My American Culture

As a first-generation, American citizen in my family, I had to experience two vastly different cultures that would shape my life into what I am now. My father and mother were from Burma; a nation deeply enriched with its own culture with little to no influence from Western nations. They moved here in their twenties, so they experienced the American culture to an extent due to their occupations. However, I was immersed into the American culture from the start of elementary school to the end of middle school, as I was placed in a private school by the name of St. John’s Lutheran. As you can tell my school was highly religious, my homework would often consist of memorization of bible verses to explaining the acts of Jesus. They would even go further …show more content…
Their overall strict, conservative beliefs on sexuality limited my sexual growth, as my parents would not discuss and block anything sexually-related. For instance, James Bond movies, such as “Die Another Day” were my father’s favorite genre to watch, but as you know James Bond is quite the womanizer so there would often be sensual scenes throughout the movie. Furthermore, when any sexual scenes would appear, my parents took an imperative to either tell us to close our eyes or perhaps fast-forward the scene to block out all sexual messages. While it is a bit understandable to do this with very young adolescence, my parents would continue such behavior into my mid-teens. Therefore, I would be completely deprived of any or all sexual knowledge from my parents forcing me to learn by myself. Of course, the internet and my friends were a huge factor in my sexual education, as we would often joke about sexual positions and favorite porn videos occasionally. Compared to my parents’ view on sexuality, my school environment was much more open with such issues and allowed me to finally discuss some issues with my peers. Moreover, the issue of sexuality still seems to be taboo for my parents, as they see it as unacceptable and immoral in their standards and only should occur for conception. So, I typically avoid …show more content…
The beginning of high school was a flux of new emotions—fear, sadness, anxiety, nervousness, and happiness—as I experienced new perspectives and ideas from an expansive environment compared to my microscopic middle school. The demeanors of the high schoolers walking around would influence me, as now many social and cultural aspects were prevalent in the atmosphere defining the norms and boundaries of the school. Juxtaposing my middle school and high school experience, there were many differences in the social, economic, and cultural sphere between the two schools. For instance, the middle school was populated with mostly white families; however, in contrast, the high school had a very wide diversity stemming from Hispanic, White, African American, and Asian. The differences in cultures had overwhelmed my transition into high school, as there was an influx of many new aspects that I would have to experience and consider in my daily life. More importantly, my sexual life had also transformed with the transition into high school, as a new whole population would now begin to influence and transform how I viewed sexuality. In high school, many people were also beginning to define themselves sexually, so there were many different types of queer that I interacted with. But by