Synthesis Essay On Identity

There are many ways One’s identity can be defined. Only you can truly define who you are. You control what your experiences and influences make of you. When asked who am I, there could be millions of different answers depending on what you base your identity off of. To me, the question who am I, can only truly be answered in one way. So, who am I? For me, it’s an easy question. I’ve always known that I was the quiet girl In the back of the classroom by herself.

     There are many aspects of identity in the poem “Sex without Love,” by Sharon Olds. I can relate my own thoughts to how the author views the subject that she talks about in this poem. There has been a situation in my own life where I was thinking to myself, just as the author was, “How do they do it, the ones who make love without love?” (Olds 740). Having been raised as a well-rounded and disciplined person, as well as religious, I know the discouragement of having premarital sex. It’s not just the immorality that these characters are experiencing that the author is talking about, but they probably have personal issues that have to do with a their self worth and identity. These

The question “How do you identify yourself?” that was once arbitrary asked of me, has had my mind occupied for a long time. And as my life became, just like a book, layered, complex, and chaptered, the path to answering this question became convoluted.

Growing up I consider being an only child an essential part of my identity, on the other hand, a relationship with a sibling could be deeply formative versus the absence for me has been a powerful stimulus to my imagination and my growth mindset as a person. When I am introduced as an only child, people often react as if growing up by myself meant that I was growing up lonely. It is most certainly true that I spent a lot of time alone even though I had friends from school whom I spent my most time with, but I never felt alone. As a young boy, I loved to get lost in various creative activities where I needed no partner or playmate to communicate with. The act of creation itself became my friend. I challenged myself upon improving my skills, researching about different topics and reading about different personalities. This gave me satisfaction into daydreaming. It was a powerful tool to give me ideas to shape my future.

beliefs. Sober uses the example of lightning. He points out that according to the Greeks,

“Who someone is: the name of a person; the qualities, beliefs, etc., that make a particular person or group different from others.” By the Merriam- Webster online dictionary this is the definition of identity. However, identity is not just who someone is or how others view them and how they view themselves. Identity does not individually come from the outside looking in, but also the inside looking out. Identity portrays how someone sees themselves in any given situation. Who someone is, is not only established by what they look like, if they are black or white, male or female, or simple characteristics, if they are funny or serious, out going or introverted; how an individual pictures themselves in different aspects of everyday occurrences is identity. It should not matter what others think or how they believe

I like to think that my journey to finding my identity has been a complicated one. As in my case identity was something no one really focused on finding but at the age of fourteen my complicated identity would come to accept a new part of it, Cancer. But it is not what I identify myself as, it makes up my identity but I don’t let that define it.

Where we are positioned – by our background and our society – influences how and what we see, and, most important, what it means.” Heidi was born and raised in Vietnam for six to seven years but she spent her entire life in the U.S. Therefore, the society has a great impact on changing her identity, personality, and even the appearance. She identifies herself as an American. Nevertheless, there are many people who are still struggling with their identity. Since we are so easily influenced by the society, sometimes people cannot “adapt” to society’s expectations and they lost their way. There are many types of identity such as race identity, sex identity, and national

For a majority of my life, I have struggled with my identity. I never knew what to identify as or which group I fit into.

When we are born, we are automatically sorted in the family we were born into and there is nothing we can do to change that. No matter how hard we try. Rich will always be rich and poor will always be poor. A “good” name can hide anything and can make certain things go away. Say you want to go out and make a name for yourself and you want to shed your family name or prove that you can make it on your own that you don’t need your family coat tails to ride on. Nope you will never be able to escape your identity; and it is that identity that will follow you from birth to even after your death while your decomposing in your mausoleum, a decorated tombstone, an urn or a shoebox. You can never escape your identity

With the end of the Cold War fundamental changes had happened in the international relations. Having lost the imposed by the Soviet Union principles of managing a state and, essentially, the political ideology, countries needed to redefine their identities in order to fit into the world of Western democracies. The process of identity reconsideration entails the profound change in a state’s self-interests which in turn affects its behavior. ’ The changes of identities pulled into its orbit Poland, Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and Yugoslavia. These countries, as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed, commenced the process of integration with the European community. Their previous identities of pro-communist states changed

Where are you come from? Where is your family? Questions like this can be sensitive, paradoxical and intimate to people’s identity and their social locations. In America, we come from variety of cultural backgrounds and consist of different types of community based on religion. Being an American could be Jewish, Christian, Italian, gay or firefighter. Therefore, finding your position is not easy while balancing all other factors among your community. Factors may come from family, friends, community and religion and those could be very confusing to your own identity. Sometimes we have troubles to understand the identity between oneself and social community, and we may lost on the road while we try to set our roots and families. As human, we have choices to embrace our community and blend in with crowds, or deny the existent fact of ethnicity, run away from it. For Adrienne Rich , an American poets, an essayist, a committed feminist, she identifies herself to the reader, as the product of a Jewish father and a gentile mother. But she cannot find her identity throughout her childhood and her death in fighting her family religion and her community. On the other hand, Michael Perry, after 12 years of travel and living in New York, a registered nurse and magazine journalist, returned to his childhood town, New Auburn, and identified himself as a voluntary firefighter and joined the local rescue department in his home town and set his

“Coming to terms” with or understanding one 's identity, like many things in life, is an evolutionary process. The ongoing search for identity begins initially by identifying our physical traits such as our gender, race, and ethnicity. True identity, however, is far beyond what meets the eye. Instead, the generation we are born into, the family we share, and experiences we have, all shape our views of the world and the role we play within it. Consequently, our identity ends up becoming influenced highly by the people around us, whether that be our family, friends, or a generation as a whole. This makes the evolution of identity easily influenced and less personal, as it is instead a culmination of characteristics, opinions, and actions of others, intertwined with our own.

Who am I? This is a question that has been asked and pondered by people for generations. The idea of identity is a complex one. Your identity is made up of so many different things like your personal characteristics, your family, your historical background, where you were raised, and so much more. When trying to figure out who you are you have to look on a scale larger then yourself. You have to look at not only who do you say you are but who does your family say you are, who does society say you are? When people look at you who do they see? What does the media see and what do they report about you? Is your cultural image even shown?

However, these identities are not always apparent. Tatum (2000) states that “it is our targeted identities that hold our attention, while the dominant identities go unexamined” (p. 7). In order to develop a holistic sense of self, we must examine all parts of our being. As my interviewer remarked: “you have to know who you are, and how you show up in pieces, and the impact that may give to others, because that definitely contributes” (A. Rubango, personal communication, September 13, 2017). Every person has their own multitude of identities. My interviewer’s own identity contains numerous components as a female, an immigrant from the Congo, and having a middle-class SES. Through her many target and dominant identities, she has acknowledged how these “pieces” have given her a unique viewpoint on the world, and how they have affected her view on issues, such as those pertaining to social justice.