Identity In My Mother's Food

Everyone has been teased at some point in their lives. When this happens, we can be tempted to act differently than how you usually do. This happens in Dreams from Father by Barack Obama, Sixth Grade by Sandra Wallace, and My Mother’s Food by Nora Keller. In Dreams From Father, the narrator, Barack Obama, is an African-American who goes to a new school, but it very different compared to his classmates due to his ethnicity, which causes challenges for him, like being teased. From Sixth Grade, the narrator, Sandra is an African-American student who is also different compared to her classmates because of her race and how she acts, which also causes her to be teased. In My Mother’s Food, the narrator, Nora is a Korean-American who gets teased by

Barack and Coretta, the only other African-American person in their grade, were playing on the playground together. Other classmates started teasing them, saying that Coretta had a boyfriend. Barack Obama said, “I ran up to Coretta and gave her a slight shove; she staggered back and looked at me, but still said nothing. ‘Leave me alone!’ I shouted again. And suddenly Coretta was running, farther and faster, until she disappeared from sight… My act of betrayal bought me some room from the other children, and like Coretta, I was mostly left alone. I made a few friends, learned to speak less often in class, and managed to toss a wobbly football around.” (Obama 837). Because his classmates used language to tease them, Barack retaliates by saying “Leave me alone!” and shoving Coretta, which hurts her. By doing this, some kids started avoiding him. This must mean his identity negatively changed because of this “act of betrayal” since he was being avoided by other classmates. Barack Obama’s identity negatively changed when he was teased by other classmates, which caused him and his classmates to hurt someone with their