The Search for Identity

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The Search for Identity in “It’s Hard Enough Being Me” by Anna Lisa Raya, “Who Will Light Incense When Mother’s Gone” by Andrew Lam, and “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan

Identity in America is becoming a worldwide issue for everyone who has immigrated here. In the three essays that I have looked at, I have seen the same issue being discussed. It is the theme of being treated differently and looked at differently. The stories talk about how children come from different areas from the world and try to fit into the American society but the parents do not respect the decision. The parents still want to carry out their culture traditions. In all my three stories they continually explore how difficult the search for identity is while they are young. Children are faced with two cultures, that of ethic tradition and that of the dominant white American youth culture that they were exposed to. “It’s Hard Enough Being Me” by Anna Lisa Raya, “Who Will Light Incense When Mother’s Gone” by Andrew Lam, and “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan they all show the common theme of not fitting in to the society.

“It’s Hard Enough Being Me” by Anna Lisa Raya is about how there is no way for young people to find a place for themselves that embraces their cultural identity while at the same time integrate them into white American society. Raya is isolated and struggling to mediate her cultural differences, or at least what she perceives they should be, and her attempts to fit into the upper-class, mostly white and American social structure away from her home and family.

For Anna Lisa Raya, her struggle in searching for an identity becomes more difficult when she had to move away from her native Los Angeles and came to New York to attend the prestigious Columbia Unive...

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Throughout all my readings over the three stories the common theme is being accepted into the American society people who are not from her feel as they are different. In all the stories it is clear that everyone has a place in America no matter what the past may contain or what traditions or values they may carry. The first two stories are more based on trying to find a way to overcome the main image that is expected of them from their family. The third story “Two Kinds” take a turn to the mother trying to help make her daughter fit in. The first two stories are about the parents trying to put down the child for wanting to just fit in and leave behind the past culture. America has put a mask on trying to introduce the face of evil into society. America is being looked at by all immigrants as a country for slacking and as a joke.

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