Americans never seem to realize how lucky we have it. We are born in this wonderful country and we never learn or understand that things can be different in other countries. When we look at short stories with such massive cultural differences like, "The Little Emperors" and "Amina," it teaches us to appreciate how much freedom we have. For example, Americans are allowed to leave our "estate" to either child whether boy or girl. It does not make a difference what sex the child is, all that matters is that they are part of our family. We are also allowed to have more than one child per family. It may not seem like a big deal; having as many children as we want but this is not the case in certain countries.

The story "The Little Emperors" shows an aspect of life in China that people are rarely...