowledge that he is from Ethoiopia?
4. Do you think he succeeds in making Kensington home?
5. How do you interpret his final paragraph
Mengestu chooses Kensington section of Brooklyn to be his home because it was the one place that he felt certainty that he came from some place. He developed a bond between everyone he meets in the area. Such as the places he eats to the people talking on the streets. The need of knowing where he came from was what he was previously missing in his life. He can’t acknowledge that he is from Ethoiopia because he had no recollection of being there since he left when he was only 2 years old. He succeeds in making Kensington his home because how the men from Bangladeshi takeout places would slip extra food because they recognized him as a regular and every time he sees his landlord’s father he says hello in Mandarin since he doesn’t speak English. Both of those shows that he has settled and immersed in where he lived. In the last paragraph Mengetsu explains how he was jealous how he was not part of the group standing across the street but he felt as if he had a feeling that he was attached to something.
Question 2
1. What is Mengestu’s reason for not hosting the “Kensington night” he had planned (paragraph 7)
2. Why do you think though he says he made new friends in the city - that no friends appear in the essay?
3. Note how often through the course of the essay he is either alone or at the edge of a group of people whose language he doesn’t understand. How do you interpret this?
The reason why Mengestu didn’t host a Kensington night is because he “had established his own private relationship to the neighborhood, one that could never be shared with others in a single evening”. From the story it seemed as if Mengestu did not have any friends. His friends were