Greenbaum 1 Alex Greenbaum

Professor Young

Writing Skills Workshop

19 September 2014

Essay: Identity

Identity

Gloria Anzaldua the author of “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” finds that her identity runs her life. Society makes her into this image that she doesn't want and the struggle of identity begins unfortunately. There is this overly complicated, emotional scenario that Anzaldua created by being studious to the people around her. Anzaldua identifies herself by the Chicano Spanish language and how much it has affected her life. I agree with her reasoning in the sense that she feels like her life and choices have been made with the Chicano language and that without it she would feel a sense of loss. Identity is important because it comes from our decision making, we get judged for our identity, and I live everyday trying to fully understand my identity.

Identity is a role defining understanding of each individual that has a beating heart. What you do each day and why you do those specific things, is the definition of your own identity. No one can take away your own, specific identity, because everyone has characteristics or experiences different than the next person. If there was just one identity that everyone went by, we wouldn't have our own unique personality traits and we would all have an outlook that would be exactly the same. There are times where our unique personalities get in the way of other more important things. We constantly make decisions that define who we are but our decisions are all based off our uniqueness.

The decisions we make day to day is what defines us as people. We can either help the woman on the street that dropped her books or just walk past and pretend nothing happened. Those kind of

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situations define who we are as people and that contributes to our identity as well. Analdua talks about

how the Chicanos try to “out Chicano each other”, which defines who they are as people. It shows in a way that she is a strong woman who has pride of who she is and doesn't really care what other people think. Her decision to be this way shows a ton of pride for her people and what she believes in rather than just showing why her people are great. And from our decision making, a certain judging from others gets secluded into this little thing we like to call society.

Judging happens every second of the day, we can be conscious of it or its usually more unconscious of what we are judging. Some people are much more sensitive to it than others, but like it or not we are judging another persons identity. We stop, and stare and judge, without even blinking we have put that person on a pedestal and probably will never think of that person the same way. With Analdua we have a person who speaks Chicano and people judge her for speaking that language. They give her looks and talk to her the way they picture Spanish people are. In the beginning where the doctor is playing around with her teeth, he talks about how stubborn her teeth are. She relates to that because she has been called stubborn and such, because of the language she speaks.

When it comes to my own identity I realize that who you are as a person is one of the most important aspects of being a human being. I live everyday trying to fully understand my identity and where I stand in the world. I do have college to help me progress in a well mannered way but there's a lot of turmoil in the world to just walk past and ignore. Analdua says that “the struggles of borders is a reality still.” meaning she doesn't even know when shes gonna truly accept and find her own identity. I think college will definitely help me through what I need to find. But there have been a ton of times and even now where I'm totally confused of what I really want to do in my life. I have this perspective and picture that goes through my head a lot but its not that realistic in terms of what I expect. My dilemma of playing baseball in college or just totally skipping it and focusing on college is just such a big decision to make and I feel somewhat confused of what to do. My identity is a bit mixed up at the moment, even with the education factor.

Education is a huge part of my life right now, especially with me trying to decide what I'm most interested in. I love film, and there is absolutely nothing that I enjoy more than watching a beautiful, rendered art house movie that comes out in the city. But learning about film and trying to grasp its complexities is not what I expected at all. I feel at a loss of what I wanna and do, and what I know is going to make me marketable for employment in the future. So I do have a few back up options such as communications which definitely could work, especially knowing that I am good with people overall and that I could see myself in that field. But right now, its difficult and complex, because as you get older your identity becomes less understandable.

Identity is such a big topic to cover that its hard just to compress ideas on to a couple of pages. Analdua has plenty of times where she states her opinion on the smell of the grilled food her mother used to make and how that starts to bring her identity into full form. The same is when I play baseball with my dad or see a movie, the thoughts of my identity and what I want to be comes back to me. I want the reader to understand that identity is what make you of it. You decide who you want to be as a person and from there, you can start to understand what your identity is. Identity is crucial because it comes from our beliefs and demands, judging others and the truth is if you don't truly know your identity, it's sometimes better that you keep trying harder and harder to find it.

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Works Cited

Anzaldua, Gloria “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” New York: Penguin Group, 2006. Print