Personal Essay 'The Space In-Between'

In “All American” by David Hernandez he talks about how confusing it is to be here, how odd it is to be of a different skin tone than other people and how he felt in those other places he

Danny faces complications trying to find his own identity. He is unsure of who he really is because he views himself through other people’s eyes. For instance, Danny tends to always explain how others identify him, “I'm a white boy among Mexicans, and a Mexican among white boys” (Peña 90). This is a problem because he does not have confidence in himself and with who he is. He feels the need to be accepted by others in order to accept himself. “Nobody paid him any attention anyway because he was Mexican. He roamed the school halls with his head down like a ghost. Drifted in and out of classrooms without a peep. Nobody even saw him as a real person. But down here, where everybody's skin is dark, everybody seems to be coming at him.” (Peña 16). This shows the amount of attention and care Danny gives into what others see him as and how they might feel about his race. Another conflict he encounters with his identity is not being a part of his father’s roots.

During the 1960’s, the Civil Rights Movement wasn’t the only one occurring. Struggling to assimilate into American culture, and suppressed by social injustices convicted by their Anglo counterparts, the Chicano movement was born. In the epic poem “I am Joaquin” written by Rodolfo Gonzales in 1969, we dive into what it means to be a Chicano. Through this poem, we see the struggles of the Chicano people portrayed by the narrator, in an attempt to grasp the American’s attention during the time of these movements. Hoping to shed light on the issues and struggles the Chicano population faced, Gonzales writes this epic in an attempt to strengthen the movement taking place, and to give Chicanos a sense of belonging and solidarity in this now

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.

The flash collection Sudden Fiction Latino: Short-short stories from the United States and Latin America brings together Latino and Latin American authors who might otherwise remain separated by borders, recognition, nationality, age, gender, and even language. Some only write in English, others in Spanish and still others in Portuguese. The collection allows readers, whether they share a cultural consciousness with these authors or not, to travel to and intimately experience many diverse worlds. Worlds, or stories, that seem to be working to define the indefinable--what it means to be Latino or Latin American. And it seems that anytime we try to define a group of people, even when it is within the context of a literary collection, it becomes something political.

The writer portrays a people too conscious to lose their culture. Hence, they establish ethnic organizations, business, cultural institutions that would meet their varied “social, cultural, economic and political needs” (Miguel 6). Supreme in these establishments’ values was to selfishly guard “Mixicanist identity” (Miguel 6) by encouraging dual identity that was “neither American nor Mexican but a synthesis of both” (Miguel 10). The title, Brown, Not White is perhaps a reflection of this consciousness. In a country that has spanned decades clinging to nothing else but color binarity of white versus black, Mexican Americans find it hard to identify with either of the two. The Mexican Americans feel aggrieved by the mistreatments they continually receive from the whites, identifying with the African Americans whom they considered inferior in the American pecking order is unfathomable. The emphasis on the title, Brown, Not White is, therefore, a reflection of the Mexican American’s struggle with the problem of identity in the face of the looming assimilation from the most dominant

Within the Mexican community, competing notions of racial identity has long existed. Aware to gradations of color in race and their shading of white and non white identity, Haney Lopez introduces the

Gloria Anzaldúa writes of a Utopic frame of mind, the borderlands created in and lived in by the new mestiza. She describes the preexisting natures of the Anglos, Mexicanos, and Chicanos as seen around the southwest U.S. / Mexican border, indicative of the nations at large. She also probes the borders of language, sexuality, psychology and spirituality. Anzaldúa presents this information in various identifiable ways including the autobiography, historical/informative essay, and poetry. What is unique to Anzaldúa is her ability to weave a ‘perfect’ kind of compromised state of mind that melds together the preexisting cultures while simultaneously formulating a fusion of genres that stretches previously

     Through our readings of the Mexicans in the U.S. and the African-American experience modules, we begin to understand the formation of identity through the hardships minorities faced from discrimination. In this paper, I am going to compare and contrast the ideas of identity shown through the readings. These two modules exemplify the theme of identity. We see how Blacks and Latinos tried to find their identity both personally and as a culture through the forced lifestyles they had to live.

