“And then in Earth Sciences I heard a name:’Stargirl.’ I turned to the senior slouching behind me. ’Stargirl?’ I said. ‘What kind of name is that?’”…
What is the obsession with people’s need of identification. Don't they understand that in the outside we might be different, but in the inside we all are the same? In her article, “Being an Other,” Melissa Algranati gives a personal narrative of her life and her parent's life and how they faced discrimination and her struggles about being identified as an “other” even though she was an American born jewish and Puerto Rican. Michael Omi’s article “In Living Color: Race and American Culture” reinforces Algranati’s article since in his article he discusses about people ideas about race the stereotypes that they face. Michael Omi reinforces Melissa Algranati because they both argue about America’s obsessions of labelling people and how it affect…
Over the course of life, we are always looking to find ourselves. We are looking to create our individual identities and find what makes us who we are. Finding yourself and keeping your identity is not always easy. In our culture, we are always pressured to be a certain way. We can see this quite easily from a young age up through adulthood.…
We just need the time and patience to discover our self-identity. We need to recall the boldness of youth and conquer the resistance against ourselves. To be brave enough to stray away form the norm is to be misunderstood by the bell curve of society. The vast majority may find it strange and distasteful but it is only because the vast majority is too timid to tear away from the support. One may feel apprehensive and uncomfortable to move along an unconventional path, just like how Waldo must not certainly feel most at ease in a sweater at the beach.…
Foreign cultures are stigmatized, or shamed, for possessing different lifestyles and physical features because they don’t fit into the mainstream society of the culture. Many of these foreign people conform and find different ways to blend in with the culture. Kenji Yoshino, author of “Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights,” discusses several instances where people try and “cover” or tone down a disfavored identity (293). On many occasions, people cover a disfavored identity to assimilate themselves into a more accepted society. Yoshino suggests that we cover based on four axes where we assimilate to a culture: appearance, affiliation, activism, and association (305).…
Pushed and shoved. Cruel names shouted across a classroom. No friends. No conversations in your direction. Lonely.…
As a biracial child in America, I never quite fit in. Growing up in Mendocino,California with exactly one “black” girl (myself) in the entire school, I was the go to for questions about rap music, dance moves and slang. I felt as if I was a representative for the entire African American race even though I am just as white as I am black. Once I left the sheltered bubble of Mendocino, I saw more people that didn’t look like me which left me in an identity crisis, everyone had a community except for me. My African family praised my fairness, and adored my curly tresses, but my white family didn't understand what to do with it.…
All of my life, either as a joke or seriously, I was told one thing over and over again, "Por que no puedes ser una niña normal?" It translate in English to, "Why can't you just be a normal girl?" As a child I never thought I was different than any other 4 year old. But growing up, the realize came when my friends and family began to ask my about my culture and my relationships. Growing Hispanic had its privileges and disadvantages.…
Many would agree that life would be boring if we were the same, which means they like being different. Most people want to be accepted into the society as well, making a paradox.…
Davis discusses how the idea of normalcy is constructed, which leads to the marginalization of people who are considered deviations of the norm, specifically people with disabilities. The concept of eugenics influenced the creation of the norm and is it is a theory that various historical figures supported. People with disabilities were seen as undesirable feeding into this idea that they should be mistreated since they are considered deviant. I found it interesting when Davis discusses the role of people with disabilities in literature. Novels usually possess a normative belief and rarely have people with disabilities as the main character.…
Dear Mrs. McCarthy, I am writing this letter to you as I have recently read your fascinating article titled “Being different will only result in tears”, and I would like to respond to it, agreeing and disagreeing with several of your elaborated points. Firstly, Hans Kruuk’s experiment proves herding behaviour is a matter of survival, proven when tested on animals when a prey animal would be marked with an ‘X’, it was killed every time, as “The X was a death warrant”, due to the animal being different. However, the experiment was carried out in the 1970’s; therefore, it is not recent and not developed according to the time. Animals in the wild can also not be compared to human society.…
Analysis and discussion================================================= There are a few points I would like to discuss about my interviewee’s conceptions of normality. The first would be Allan’s sense of himself as an individual or outsider to the mainstream and the story of his name. The second would be Allan’s sense of himself as an American, independent of his Latvian roots. The third would be Allan’s sense of how the norm is molded—and also transformed—in music and culture; which in Allan’s case begs a question of the influence of money, industry, or (in a word) capitalism on what becomes considered “the norm.” =…
Being born in India, plucked from my homeland, then deposited in the United States at a young age, I felt very different from other the students at my school. I came from an ethnic background, I spoke English, but with a foreign accent, I prayed, but to various Gods, I had hobbies that were strange, I ate food that tasted different, I listened to songs with a different beat, I watched movies that had English subtitles, everything about me was different, but there was only one thing I wanted. I wanted to be…cool. I searched everywhere for what I believed would make me cool. I beheld for the words to describe the groups I desperately wanted to join.…
Judgmental. Stuck up. Hateful. Narcissistic. Is that what people perceive when it comes to my identity?…
In May Sarton’s,”The Reward of Living a Solitary Life”,she brings up solid points to why solitude is better than togetherness. While being more social is rewarding as well,I’d say I find my self-contentment is best found in solitude. In her essay Sarton argues that “solitude is the of personhood. It brings out the authentic flavor of every experience”(880). This quote suggests that in the presence of other people you are not yourself and that you can’t enjoy what you encounter in life.…