Natasha Trethewey's Flounder

It is important to find out who you are. In order to find out who you are, you must start you’re roots and if you have no roots or are unable to reach them, finding where you came from to help find yourself becomes really difficult. Also it’s hard to find yourself when you have others telling you who you are and who you are supposed to be. These two put together makes it extremely hard to find yourself. In James McBride’s memoir The Color of Water, James McBride has conflicting feelings of being biracial illustrates how important it is to know where you came from and who you are in order to move forward in your life.

In his essay, “As Black as We Wish to be,” author Thomas Chatterton Williams tries to paint a picture of a world where the sight of interracial families was still considered an oddity and shows how, over the decades, society has slowly became more acceptable towards the idea. He begins the essay briefly discussing the ignorance of people during the late 1980’s while also elaborating what hardships African Americans have dealt with over the past century. He explains that even with the progression of interracial families and equality of African Americans, a new problem has now risen for interracial children of the future. While either being multiracial, African American, or White, what do they decide to identify themselves as? This is the major question that arises throughout Williams’s argument. While Williams’s supports his argument with unreliable environmental evidence, as well with other statistical evidence. His argument is weakened by an abundance of facts, disorganization, and an excessive use of diluted information.

Everyone in the world has their own identity but some are still searching for it. Many base their identity on race, religion, culture and language because it’s easier to belong to a certain group. However, there are some people who struggle with finding where they belong. For instance, James McBride in The Color of Water wonders who he is through most his childhood and some of his adult life. Mcbride tries to find himself by learning about his mother's background. After evaluating his mom’s past,culture and race his own issues with himself were made clearer because now he finally knows where he came from.

James McBride can tell you firsthand about man verse racial identity. Journalizing his experience in his New York Times Bestseller novel the Color of Water simply outlined his struggles of finding who he was. His upbringing included a black father and a Jewish white mother. His background made it hard for him to understand why his home was different than others on the street. Although McBride experience shows an older outtake of racial identity, some may say this still is a problem today. Offspring feels the need to pick a race in society to succeed in the generation and it may be the step to understands them more. Notice in the subtitle of the book "A black Men tribute to his white mother" he label himself as just black as if there was a barrier between his mother and himself because the so different. Today we need to not let racial identity become a big part of our lives.

I am white: It’s a fact that I never question. When I look at myself in the mirror, my whiteness is reflected back. Printed on my birth certificate is “Caucasian,” another reaffirmation that I am, indeed, a white person. Being white is an integral part of both my social and biological identities, and never do they contradict one another. In Paulette Jiles’ News in the World, however, biology and identity do not reside in perfect harmony. Johanna Leonberger is a 10 year-old German girl who is kidnapped by a tribe of Native Americans at the age of six. Four years later, she is returned by her captors, but with an entirely different identity. Through Johanna’s relationship with the Captain, the man responsible for

In the boiling pot of America most people have been asked “what are you?” when referring to one’s race or nationality. In the short story “Borders” by Thomas King he explores one of the many difficulties of living in a world that was stripped from his race. In a country that is as diverse as North America, culture and self-identity are hard to maintain. King’s short story “Borders” deals with a conflict that I have come to know well of. The mother in “Borders” is just in preserving her race and the background of her people. The mother manages to maintain her identity that many people lose from environmental pressure.

This research discusses the many different ways of how society can influence identity. In the book the girl who fell from the sky by Heidi Durrow, it talks about a girl named Rachel Morse. Rachel Morse tries to put her tragic past behind her by keeping away her feelings. She goes to live with her grandmother. Rachel pretends to be a new girl after her mother killed herself and her siblings. As life starts to get hard for her, she remembers her father’s promise that he would come back and get her. The years passed and her father did not come which made Rachel gets more and more annihilate by the way she is judged based on the color of her skin. After Rachel started school in Portland, she became aware of being bi-racial. She believed

“All that is gold does not glitter and not all that wander is lost.”  This quote simply paint a picture that looks can be deceiving. “Cross” by Langston Hughes and “Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Richardson both emphasizes social status and identity. Knowing who you are is a big issue that many people struggle with as they go through life. To live happy and successful lives people must first verify who they are in the world. Being crossed between two races, not knowing where you fit in and being confused on who you are can affect a person life forever.

