Walking on Eggshells: Gen Z & “Swept Away” by Shayna Sengstock

                                                        

I believe that the new generations are not taught to be prepared for what the world will throw at them. They are only told that people will change and that they should not have to face the problems that occur in the world.

— Kyle Thompson, “Are Millennials Too Sensitive?”

As a member of Generation Z growing up in the twenty-first century, I and many of my peers have encountered that famous saying, “I am a balloon, filled with emotions, in a world full of pins” (Unknown). This phrase has crippled the newer generations and caused us to act like fragile, overly sensitive humans who view everyone with different opinions as the enemy. As Kyle Thompson infers on the Millennial generation, born from 1980 through 1994, they have not been able to adapt to the real world. As well, my generation, 1995 through 2015, has also not been given the proper tools to solve problems; instead, we are coddled by our helicoptering parents who protect us from all harm. We expect others to walk to the same beat of the drum that we do, and when our homeostasis is upset, we curl up in a ball of self-pity. Barbara Lilley states in her article, “Why Are so Many Millennials Emotionally Fragile?,” “The world seems to be overrun with snowflakes whose fragile beauty dissolves as soon as they land on solid ground” (par. 1). We are so affected by everything we see and look at that when we have to view something difficult we break as easily as eggshells being walked on. I refer to our class discussion on who walked on more eggshells: deckhand Gennarino or the once shrewish but now subdued Raffaella in Swept Away?

Lena Wertmüller’s film evoked many emotions in me, some of which were most overwhelming. The way the characters treated one another made me feel indignant; the sexual harassment uneased me; the mistreatment disgusted me, and the abuse launched on both characters made me feel empathic. Unlike some of my peers, I was fortunate to be able to discuss the film with relevant people because I had built friendships with other students from last semester as well as with my peer teacher, Benny, and my coach, KP. In the basement of Axinn Library I discussed the film’s grotesque characteristics with Benny. I ranted to him about how the film trapped me and made me feel like I could not move forward into written self-expression. Through him I was able to calm down and I was able to see that by talking to someone it is easier to unpack the intensity in certain situations. I was used to watching fluff piece productions where everything ends in a happily ever after and Prince Charming rides off into the sunset. However, Wertmüller uses characters that really show what it is like to be a human being: Gennarino Carunchio, a short-tempered, lower-class man who was a leader of the communist party and Raffaella Pavone, a stuck up, highly opinionated lady of the upper class. These characters were meant to show the tension between Northern and Southern Italians during this time period and draw awareness to the corrupt political system that Italy was experiencing. “Swept Away observes a clash through two human manifestations of contrasting political systems who are in disagreement over the sexual politics of the time period” (Marking, par 3). The film shows how the main protagonist Gennarino sticks to a machoistic view of women, regarding them as “an object of pleasure for the working man” (Wertmüller, 1:24:34). Anger blinded Gennarino because Raffaella once held a higher position over him. He was someone whose views of the world did not permit women to have equal or higher rights than a man. He yearned to achieve the same level of respect and power that Raffaella evoked on a daily basis. Just like my generation, he was brainwashed by the cultural standards. Gennarino’s communistic views were challenged by Rafaella’s outspoken spirit; instead of humbling himself and realizing there are other ways of viewing life, he got wrathful and lashed out at her.

This brainwashed approach to life relates to Plato’s allegory of the cave. Gennarino was like the prisoners who just saw shadows of things and not the whole picture. When one of the prisoners was let go and saw what the world was really like, his eyes were opened to new ideas. The prisoner tried to go back to the others and tell them of his discovery. However, the other prisoners did not want to hear his point of view and therefore, ridiculed and abused him. Gennarino’s views were skewed by his pride just like the prisoners. When Gennarino finally had it with Raffaella’s constant nagging and criticism, he was seen chasing her around a deserted island abusing her for the “crimes” of the wealthy. “You are going to pay for everyone [. . .] that is for causing inflation and not paying taxes [. . .] and that is for the hospitals where the poor cannot even get in” (Wertmüller, 1:08:53). Raffaella struggled underneath him as he ripped her clothes off and whispered, “You are finally going to know a real man” (Wertmüller, 1:10:48).