During the Mexican-American War the border moved, but the people didn’t. History has shown us that no matter how thick the border might be Latino Americans have a strong connection to their culture and roots; instead of assimilating, Mexicans live between two worlds. The film, Ballad of Gregorio Cortez gave us a perspective of two cultures; “Two cultures- the Anglo and the Mexican- lived side by side in state of tension and fear” . Cortez is running for his life as he heads north, while the Anglo believe that because of his Mexican ethnicity, he would travel south to Mexico. Throughout the film there were cultural tensions and misunderstandings; language plays an important part of someone’s identity, and for many Latino Americans Spanish is their first language. The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez also shows us that language plays an important role, and can cause confusion between two different groups. For example, Anglos refer to a male

The racist connotation that Miss Jimenez associates with who she thinks would “fit in” society’s box is a definite reflection of the hardships Valdez witnessed in his community. For example, the Zoot Suit Riots that occurred in 1944 was rooted by a reaction by young Mexican-American males against a culture that did not want them to be a part of it. Stuart Cosgrove examines this issue when he states, "In the most obvious ways they had been stripped of their customs, beliefs and language.” (*Vargas 317) These youths were going through an identity crisis because they did not know which culture they could identify with. Miss Jimenez is a character that embodies that repression Valdez explains in “Los Vendidos.”

Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Blaxicans and Other Reinvented Americans” emphasizes on the idea that culture is what creates a person's identity, rather than a person's race. Rodriguez states, “I wear an indian face; I answer to a Spanish surname as well as this California first name, Richard” (88). In other words, Rodriguez is trying to give an example on how race should not identify another. Rodriguez is explaining that he does not identify as one specific race because there is many different parts of who he is. It is hard to identify someone when they do not even know what to go by because they may have many different cultures or races. It is very stereotypical to identify one by the way they look rather than what they grew up as or how that

Finding my voice as a woman in the world has led me to have a greater appreciation of my Mexican-American culture. Although the women in Galang’s book are of a different cultural background I was able to understand and connect with the struggles they went through trying to balance those varying cultures and the difficulty they had in finally accepting it. The story that most exemplifies the two spectrums of acceptance of one’s culture is “Rose Colored”. While going through elementary, middle, and a small portion of high school I could identify mostly as Rose because I hadn’t yet accepted the culture I was from. I was ashamed of being part Mexican and thought people would automatically stereotype and not like me. I saw my curly hair as something that should be hidden, always in braids because it wasn’t straight like all the others and also avoided talking about my home life for fear of being cast out as different. As I grew up into a young woman I began reading more and more about my culture and researching what it meant to be a true Mexican-American. I learned to appreciate all the beauty my culture has to offer and realized that being from two different cultures was not about picking one over the over but combining both at the same time. After reaching this sudden realization I was able to

Whenever I am asked to describe where I grew up, I always find this difficult for me to answer. To further complicate matters, I have lived in five different locations, spanning three different continents, all before the age of seventeen. As a result of growing up in a military-oriented lifestyle, the concept of constantly moving around was nothing new to me. Rather than view it as a shortcoming, I grew fond of the idea of moving to somewhere new—to a location where I have yet to explore and integrate myself into. Thus, due to my exposure to a multitude of cultures and individuals from all walks of life, this has affected how I move through the world’s space. In this paper, I will be discussing how the following concepts of my subject position: my ethnicity, culture, and identity as child of a former service member reflect Gloria Anzaldúa’s discussion of la mestiza.

Gary Soto attempts to make it understandable in his short story “Like Mexicans” that a person’s race is not what defines them completely. In Gary’s situation, he went and married Carolyn a Japanese woman after having claimed that he would only marry a woman of Mexican descent. Gary’s best friend Scott highly disagreed with Gary’s decision in being with Carolyn, he felt Carolyn was too good for Gary and therefore this false assumption brought down Gary and distorted his thoughts on race and economic status. The essay by Gary Soto was well written because it can be highly relatable to one’s life especially to someone who is of Hispanic descent.