How Does Culture Influence Culture

The effects of culture on an individual can be a critical factor of personality and how one views the surrounding world. The broad aspect of cultural influence can be argued that mindset and personality can only be defined by their surroundings. Cultural identity can also be seen as what your surroundings consist of or an important choice that can only be made by an individual. It’s impact can cause exhibition of personality or divergence from domestic society. Culture and how it develops an individual is a particularly controversial topic when referring to its overall effect. Although society is raised and surrounded by all sorts of influential culture, one ultimately has to make the final decision on the makeup of their personality and how

Therefore, just because one’s self is raised educated in a single domestic culture, one does not have have to accept this culture. It is possible for a person to branch out to other cultures by one’s own will. Similarly, in the narrative Two Kinds by Amy Tan, Jing-mei, the ethnically Chinese daughter, rebels against the common Chinese parenting style of her mother while living in the Chinatown of San Francisco, United States: “...And then I decided, I didn’t have to do what mother said anymore. I wasn’t her slave. This wasn’t China.” (Tan 15). Accordingly, Jing-mei decides not to accept the culture that her mom tries to compel on her, but instead rebels against this. She takes authority over what she accepts as her culture and chooses to reject her parental upbringing. This sudden feeling that Jing-mei has conjured up inside causes her to unearth part of her that she has not yet before seen: “It felt like worms and toads and slimy things were crawling out of my chest, but it also felt good, that this awful side of me had surfaced, at last” (16). Ordinarily, the effects of culture would lead the offspring to agree due to similar upbringing, but this is not the case for Jing-mei. Due to her exposure and adaption to a foreign culture, in this case American, she is able to distinguish the dissimilarities. Jing-mei utilizes both Chinese and American culture to attempt to create her own personality. Perhaps culture is a factor in her character, she chooses to make the decision on the culture that she will choose to accept and which traits she will adopt. Jing-mei is a great example of how culture affects an individual and also how individuality plays a significant role in determining the final outcome of one’s