This scene proved highly controversial among my classmates. We all were not used to watching films that made us uncomfortable and dared us to think too deeply about unsettling topics. Swept Away caused some of us to relive moments that we were trying hard to forget and caused others to be infuriated. Enraged, we argued about whether this film should have even been shown to us in the first place. In essence, we were all blinded by our anger. However, how are we supposed to stand up and make a difference if we are too afraid to watch something that shows us the corruption previous generations have experienced? How are we supposed to change the world if we cannot look at the problem head on? We all have been babied by the cultural climate we live in. “We know violent things are happening around the world, but we play a blind eye to them” (Thompson, par 3). We think that not showing these images will make them go away when in reality we are just sweeping everything under the rug creating more of a mound. “These problems will keep happening until we talk about them and bring awareness to the subject” (Solaimani).

So, what now? How are we supposed to open the eyes of our culture and make others realize the corruption that is happening around us? What we should not do is let our oppressors walk all over us like Rafaella did. She was afraid that if she spoke out against Gennarino that she was going to be harmed by him. This caused her to fall into silence. Gloria Anzaldua wrote in How to Tame a Wild Tongue, that we need to “Overcome the tradition of silence” (Anzaldua, page 40). “We are given tongues to be able to speak the truth and to stand up for what is right” (Schofield, par 5). We need not be scared or afraid to discuss these unsettling topics and show others our views on them. Rafaella was not allowed to voice her views on the island and was told by Gennarino to be submissive — women should be seen and not heard. “If that damn bitch doesn’t keep her mouth shut I’ll murder her” (Wertmüller, 7:15). Gloria Anzaldua was taught by her mother that, “Flies don’t enter a closed mouth.” Both of these women were forced into not using their voice. They were afraid that if they spoke they were either going to be deemed wrong or abused. It was only until both of these women realize that they “will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. [They] will have [a] voice” that they were truly freed from their oppressors (Anzaldua, page 40). That is why we need to learn to discuss these difficult topics instead of walking on eggshells and being afraid. If we keep our mouths closed nothing is going to change. “The world suffers a lot. Not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people” (Napoleon).

Works Cited

Anzaldua, Gloria. (2019). [online] Everettsd.org. Available at: https://www.everettsd.org/cms/lib07/WA01920133/Centricity/Domain/965/Anzaldua-Wild-Tongue.pdf [Accessed 6 April. 2019].

Lilley, Barbara. “Why Are so Many Millennials Emotionally Fragile?” Intellectual Takeout, 1 Dec. 2016, www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/why-are-so-many-millennials-emotionally-fragile

Marking, Alexis. “Boys Will Be Boys’ until They Turn into Abusive Men.” Taking Giant Steps, Kirpal Gordon, 4 Feb. 2019, http://giantstepspress.blogspot.com/2019/02/boys-will-be-boys-until-they-turn-into.html

Plato, “The Allegory of the Cave,” PDF & https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=plato+allegory+of+the+cave+cartoon&view=detail&mid=C711AFC2F023B84F2320C711AFC2F023B84F2320&FORM=VIRE

Schofield, Sadie. “How Identity Works: Without Pain How Can We Know Joy?” Taking Giant Steps, Kirpal Gordon, 27 March 2019, http://giantstepspress.blogspot.com/2019/03/how-identity-works-without-pain-how-can.html

 

Solaimani, Shadie. Class discussion. 1 April 2019

Thompson, Kyle. “Are Millennials Too Sensitive?” The Athenaeum, 9 Aug. 2017, theath.ca/opinions/are-millennials-too-sensitive/  

Wertmüller, Lena. Swept Away, Youtube, 19 Feb. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzAEF5g35uw

Waiting to Exhale: Challenges in Forging a Black Identity by Charlotte Seay

Fireman: Ma'am, were you aware that your car was on fire?

[Bernadine nods her head while smoking a cigarette]

Fireman: Ma'am, did you start this fire?

[she puffs smoke and plainly looks at him]

Fireman: You know, it's against the law to burn anything except trash in your yard.

Bernadine Harris: [flicks off ashes from her cigarette] It is trash.

Fireman: Look, this is a nice area. Luckily, a neighbor cared enough. Listen, the next time you want to burn something...

Bernadine Harris: It won't happen again.

