Greg Sarris Essay

When his second grade teacher calls him “indian, indian, indian,” Victor says, “Yes, I am. I am Indian. Indian, I am” (Alexei 173). The conversation portrays parallelism in that Victor’s repetition echoes the way his teacher repeats “Indian”. Alexei’s use of a capitalization change portrays Victor’s desire to identify as Indian while the white community tries to assimilate him.

However, the effects of social racism have largely contributed to all the intersecting dynamics in my life. Cherríe Moraga shares a similar conflicting identity crisis, in which she is labeled, “la guera,” meaning light skinned Latina. She discusses in her essay, “La Guera” how her home environment and other social spectrums treated her white, where she gained the idea that “white was right” because it, “attempted to bleach me of what color I did have” (Morago, 2015). She too describes her experiences of passing as it pertained to her race and the privileges it entailed, in which she refers to as being “anglicized.” Today, as a junior at Washington State University in Pullman, my white appearance deems me part of the majority, therefore excluding me from any racist harassment other students have experienced in just this past year alone.

You will often find brown in this book as the cement between leaves of contradiction” (Rodriguez xi). Rodriguez applies logos to clearly explicate where the brown’s lie, they are the impure as “brown [is an] impurity” and the social standards are pure (Rodriguez xi). He then furthers his argument with the application of pathos to convey the brown are “like the skinny or fat kids left over after the team captains chose sides. ‘You take the rest’- my cue to wander away to the sidelines, to wander away” (Rodriguez 5). They are the unwanted, the obscure with bold individuality.

In his book the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie portrays a teenage boy, Arnold Spirit (junior) living in white man’s world, and he must struggle to overcome racism and stereotypes if he must achieve his dreams. In the book, Junior faces a myriad of misfortunes at his former school in ‘the rez’ (reservation), which occurs as he struggles to escape from racial and stereotypical expectations about Indians. For Junior he must weigh between accepting what is expected of him as an Indian or fight against those forces and proof his peers and teachers wrong. Therefore, from the time Junior is in school at reservation up to the time he decides to attend a neighboring school in Rearden, we see a teenager who is facing tough consequences for attempting to go against the racial stereotypes.

Throughout this book, a derogatory word is used to label Native Americans. The term “injun” is slang for the other, equally racist term, “Indian”, used to make reference to Native Americans. When Columbus first arrived in the Americas, he thought he was in India, so naturally he referred to the natives as Indians. After they realized they were not in India, they did not try to learn the real names of the tribes. Up to 300 years later, the degrading term “injun” was still being used.

Writer Sherman Alexie has a knack of intertwining his own problematic biographical experience with his unique stories and no more than “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” demonstrates that. Alexie laced a story about an Indian man living in Spokane who reflects back on his struggles in life from a previous relationship, alcoholism, racism and even the isolation he’s dealt with by living off the reservation. Alexie has the ability to use symbolism throughout his tale by associating the title’s infamy of two different ethnic characters and interlinking it with the narrator experience between trying to fit into a more society apart from his own cultural background. However, within the words themselves, Alexie has created themes that surround despair around his character however he illuminates on resilience and alcoholism throughout this tale.

If he’d been anything an Indian boy living on the reservation he might have been called a prodigy. But he is an Indian boy living on the reservation and is simply an oddity.” Sherman Alexie

Black and Puerto Rican: Developing Piri’s Double-Sided Identity For centuries, American citizens have possessed a tendency to view ethnicity in black and white. A person without pale skin and smooth hair is characterized as black without regard to his or her self-identification. Given the racism prevalent in society, this black-white paradigm causes difficulty for people who are not comfortable in one or either category. Piri Thomas was one of these children, and his memoir recounts his struggle to understand himself. In Down These Mean Streets, Thomas demonstrates how the protagonist Piri’s confusion with his skin color and Puerto Rican heritage lead him to eventually acknowledge and appreciate his identity as an Afro-Latino man in America.

Overcoming a challenge, not giving up, and not being afraid of change are a few themes demonstrated in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Perhaps the most prominent theme derived from the novel is defying the odds, or in other words rising above the expectations of others. Junior Spirit exemplifies this theme throughout the entirety of the book. As Junior is an Indian, he almost expects that he will never leave the reservation, become an alcoholic, and live in poverty like the other Indians on the reservation—only if he sits around and does not endeavor to change his fate. When Junior shares the backstory of his parents, he says that his mother and father came from “poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people” (11).

“I’m not the Indian you had in mind” challenges the widely accepted image held by society of what an Indian should look, act, and essentially be like. The short video starts out with a man dressed in casual business attire carting out a life size statue of the stereotypical Indian. He takes the statue, dressed head to toe in what society expects an Indian to look like including a traditional headdress, tomahawk, long hair and clothing then places it next to a television. The man, along with a woman dressed in a blazer and pencil skirt and another man in what society would define as casual clothing, go on to tell the stories of what society believes true Indians are. Stereotypes are essentially preconceived notions or ideas about groups of

The label “Indian” refers to a variety of different cultures (over 2000), with hundreds of different languages and different ways of living. Indians had long, dark hair, almond shaped eyes and bronze or tan skin. After the realization that America was not a part of Asia a examination began over how people got there. Joseph de Acosta said “Old World animals were presents in the Americas” (Faragher pg 5), humans must have crossed a land bridge with them.

In the novel, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, nine distinct stories are told that depict families or people of Indian descent who experience different situations and circumstances that affect their lives. Many themes arise throughout the stories, but one that is prevalent through two specific stories, Mrs.Sen’s and Interpreter of Maladies, is the idea of cultural assimilation. Mrs.Sen’s and Interpreter of Maladies both portray the idea of cultural assimilation, but in different ways. Mrs.Sen’s is an example of a woman who resisted cultural assimilation in order to preserve her Indian heritage, while Interpreter of Maladies is a story that depicts a family who have fallen victim to cultural assimilation, thus losing a sense of connection to their Indian roots and being conformed into American culture. Lahiri uses the recurring motif of physical objects and actions to illustrate the various effects cultural assimilation has on certain people.

In Philip J. Deloria’s book, Indians In Unexpected Places readers are provoked with questions. Why is there an Indian on an automobile? Why is she getting a manicure? Why is the young man in football apparel? Indians have been secluded into a stereotype of untamable and wild animals.

Many people are influenced into finding their own identity. Our values, morals, and beliefs are followed by our life choices we make in becoming who we are. In the stories, “Arm Wrestling With My Father”, by Brad Manning and “Looking For Work” by Gary Soto share relationships where they are unable to find themselves. In the story “Arm Wrestling With My Father”, Manning reviews his relationship with his father. Also, in “Looking For Work”, by Soto tells a story about a nine-year old Mexican American boy who isn’t interested in his family’s culture.

Milton Glaser is an iconic New York City designer who was born in New York, June 26, 1929. He attended the high school of music and art. Known for his influential colourful dynamic design, the three most popular of his famous design work include the I love New York logo, Bob Dylan poster and DC bullet logo and also designed for DC Comics. Milton Glaser is still a working graphic designer today, and I think his relevance to the changing of culture is outstanding. The society was going through so many of changes in the time between 1955 and 1975. During that period of time everyone were learning about freedom and declaring independence from the own thoughts about family, friend, life and established traditions. There were war and integration