People love to label themselves. From personality quizzes to AA meetings, many long for acceptance within a group filled with people like themselves. Yet, arguably, the most important label for many is their heritage. In her essay “Cultural Baggage,” author Barbara Ehrenreich discusses her relation to her identity and society's obsession with culture, questioning why people find clearly defined culture as so important and crucial to the human experience.
Beginning in her childhood, Ehrenreich details her desire to understand and find meaning in her life, which largely stems from the absence of any distinct and unique culture . Discussing how her parents handled explaining why she shouldn’t feel insufficient because of that, she launches into
“Where are you from?” is a common question people ask if you look ethnically mysterious. Being a different race with unique facial features shows you are, not what they call in the United States “American”. Evelyn Alsultany was born and raised in New York City. Her ethnicity is Arab from her father's side and Cuban from her mother's side. She describes the social issue, she confronts the way people approach her creating assumptions, consequently making her feel excluded from her cultural background.
Ehrenreich's personal account encourages the readers to reflect on their own relationship to their cultural background and how it shapes their individual identity and practices. At the beginning of her essay, Barbara Ehrenreich shares a conversation she had
but I do not think about what that means nor what means for my other identities nearly as much as I probably should. While the captured Africans, repressed Native Americans, and the European settlers that fragmented them are all parts of my ancestry and have led to my current identity, my identity now is so vastly different from their modern counterparts. Let me begin with the dominate culture that makes up the bulk of my identity, African
Dwight Okita and Sandra Cisneros were greatly influenced by American culture. Both authors explain the topic of American identity, in Okita’s poem American identity has more to do with how you experience the culture of a country than with where your family came from. Both Okita’s poem and Cisneros’s short story however, show that cultural heritage and physical appearances do not determine what it means to be “American.” Okita’s Letter “in response to executive order 9066” is the description of a little girl who is overwhelmed by the American Culture. In the letter, we can see how the narrator is affected as she states that her best friend is a white girl named Denise.
The collective autobiography edited by Alice Pung “Growing Up Asian in Australia” and the short story collection written by Maxine Beneba Clarke, “Foreign Soil” both illustrate the impact of family and cultural expectations on one’s identity. Both authors emphasise how the personal desires and beliefs of individuals brought about by the expectations imposed by their family, their culture and the society on them can serve as a motivation to change and establish their identity. The desire for acceptance and love can motivate an individual to satisfy a certain expectation. Similarly, pressure brought by individuals around a character may bring them to feel obligated to meet standards.
Running Reveals Me Your own culture can be a topic that is hard to grasp. It is much easier to see someone else’s culture because they are different from you. In the personal essay, “Ethnic Hash” explains, “Do I even have an ethnicity?”
“Cultural Baggage” by Barbara Ehrenreich explains the author’s views on traditional values that come from family ancestry. Ehrenreich’s motivation to write about this subject came from the way she was raised and challenged. She grew up finding new things to try and not to succumb to the mindset of accepting something because it’s always been that way. Ehrenreich’s father said in the essay, ‘“think for yourself’ and ‘always ask why’” (Ehrenreich, 04 Apr. 1992).
Our culture helps to define who people are and is an extremely important part in people’s lives. Not all cultures are the same and most people grow up in different cultures. We can see this between Reuven and Danny. In Reuven and Danny’s culture, there are many differences and similarities in their religion, the dynamics of their family, and the customs and traditions they practice. First, religion is a major part of who we are and in Danny and Reuven’s cultures we can see similarities and differences.
Cultural identity involves the formation of an individual’s solid qualities that influence on how different the individual reflects on the cultural phenomena and people surrounding him. In addition, cultural identity is the feeling of an individual’s belonging to a group. Indeed, this identity can be inherited or built by the influence of surroundings. Indeed, the question of the cultural identity of the immigrants has been studied by many scholars. Many argued that their identity is fixed and connected to the homeland; however, others illustrate that cultural identity is shared and collective.
In Barbara Ehrenreich’s essay, Cultural Baggage, she talks about the topic of ethnic heritage as the author in the paper is replying to a friend that’s asking her what her background is. Barbara states that her reason for writing her essay is to make readers conscious that having no ethnic background is in fact an ethnic background. She takes on an uncommon view of herself as most people pride themselves in stating where they came from and the traditions of the culture they abide by, rather than feeling embarrassed to claim their background. Perhaps Barbara is trying to get us to understand that a family that doesn’t cling to their culture and abide by its standards can be just as successful as those that do ,and also that being different isn’t always a bad thing.
Who am I? This question is posed by almost every person at some time during their lives. Who we are defines our experiences, impacts familial and social relationships, characterizes our expectations of ourselves and others, and governs our values both learned and perceived. A difficult task for any person evaluating this question is being honest with ourselves about our own prejudices concerning factors such as ethnicity, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, and country of origin among many more underlying differences that distinguish ourselves from other minority groups.
Although she feels scared and guilty because of her parent’s fighting, she tries to keep looking cool and disengaged in his
Throughout my experiences in this course so far, I have had many opportunities to reflect on my own past and have begun to better understand my own cultural identity. It has been much more difficult to wrap my head around than I would have predicted it to be because so many things play into the construction of an identity that it can be hard to look at all of those separate pieces together. My cultural identity, like all others, is more complicated than it first appears. I identify as a white person, a woman, an American, a gay person, and a feminist, just to name a few. While all of these labels carry with them stereotypes and expectations, they also interplay with the cultural influences I was subject to throughout my childhood.
Before I really dive deep into this, I want to first attempt to define what my culture is. Culture, for me, has always been something elusive, something hard to grasp. I like to blame my difficulty in the way my brain is just wired – I’m more suited for logical, mathematical, abstract thinking rather and less so for understanding people. But this doesn’t mean I shouldn’t attempt to do so. Growing up, I had always been isolated from my peers.
Cultural identity plays a very vital role in cross cultural communication, people from a particular culture communicate with partners and employees from many different cultures and in this situation every individual strives to keep their cultural and individual identity. According to Gardiner and Kosmitzki, identity is defined as “a person 's self-definition as a separate and distinct individual, including behaviours, beliefs, and attitudes” (Gardiner & Kosmitzki, 2008, p. 154). Also, Ting-Toomey defines identity as a "reflective self-conception or self-image that we each derive from our family, gender, cultural, ethnic, and individual socialization process"( Ting-Toomey, 2005). Both definitions bring out the generalisation of cultural identity