[she shuts the door in his face]

One can only dare to be such a badass like this character. A noble African American woman named Terry McMillian wrote a novel titled Waiting to Exhale which was adapted into a two-hour dramatic film in 1995. It is a story about four African American females struggling with romantic relationships, causing them to lose their sense of identity in the process. The scene above is about Bernadine Harris burning her soon-to-be ex-husband’s car with his clothes inside because he was leaving her for another woman. This scene displays two things: destruction and cleansing. Although one should never deface someone’s property, sometimes one must break down and dismantle themselves in order to be reborn.  In the end, one can emotionally rehabilitate oneself and begin to create a new canvas and embrace the person one is meant to be. Personally, I have not had romantic relationship problems that have hindered my growth as a person. However, just like those four women, I have allowed the people in my life to define who I am and how I behaved. Worse, in acting the way I wanted to, it always felt like an act. When I attended church, I had to be very proper and modest in my behavior and appearance, yet the next day at school, I would be cursing and wearing crop tops and a fake septum ring. My personality just did not seem to fit into any one place. I divided myself into the multiple dimensions of my life, each one requiring a different characteristic for be to embody. I have been waiting for a chance to exhale and be satisfied with the person I am.

The first time someone called me an “Oreo” was in middle school in the seventh grade. Just like the cookie, being an Oreo is when one is black on the outside but acts white or behave in ways that are not associated with the African American community member stereotype. On a good day, this need to be properly black and properly American would not affect me so much. But being told by a girl who was lighter than me that I am not black enough to be black caused me to feel rejected by a whole community. I suppose I did not act black enough to have a lot of black friends or act white enough to have any white friends. I was in sort of a limbo state. I had friends, but I never felt like I belonged anywhere which made me feel insecure in the way I spoke. Over the phone, one of my aunts---that is, someone who shared my DNA---told me I sounded like a little white girl: “so proper.” I knew she did not mean any harm, but that comment felt so ignorant. I wanted to throw those words in a car and watch the whole thing burn. Can I not be a proper black girl?

Gloria Anzalduá was ridiculed for the way she spoke while she was in the United States. When she went to attend “Pan American University, [she] and all Chicano students were required to take two speech classes. Their purpose: to get rid of [their] accents” (Anzalduá, 8). Both Anzalduá and I had people in our lives telling us who we should be and who we already are. I strongly believe that the way one speaks and writes is strongly connected to one’s identity. Consequently, I have gotten bolder over the years which has changed the way I act around people in certain situations. My boldness gradually showed in my writing, and I had to learn how to cohere my thoughts concisely. Yet something in my head told me to hold my tongue and my breath as I slowly faded into the background.

Like school, like theater: an ensemble member does not have a significant role. They are just there to fill up some of the space on stage in the background. I was an ensemble member in my own life. It is funny because that carried over to high school when I became an ensemble member in musicals and plays. I never drank, smoked, or had sex during middle school or high school. It seemed like all my friends were partying and getting boyfriends and I was just there alone. I began entertaining myself with the thought of becoming promiscuous. This idea was a mixture of many things: I wanted to experience being with a guy myself, and I wanted an escape from my “goodie-two-shoes” life. Although I never actually put any effort into being promiscuous, it always lingered in the back of my mind. I incorrectly associated promiscuity with freedom because I believe that if one can do whatever one wants with one’s body and with whomever, one is free. One is doing those physical actions on one’s own time which I had never done before. I also felt that if I became this kind of girl, I would be free mentally. I was born into the Christian faith, but I never saw Christianity fitting into my life as I got older. In the Bible it clearly states, "Nevertheless, [to avoid] fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband” (1 Corinthians, 7:2). Christianity promotes sex after marriage, not before. Just like Plato’s cave allegory, Christianity was my cave. I did not live or explore outside of that reality. My mother made me go to church every Sunday, even when I told her that I did not want to go anymore. She yelled at me and made me go. I wanted to rebel and go against my mother’s wishes.

As time went by, I stumbled across a book in high school titled Loose Girl by Kerry Cohen at a local thrift store. It is a memoir about her journey of promiscuity. At the back of the book, I read an interview with Mrs. Cohen:

Q: Why did you write this book?

A: My own saving began when I saw myself in the pages of my book, so my hope is that girls and women will find themselves in Loose Girl. 

