Marissa Lehnert
Engw_1100_34
What Identity Means To Me
Identity makes a person who they are. Without identity, everyone would be the same. Identity is very important to me. Personally, I think identity is not other people’s perception of you or the friends that you have. Identity is how you present yourself, your race, religion, gender, language, family, culture and zip code. All of these things make you who you are. I am a catholic, Caucasian girl who only speaks English, is from a family of 6 and lives on Long Island, NY. That’s who I am. I am different from other people I know that are colored, from a different state and Jewish. We have different cultures, different holidays, different interests, different preferences, even different accents.
Differences don’t make someone weird or strange. It just makes them unique. "I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent's tongue -- my woman's voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence."(Anzaldua 267) This quote means that she doesn’t care if someone tells her not to speak a certain way, she is going to do it anyways because she is comfortable in her own skin and she will speak her mind. "So, if you want to really hurt me, talk bad about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity-I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself."(Anzaldua 266-267) This quotes is saying that in order for her to respect herself and have pride in herself, she needs to respect and have pride for her language. Her language is who she is and no one can change that, no matter how hard they try because she is happy just the way she is. To conclude, identity is an important part in everyone’s life.
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