Traditions vs. Personal Values: Everyone Wants to Belong Essay

Adolescence is popularly known to be a very tumultuous stage in a person’s life. In the adolescent stage (also coined the identity vs. role confusion stage by theorist Erik Erikson) bodies are changing rapidly, emotions are unfamiliar and unexplainable, and refraining from succumbing to peer pressure is more challenging than ever.

We’ve all know what it feels like: walking down the halls in middle school or high school while you feel like you’re being watched…analyzed…critiqued. It would almost seem like every person you passed would be silently judging you for what you’re wearing, how you applied your makeup, how you did in the last soccer game, or what they heard you did with Jonny. The passerby’s in the hallway would place you on the high-school-hierarchy-of-coolness scale based on superficial characteristics even before getting to know you. Adolescence is a time of learning and forming an identity but it’s also a time where you are constantly being watched and evaluated by your peers, sometimes even put down by physical or verbal means. Bullying has always been

‘Go away. You are of no use to me.’ Kahu stopped in her tracks. I thought she would cry, but she knitted her eyebrows and gave him a look of such frustration that I could almost hear her saying to herself, ‘You just wait, Paka. You just wait.’”

Despite the large amount of people that feel confident and comfortable in expressing themselves freely, many adolescents have a deteriorating concept of self because of the belief that they should have to conform to their peer’s ideals. The identities of these children are being dictated by a need of acceptance from prominent social groups in their environment; however, teenagers must realize one’s own individuality as something beneficial and recognizing that conforming can become problematic in certain situations.

“We belong … like fish in water. We’re in our environment.” This quote from the New York Times shows the perception of belonging as the idea about connecting to a place, person, group or a community. 'Feliks Skrzynecki' by Peter Skrzynecki, 'I'm nobody! Who are you?' by Emily Dickinson and 'The Rabbits' by John Marsden & Shaun Tan show the concept of belonging as being contrasted towards the New York Times quote, showing the alienation and non-existent connection towards it. These texts have furthered my understanding on the perceptions of belonging by recognising the different concepts of connection to people, places and things.

While Usha had one experience living in America, her mother, Aparna, had a very different one than her daughter. From Usha's perspective, Aparna is viewed as a traditional Bengali mother. She cooked, she cleaned and cared for her family. She was a house wife, chosen to marry a man she didn't love and raise a child as evidence of the arrangement. She was unsettled by the

From the beginning of the story, Jayanti shows signs of assimilation and acceptance, to become an American. Before reaching America, she promises to give herself a typical

He too later after seeing so called Hubshi (African Americans) looks upon them as inferior to himself. He fights with himself over his old spiritual identity with his new materialistic American identity. Due to the cultural shock there is a battle going on inside Santosh over his own values and that what he has adopted in America. Before Santosh never looked into the mirror except after the haircut but now he started looking at himself in the mirror and started praising himself for his beauty therefore his self-identity and results in a sexual encounter with a hubshi woman after which riots and burning starts of in Washington after which he realizes about his life as a prisoner with his employer and leaves him and meets Priya another Indian restaurant owner and works there as a cook and gets a big room to live in not cupboard that he got with his employer. The author uses first person narration so as to show his readers what Santosh felt in the new environment and what were his experiences in the beginning in totally a new culture and how he comes up with them before becoming a USA citizen by marrying Hubshi woman that he could have never thought of back home in India with Priya’s support after he explained Santosh that nobody cares in USA about what others does and Black and White are equal

Teenage years are the time of a person’s life when they really start exploring their identity, who they are and who they want to be. During these years it can be hard trying to figure out who you are and where you belong, with the constant

Bell writes, “Tired of being a good girl who met all her parents’ and community’s expectations, Jayanthi began casually hooking up with men after college, often meeting several in one night” (33). Initially, Jayanthi adopted the “good girl” strategy as a part of society’s expectations and fulfilled her parents’ desire of being a typical Indian girl. In other words, Jayanthi’s initial approach to her reality as well as her personal identity was to act according to her parents’ and society’s expectations. However, throughout the passage of time, Jayanthi becomes “tired” of the “good girl strategy” as she still did not find her sense of identity but instead, her initial reality was altered because she did not embrace who she was. Essentially, Jayanthi did not embrace her reality at present as she feels that her life was determined by her family’s expectations. In essence, her pre-conceived reality of being a typical Indian daughter was altered because of her individual desire to find her sense of identity that is more complicated than that laid out from her cultural background.

I know how the teenagers in my generation thinks and people doesn’t need to be judged. Judging someone because they don’t have something or because they don’t look like you doesn’t mean they have to be judged. There are teens that have mindsets as I do such as teens shouldn’t be treated this way or that teens doesn’t deserve to be treated this way. There are mindsets where teens feel like because they’re treated this way, they have to commit suicide or think they don’t deserve to have friends. They think that because they’re treated in a manner like this, why live? Why be at school? Why go outside? No teen should have a mindset where they think they don’t belong here on earth.

The desire to fit in with peers can be a very strong influence on teens.

Teenage is a fundamental stage of life that each human being passes through. Some people face this period of their life strongly and positively, while others face many problems and difficulties. This depends on the environment these young adults live in, their parents, their friends, their living conditions, their education, and many other factors. Teenagers face many problems such as becoming addicted to drugs and alcohol, being influenced negatively by their peers, self-image and weight, or even arguments with their parents

Her weak, dependent and ineffectual identity transform into power and authority. Shashi Deshpande through the transformation of Akka affirms that the concept of Abala is only a relative ideology and not an absolute truth of female identity. Money and mental freedom modify Akka’s spectrum of life. She too becomes emblem of parental authority governing and guiding the fortune of her grandchildren. Her presence and authority provide security to other women in the family who were the victims of identical financial crisis and the curse of barrenness. In Akka’s death, we can find the end of “patriarch” and traditional life but Indu in retrieval of her past, unconsciously seeks a replantation of her desires that have no productive soil of old

While visiting Nsukka for the first time, her cousin and aunts outspokenness cause her to be aware of her insecurity. Kambili's cousin, Amaka, is very outgoing and open, she “asked many questions and did not accept many answers” (71), her ideas are always spoken out and she made sure her opinions were known. While speaking her mother, Amaka describes Kambili's behavior as,”funny...strange” (142), when Kambili overhears, she becomes overwhelmed and stressed due to her