I found many flaws in myself that Mrs. Cohen had as well at my age. I am glad she wrote her memoir because it put my thoughts and potential actions of being “loose” to rest. It made me realize that it is not necessary to be a loose girl in life. It would have not made me live any more of a great life then I already had. I understood the depths and consequences of actions that I was considering. This life lesson goes along perfectly with Walt Whitman’s long prose poem, “Song of Myself.” He wrote: “Trippers and askers surround me, / People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life... / My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues… / These come to me days and nights and go from me again, / But they are not the Me myself.” (Section 4). Everyone plays a part in one’s development, which Whitman eloquently phrases in his work. It is the small things like the dues one must pay to form our identity. Perhaps it is the way one feels when dressed: am I being controlled or freed by clothes? What really defines one’s character? For me, it was the people in my life early on who influenced me, especially the people who I went to church with. All the compliments they gave me made feel obligated to attend service after a while because they were so kind and old. Whitman made me realize that these things that have surrounded me since the day I was born made me the person that I am today. The effects of these influences were inevitable. Identity is inevitable. However, in life we get to choose whether we want those influences to impact our identity, as Whitman noted. I knew I did not want to be the person who I was at church because I was just going through the motions and not living the way I truly believed life to be. I agree with Whitman’s ending line: “Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders / I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait” (Section 4). Now that I have grown and am away from that either/or middle school environment, I can breathe a little more. 

In high school things got better. During my senior year, I decided to take a creative writing class. My English teacher encouraged me to do so. He saw a potential voice in me. I am not going to say that I emerged as a great writer, but I became more articulate, more confident, more essential. He did not just let me sit in class and stay silent. At the end of the semester, we had to present our final project. It was an opportunity to get to know what everyone was thinking about and how they chose to express themselves. I decided to write a book of poems. Due to “senior-itis” (a wave of terrible procrastination and lack of motivation among students during their senior year of high school), a lot of my poems were weak. I did not commit on any one idea to really be as successful as I could have on this project. I did not fail, but I was not proud of what I produced. After this project, I learned something very important: I am afraid of being ordinary and it showed in all my writing. I tried to sound smarter than what my own knowledge could provide all because I had not discovered my authentic self, what Whitman calls "the Me myself." 

Subway Art by the author

One cannot teach oneself authenticity. I looked up to so many recording artists who exhibit this quality in their character. Since I did not know who I was, I naturally wanted to emulate those who I want to be. I am still guilty of still doing this today, but not as extremely as before. I am now more inspired by their courage rather in trying to be like them. I found great relief in Alan Watts’ concept on what being an individual means by calling all beings hoaxes. “The word ‘Individual’ is the Latin form of the Greek ‘atom’—that which cannot be cut or divided any further into separate parts. We cannot chop off a person's head or remove his heart without killing him. But we can kill him just as effectively by separating him from his proper environment” (Watts, 9). This notion of intrinsic wholeness goes back to my theory of one having to destroy oneself to find oneself. Many people, including me, have thought that entering into college is yet another journey of self-discovery. To become the person that I want to be, I could not stay at home.

Everyone’s life has different scenes, just like a movie. There is an opening and closing line. I have stepped up from behind the scenes and taken more control of my life. I have begun to Gestalt my life by living as a whole human being rather than choosing pieces of my life to live. An individual is one atom, one organism. I have lived a life where I thought I did not belong. In reality, “[I] have been fooled by [my] name…[believing] that having a separate name makes [me] a separate being” (Watts, 11). Instead everyone is connected. Once one realizes that one is neither more ordinary nor extraordinary than the other, one can live the way one pleases. I have begun to realize this which has allowed me to finally breath in and exhale.

Works Cited

Anzalduá, Gloria. "How to Tame a Wild Tongue." (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 01 Dec. 2016.

The Bible: King James Version. Glasgow: Collins, 2008. Print. 01 Dec. 2016.

Cohen, Kerry. Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity. New York: Hyperion, 2009. Print. 01 Dec. 2016

"Go to Bing Homepage." Plato+allegory+of+the+cave+cartoon - Bing Video. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2016.

Watts, Alan. The Book: On the Taboo against Knowing Who You Are (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 01 Dec. 2016

Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself” N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2016

Whitaker, Forest, director. Waiting to Exhale. Prod. Terry McMillan and Ronald Bass. Perf. Whitney Houston, Angela Bassett, and Loretta Devine. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, 1995.