A great poet makes the reader feel connected and inside the poem. Shakespeare, Frost, and Angelou all encompass the great qualities of a wonderful writer, because readers are taken on a trip. Much like the Shakespeare, Natasha Trethewey, used “experience” to write poems that take readers on an adventure through the lives of 1912 New Orleans prostitutes. She gives these women identities. These normally shunned women were given families, backstories, and most importantly, emotions. She took what people consider the scum of society and turned them into normal women, who have doubts and insecurities. She manages to make women these women human. In this specific collection of poems, the focus is on Ophelia, a young woman who has to deal with a father

In his essay, “Racial Identities”, Kwame Anthony Appiah addresses the topic of racial identification. He describes how and why it’s hard not to identify someone based on their race. Today in the United States, racial identification is quite relevant. People judge and stereotype others based on race. Classifying people based on their looks isn’t bad, it’s the negative attitudes and labels that come with it. Racial identification is hard for most people to avoid, is detrimental due to the bad attitudes people have, negatively affects people’s lifestyles, and divide people.

Racial identity is an important concept that everyone must deal with in their life. It is an individual’s sense of having their identity be defined by belonging to a race and or ethnic group. How strong the identity is depending on how much the individual has processed and internalized the sociological, political, and other factors within the group. In some instances, people do not identify with their race and they will “pass” as another. Nella Larsen, an African American writer and prominent member of the Harlem Renaissance movement, she explores the consequences of “passing”. Larsen’s Passing is a novel that challenges the concept of ethnicity, race and gender while revolutionizing the idea of what we describe as identity. The novel explores the issue of race through vivid plotting that depicts a mentally touching story of affecting boundaries in the early American society. The novel also explores the effects of racial construction on a person through multiple levels. Through Larsen’s characterization and setting she is able to bring out the social construction of race in an enjoyable and educated format in which race, class distinction and identity themes are intertwined. Larsen herself often struggles with identity, as she grew up being raised by an all-white household after her father, a black West Indian, disappeared from her life. Larsen depicts the theme of racial identity by using two women characters, both of which are attractive, and are “light” enough to be able

Identity communicates a strong characteristic that cannot naturally be expressed in terms of a social category. Social and personal identity enable the formation of an individual, reflecting the idea that social categories are assured with the bases of an individual’s self esteem. “Race and racial identity are identifiable as a social constriction culture” (Little and McGivern, 328). However, issuing social categories based on race or ethnicity links to biased regulations and practices. Johnson’s novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, examines ways racial identity is socially constructed through the segregation of Jim Crow Laws, the act of "passing off” another race, and through practices of lynching. The Autobiography of an Ex Colored Man explores the way racial identity is socially constructed within legally sanctioned forms of racism and discrimination.

Each and every person on this Earth today has an identity. Over the years, each individual creates their identity through past experiences, family, race, and many other factors. Race, which continues to cause problems in today’s world, places individuals into certain categories. Based on their race, people are designated to be part of a larger, or group identity instead of being viewed as a person with a unique identity. Throughout Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Richard is on a search for his true identity. Throughout Black Boy, one can see that Richard’s racial background assigns him with a certain identity or a certain way in which some

In George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, his character, Tyrion says, “Never forgot what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness” (Identity). This quote is crucial towards accepting one’s identity and allowing that acceptance to strengthen that person. In Cisneros’s “Bien Pretty” from Woman Hollering Creek, the main character, Lupe tries to focus solely on one part of her dual identity, allowing her to be bothered and insecure about her place in Mexican heritage as well as in American culture. She has to deal with not only her desire to belong to one singular culture, but also trying to find belonging in the identity that she exists in, the “borderland” identity. The “borderland” identity is a concept that Gloria Anzaldua discusses in her book. Gloria Anzaldua discusses in her book, the concept of the “borderland” identity; the identity that exists for people are a part of both Mexican and American heritage who are too much of either to belong to any one specific group. In “Bien Pretty,” Cisneros shows the struggle of identifying and connecting to the “borderland” identity through the character, Lupe, especially in relation to Lupe’s connection to her Mexican heritage and her relationship with Flavio.

The following paper will discuss two of the major dimensions of my cultural identity, and analyze the way in which my identity holds privileges, or has exposed me to oppression. Being that I am white, I have lived a life of privilege simply because of the color of my skin. I have been afforded opportunities, and lived a life free from persecution due to my skin color. I have also lived a life that has been impacted by oppression because of my female identity. This unique position between privilege and oppression is where I live my life.