Week 3

This week’s readings mainly focused on identity, both Pavlenko’s The Making of an American and Holliday discuss quite a bit about identity, cultural identity. How do we construct our identities and how do we choose how we want to be represented to others? As Pavlenko’s states in his article, identity is the dynamic and shifting nexus of multiple subject positions, or identity options. Meaning someone is acknowledged as a mother, an accountant, heterosexual or Latina. These are done by narrative identity construction. A large portion of the article looks at these narratives by immigrants that came to America in the early 1900s. The narrative identity construction is done though both fiction and non-fiction roots and in this case we have non-fiction; autobiographies.

When it comes to immigration, it then leads to assimilation. This assimilation of immigrants in the United States then creates an identity for each one, but these identities are considered imaginable or negotiable because society back in the day gave its members identity options. This is surprising to me because it makes it seem like is society didn’t “approve” of someone’s particular identity, they were then rejected until they were accepted. The whole heterosexual vs. homosexual has always been a debate in our society and even though it is becoming a more “acceptable” identity, people who possess this particular identity still don’t feel as though they belong.

This is often the case with immigrants. The people who come to the United States to pursue the “American Dream” are often assimilating in a way that they love their own personal and cultural identity. I took a Latino Studies class my first year at the university and we learned about Mexican-American students whose parents are native Spanish speakers who teach their kids Spanish in the home but when they come to school they are speaking English and possibly Spanish with other Spanish speakers. Why should we shut down these kids from keeping their one identity from interacting with another one. It’s important to encourage students to keep their identities. I believe that cultural identities help make this country as diverse as it is.

It’s not possible to narrow down the nation to one identity and culture. We are all made up of different identities. I come from a Greek and Hispanic background. Those are two identities I already possess along with the very traditional culture of both worlds. My parents still feel as though they are considered foreigners because of their heavy accents when speaking the English language even though they’ve basically assimilated very well to American culture. I can say that even though they have assimilated, they still keep their cultural traditions close to heart and have passed it on to their kin.

Cultural identity is a very important thing when it comes to teaching students. We as teachers need to understand that every student comes from their own set of ideas, likes, dislikes, and philosophies and we are in no position as a society to damper anyone’s identity just because it’s taboo or looked at from a different light in our society. As stated before, it’s impossible for there to be one accepted identity or culture because of the amount of diversity within just one person.