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How Identity Works: Without Pain How Can We Know Joy? by Sadie Schofield

What is good without bad? In “The Story of the Chinese Farmer” by Alan Watts there was a man who had bad and good fortune happen to him at different times. His son broke his leg which seemed to be a bad fortune, but because of this, he was not drafted into the war. His neighbors gathered around him every time a different event occurred, and they would cry out “Oh, that’s too bad” or “Wow, that’s great!” However, each time the Chinese farmer would state, “Maybe” (Watts). The Chinese farmer realized something that all these town folks did not understand. You cannot have good without bad. They are inseparable. For “your joy is your sorrow unmasked” (Gibran, [On Joy and Sorrow]). Alan Watts gives a clearer picture of this in The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by stating:

. . . Just as the hour-hand of the watch goes up to twelve and down to six, so, too, there is day and night, waking and sleeping, living and dying, summer and winter. You can't have any one of these without the other, because you wouldn't be able to know what black is unless you had seen it side-by-side with white, or white unless side-by-side with black.

Everyone has their own experiences with black and white. One fails a test, but because of it, one wants to study harder. One gets thrown in jail; however, one learns not to make the same mistake again. One gets sexually assaulted, yet one walks away stronger with the knowledge that even though this happened, one might be able to help someone else who is going through the same thing. Whitman wrote in “Song of Myself,” section 4, “I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won” (Whitman, par. 18). I have had my own share of black and white which I had to deal with and my own identity to figure out. For me to tell what happened to me and to take ownership of the situation is going to be a hard thing, but in the end, it will help myself as well as others.

From the ages of three through sixteen, I was sexually assaulted by my grandfather. He was a man who I called Papa. I was supposed to trust him and have comfort knowing he would protect me, yet instead he betrayed me. This was something which pierced my soul and made me ashamed of who I was. I thought that it was me who did something wrong, that in some way I was the problem. Just like any other victim of a sexual assault, whether you are male or female, you know that a part of you is missing after the occurrence. There is that feeling missing from you; you know it was there, but now it is snatched away by the rapist.

Surprisingly, I never realized what was happening to me until I was sixteen. Because of my Baptist background, I was never taught what sexual assault was. My church thought it best to keep these things away from children not realizing that sexual assault could happen to anyone. The even sadder part was, when I eventually realized what was happening, my grandfather was admitted to a nursing home because he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and forgot his past. He might have forgotten what he did, but I did not. He eventually passed away in October of 2016; I watched him take his final breath as he laid there on a hospital cot. For a long time, I felt no justice was done for his actions. Instead, I curled up in a ball of negative emotions causing 2017 to be the worst year of my life. I tried counseling for a while with no avail. One cannot be helped by a counselor if one is not willing to heed their advice. For me, at least, I had to figure out for myself who I was. Was I just a victim of a crime or was I someone who might grow from this experience?  

Someone who helped me figure out my identity was my friend Robert. He went through a similar experience of feeling rejected and used, yet somehow he looked past all of that and found the beauty in life. He realized “the deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain” (Gibran, [On Joy and Sorrow]). It was him who got me out of my mental state of collapse. Through him, I learned to “unscrew the locks from the doors and to unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs” (Whitman, par. 24). Reflecting on my grandfather’s behavior, I took refuge in these words: “Whoever degrades another degrades me and whatever is said and done at last returns to me” (Whitman, par. 24). Because of Robert’s scarred past, he looked to alternative options to relieve his pain, causing him to have a run-in with the law. He did, however, learn that he would not be making the same mistake again, but he still had to pay for the consequence of his actions. This past November he was taken away to prison for a few months, where he is now. This was another major event in my life which could have caused me to slip into depression had I not looked at it from a healthy point of view. I saw this as a way for me to put into practice everything that he helped me with. I saw it as an opportunity for growth and to show the world that even though this is my past it does not define me. I do still struggle a bit with my past sometimes and “these thoughts come to me days and nights and go from me again, but they are not the Me myself” (Whitman, par. 4). 

