My Cultural Identity Research Paper

A sweet, savory strawberry Everyday, I tend to overlook and ignore what my culture has to offer me because in my perspective, my cultural identity never had significant value. I just never questioned the importance of my cultural identity. But as we slowly visit the individual cultural topic, I realized the many aspects of how my own cultural identity is influenced by my family names, religion, and food. My cultural identity is a simple strawberry. A strawberry can be frozen, chocolate dipped, topped with sprinkles or even mixed in a smoothing. These extra ingredients can help boost the strawberry itself similar to what cultural identity can do to a person. In the end, it comes down to one pure strawberry, like I’m a pure blooded …show more content…
My first language was Ilocano and Tagalog. English was actually my third. The Filipino cultural always valued the respect in the family members and other people. Especially in my large families, we always had to address a family member to show respect to them. The terms “manong” and “manang” are Ilocano words that mean older brother, sister or in general, person. In tagalog, it was “kuya” and “ate” also meaning the same. I was always taught to call someone older than me these terms so that I respected him or her as much as I can. When meeting an elderly I would give them mano. Mano is a gesture in which the younger child takes the hand of the elder and places the hand onto the child’s forehead. Even after I moved to Hawai’i, I never forgot these respected terms and gestures because it is my way of greeting anyone without giving disrespect. This also applies to any cultural aspects when given deep respect for, no matter whom it may …show more content…
My mother, Melba used to play badminton against her class peers and would win. However, my father, Rafael took table tennis a whole different level. He used to play for his college in the Philippines and was the top player in the school. My father even got into championships, but unfortunately he stopped because he was tired and had to money to continue on. I play regular tennis and soft tennis. It is quite funny that for months now, I never knew my parents played these sports very similar to tennis. Their sport is a combination of my sport. From the way my father described his feelings on table tennis, I felt great pride and passion for what he accomplished. It made me reflect on the level of concentration I had only for tennis and it really changed. I am now focused on tennis to fulfill my dream of become a professional tennis player someday. My parent’s inspirational stories have helped me create a new chapter in my life as a passionate tennis