Tug Of War: A Cultural Analysis

Tug of war is usually a fun game for children. However, when dealing with being in the middle of two cultures, it is not as fun. It was as if the two identities that made me were playing tug of war to discover which identity would come out victorious. As a child, growing up in a country that your parents immigrated to often leads to a battle between two different cultures, especially with first generation children. With my parents coming to America after the Liberian Civil War in 1993, I grew up learning about their struggles and the sacrifices they made in order to provide a better life for my siblings and I. Elementary and middle school was a difficult time for me as I went through an identity crisis. Unfortunately, none of my friends could relate to the struggle of living as a first generation child of immigrant parents. No one understood the traditions that I had or the why I did things a certain way. Trying to fit in became futile. As I got older, I had no one to turn to and was left to question myself and who I was as a person. It almost felt as if I had to hide my own identity from my peers due to comments that I heard, such as “African booty scratcher”, when referring to others. In contrast, my father failed to realize that I was also …show more content…
That was the year I entered high school and was exposed to diversity for the first time. In every class I took, there was someone of a different religion or ethnicity that I had never encountered before. Inspired by the change in my environment, I made the decision to finally embrace both of my cultures with open arms. I was finally able to break out of my shell and allow myself to fully embrace both of the cultures that are deeply embedded in my bloodstream. I felt like a new person walking through Central High School’s doors for the first official time. The diversity that I saw only reassured me of my decision to accept myself completely; both cultures