I took my first steps into discovering my new self as I progressed throughout my first semester of college here at Hofstra University. I was not going to let these series of sexual assaults be the thing that took me down. Instead, I decided to surround myself with people who I knew had my best interest at heart, even though this story of sexual abuse might scare them. However, this story might also help them because “no matter who you are, we all have some sort of monster hiding in our closet” (Gottwald). This was my monster and is the monster of many other people. I have to say if I had not have gone through this experience I would not be at the same state of mental compacity as I am now. In a weird, twisted way I did grow from this experience. Because of this, I unlocked what Whitman was trying to say when he stated in his Preface to Leaves of Grass:

. . . hate tyrants . . . have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men. . .  read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

Because of experiencing rape at a young age, I have learned to be more companionate and to take more time to invest in the lives of others. I also learned to re-examine my life as well as overcome whatever insults me. My job now as a thinker and learner is to use the Jewish philosophy תיקון עולם or tikkun olam, which roughly translates, “to heal the world.” I have to repair the tear in the world by showing people that “I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. . . I will overcome the tradition of silence” (Anzaldua, par. 40). We are given tongues to be able to speak the truth and to stand up for what is right. We should not feel like we have to hide our past or be too afraid to speak up when we are being abused. Gloria Anzaldua suffered with using her own voice. Every time she opened up her mouth she was deemed wrong. That is why we have to untame our tongues; we need to prevent the silence. There are many women and men alike that feel the need to keep silent; they do not feel like they are going to be taken seriously. Such is the case with many college students. Sarah Baum wrote it best in her essay, “Pulling That Weight: How Colleges Can Support Survivors of Sexual Assault,” especially the story of Emma Sulkowize (uses they/them pronoun). Emma was sexually assaulted while they attended Columbia University. “They reported it [the assault] to campus authorities but it fell on deaf ears. When that failed, they reported their assault to the NYPD. Their case was ridiculed and dismissed” (Baum, par. 1) Emma is just one of many who have suffered by being dismissed. It is a scary thought that “One in five women will be assaulted on a college campus” (RAINN). Yet, when a student is a victim of sexual assault on campus, they have no ally in their school. They only face blame and shame. “They are damned before they can even be victimized” (Baum, par. 2). We need to all bond together to stop this from happening. We need to lend a listening ear to victims. We also need to help heal the world of the victims whose lives have been torn apart. We need to jump out of the cave and look toward the light (Plato).

Looking back now, a semester after I wrote this, I can truly say that my life has changed. I have been able to use my voice as a writer to help others by stepping into peoples’ lives and being the listening ear, they were yearning for. Because of this I have been able to help victims gain a voice of their own. Sexual assault is a hard battle to overcome, but when we all join together to take it down little by little the mountain turns into a mole hill.

Works Cited

Watts, Alan. The Book; on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. New York: Pantheon, 1966.Menantol. Web. 06 Dec. 2018.

Plato, “The Allegory of the Cave,” https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=plato+allegory+of+the+cave+cartoon&view=detail&mid=C711AFC2F023B84F2320C711AFC2F023B84F2320&FORM=VIRE

Gibran, K. (2018). The Prophet by Khalil Gibran - free online ebook. [online] Wyzend.com. Available at: http://wyzend.com/prophet/ [Accessed 6 Dec. 2018].

Whitman, W. (2018). SONG OF MYSELF. (Leaves of Grass (1891-92)) - The Walt Whitman Archive. [online] Whitmanarchive.org. Available at: https://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1891/poems/27 [Accessed 6 Dec. 2018].

Gottwald, Benjamin. Personal Encounter. 5 Dec. 2018

Green, John. The Fault in Our Stars. 2018

Anzaldua, Gloria. (2018). [online] Everettsd.org. Available at: https://www.everettsd.org/cms/lib07/WA01920133/Centricity/Domain/965/Anzaldua-Wild-Tongue.pdf [Accessed 6 Dec. 2018].

RAINN | The Nation's Largest Anti-Sexual Violence Organization, www.rainn.org/statistics/campus-sexual-violence.

Baum, S. (2018). Pulling That Weight: How Colleges Can Support Survivors of Sexual Assault.

Watts, Alan. “Story of the Chinese Farmer.” YouTube, Wiara, 19 Nov. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byQrdnq7_H0

Between Two Worlds: The Struggles of a Woman with a Feuding Heritage by Isabella Soto

“Speak Spanish to us,” said my aunts and uncles as I responded to them with English words.

“Oh, that’s from your Dominican side,” my dad stated when I had too much of an attitude as a child. 

