Personal Narrative: Identity And Culture

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Who am I? That’s a question I often used to ask myself. I’ve always had trouble trying to figure out who I am as a person. Like what do I profile myself as, or should I fall under one of many of societies different categories? During the reading of Lahiri’s; “Identity and Culture”. I found out we share a lot of similarities, to a certain extent from my childhood. For instants we both share in common the fact that we have immigrant parents, mine being my father. He himself was born into an immigrant background. Seeing as my grandfather is Jamaican Irish, and my grandmother is Syrian Jamaican. Wanting to do better for his family, and himself, he traveled far away from home. To start a new life in Houston, …show more content…

My father is a strong believer in culture, so a lot of things that Americans did he did not condone. Like for insists the closes I wore or the music I listened to, and even things I watched on the television. He felt when I came over and I was in his house, I played by his rules and his customs. When I started to notice this, it made me think like is this the person I really want to be? With all the tradition, and all the customs, and all the standards that he had put on life. This made me question a lot of things growing up, because on one hand mama would say that it’s ok to be different, and she would allow me to do the things I wanted. Verse as when I went to dads house a lot of things were more unacceptable. Knowing that my dad is Jamaican, and puts a tradition behind everything, it made me think. Do I have to be this way to because this is my background? Just because this is his culture does it make it mine too? I’m not from there, but my father is so do I have to carry on these traditions? Becoming an adult has really cleared that up for me. As Lahiri states on pg.99. “As an adult I accept that a bicultural upbringing is a rich but imperfect thing”. I appreciate my culture, my background, and my upbringing. But I now know who I am, I now know my identity. Not in a box, not in a category, my identity is

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