“I won’t get you yogurt if you don’t ask in Spanish,” my grandmother said to me when I was five years old and requested a snack.

“I’ll give you twenty dollars if you say five sentences in Spanish,” uttered my Titi Milagro when I sat listening to the lecture as to why I should know how to fluently speak my family’s native language.  

Growing up, these comments were spoken to me as I was a 100% Hispanic while barely knowing how to speak Spanish. As both a Dominican and Puerto Rican, I have been discriminated upon by both sides of my family for not being Dominican enough, not being Puerto Rican enough, or not being Hispanic enough all together. My mother is a Dominican immigrant and my father is a Boricua/Nuyorican (New York Puerto Rican), speaking the slang of the area he grew up in. Both speaking Spanish, I have always been questioned as to why I do not. My brilliant, persistent mother was an Emergency Room technician before I was born. Instead of being able to focus on her work and her tasks, she would constantly be pulled aside by doctors, nurses, and registrars so she could translate to/for a patient. This is the last thing she wanted us to experience as grown adults because she wanted us to work without disruptions. In addition to this, my older sister was put into ESL (English as Second Language) for not knowing enough of the English vocabulary. Ripping the accent and language from my sister’s tongue, my parents vowed to speak less Spanish around us in fear of it holding us back in school. She and my father “wanted to assimilate us into a culture that would not right away put up their guard against us because of our accents” (Rodriguez). However, not knowing the native language of my family, I have been teased and judged for being too “Americanized.” In addition, my background allowed my relatives to consider my sister and I “the mutts of the family” (Soto). Dominicans and Puerto Ricans have such a rivalry; it is hard to be accepted on either side. Throughout my life, I have found myself torn in both directions to be one or the other, forced an accent while around my family, and tried to win both sides’ acceptance through speaking a broken language with an accent that was not considered correct. 

However, after reading Gloria Anzaldúa and Emily Rivera, talking to certain family members, and watching Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture,” I have realized I am so much more than a mutt of two feuding countries; I am the product of understanding between two unique cultures that is blended perfectly from the fragmented pieces that fell together to form a new generation of people willing to fight for their individuality. As I got older, I realized how unnecessarily segregated the two cultures were toward each other as well as how much of an outcast I felt myself to be in my family. I had always been a bit different from the rest of my primas due to the fact that I do not speak fluent Spanish and am not pure Dominican. This idea of being an outsider stemmed from my grandmother’s resentment toward my mother for marrying a Puerto Rican man. Maturing as years went on, I realized this disregard toward my father carried on to favoritism of the grandchildren. Compared to my purebred cousins, my grandmother has shown to be more loving and appreciative of them. At fifteen years old, my cousin was given four pandora rings and $200 to go shopping for her quinceñera, when I was not even given a feliz cumpleaños. My cousins are rewarded for accomplishing a score of 90 on a test while I am not recognized when I have a 95 grade point average for all four years of high school. Not only am I treated differently than everyone else, I am forced to experience the comments of my abuela toward my father, like calling him un baboso, making me feel as if the comments are partly meant for me, too. 

In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” a man leaves a cave, becoming enlightened from a sun never seen by him before. This man, who tries to show his former cave members that there is more than what they have ever known, is shunned and resented for disrupting the peacefulness. My family is equivalent to those in the cave: close minded and unwilling to look at anything different from what they know. The enlightened one, who was different and attempted to show the others what is out in a universe nobody knew existed, is me. The only difference is that I was never in the cave to begin with.

Not only being Dominican and Puerto Rican, I am a Hispanic who does not speak la lengua effortlessly. Growing up, I had to explain my lack of fluency to every family member at every family gathering. To make it worse, I forced a fake Spanish accent and listened to music that was more accepted by my family. I acted like I was totally la raza, but like Emily Rivera, “I hated every second of not being able to be my entire self” (Rivera, par. 2). Listening to more salsa to appease my Puerto Rican side, listening to more merengue to please my Dominican side and trying to stay neutral enough in order to resonate with my Americanized friends in school, I felt as if I was in a tug of war with myself, pulled in all directions in my desperate need to fit into the many situations I faced growing up. Living in the borderlands was my most significant issue. As Gloria Anzaldúa put it, I was “half and half” and was “caught in the crossfire between camps...not knowing which side to turn to [or which side] to run from” (Anzaldúa, 412). Most of all, I wished “[I] was a purebred and not a mutt” (Mendoza).

After years of thinking I was an unwanted breed of Hispanic, I read “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldúa. Speaking of her Chicano background, Anzaldúa felt the judgements from those within her community. Chicanas who “spoke Chicano Spanish internalized the belief that [they] speak poor Spanish” (Anzaldúa 415). Like me with my family members, Chicanas are “afraid [others] will think we’re agringada because we don’t speak Chicano Spanish” (Anzaldúa 415). I felt less alone reading this and more intrigued as to how she responded to it. Anzaldúa realized that instead of “living in the borderlands,” we are “straddling the borderlands” (Anzaldúa 418). I am not one or the other. Like Gestalt theory suggests, I want to embrace my three identities. I refuse to perceive myself as nothing less than a whole self which is greater than the sum of her parts. I am Puerto Rican and Dominican as well as American all at the same time. Many Hispanics feel confined to the walls our culture and families put up for us, but it is unfair “to put us in a box” (Rodriguez) and constrict or limit a person for not being like the rest. Perhaps my generation in America, standing on the shoulders of our Caribbean abuelos, will no longer need to worry about our differences but come to see our heritages co-existing in equilibrium. “There is more unity than anything else” (Reyes). Check the way our hips move as we dance to the beats our ancestors gave us, the way we cook arroz, habichuelas, platano maduro, y pernil, the way we gather together around the dinner table every night.

In Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture,” he speaks of how brick walls are there to give chances. For many years I thought that I was an outsider. However, these brick walls let us “prove how badly we want things” (Pausch). Overcoming this idea of not being able to appease every side of who I am, I have broken down this brick wall representing a separation that should not have existed in the first place. There is neither being too Dominican or too Puerto Rican. There is no existence of being too much of this, too much of that, or not enough at all. My entire life has been conflicted by not allowing myself to be anything at all or everything at once. However, I have realized that I am more than just someone who cannot roll her R’s, more than someone who does not “look Hispanic,” and certainly more than a person who has been treated like an unwanted dog given the scraps of the true Hispanic experience. Por favor!

Who I am is not the separation of multiple cultures; I am the harmony amidst raging storms. Being a perfect combination of the good and bad of each, I am the loud Dominican one can hear from down the hallway, the quiet Puerto Rican who moves rhythmically  to the music of Hector Lavoe, and the American who takes pride in being a part of a nation with such diverse heritages. The unique creation of an unconditional love between two people who saw past their backgrounds, I am the product of the broken parts of a puzzle that somehow fit perfectly with one another.

Works Cited

Anzaldúa, Gloria. “To Live in the Borderlands Means You.” PDF. 3 December 2018.

Anzaldúa, Gloria. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” PDF. 3 December 2018.

Mendoza, Johnathan. “Brown Boy, White Boy.” Youtube. 2 December 2018.     

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Lj7o3GoaWo

Pausch, Randy. “The Last Lecture.” Youtube. 22 November 2018.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo&t=2692s

Plato. “Allegory of the Cave.” 29 November 2018.

https://yale.learningu.org/download/ca778ca3-7e93-4fa6-a03f-471e6f15028f/H2664_Allegory%20of%20the%20Cave%20.pdf

Reyes, Yesenia. Personal Interview. 5 December 2018.

Rivera, Emily. “I Dare You.” Taking Giant Steps. 28 October 2018.

Rodriguez, Gina. “Gina Rodriguez To Those Saying She's 'Not Latina Enough.'” Youtube.

9 October 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4KiYi1rtU8&t=78s

"My Subcontinent Is Always in My Subconscious: Indian Heritage in America" by Alisha Andrews

One’s identity can be found through life and the experiences within it. In our WSC class my peers found their identity in different ways: going into the army at the age of 18, living in a negative town their entire childhood, being a certain religion that is misunderstood in America. The experience that helped me find my identity was being the first generation, American-born citizen and living through the struggles of my immigrant parents.

The process of immigration is difficult, but the process of an immigrant adjusting to America is never ending. Both my parents came to America at the age of 18 with their cousins from India, all without their own parents. All 15 of them lived in a 3 story rental house in Queens Village where everyone lived paycheck to paycheck. My parents had 3 jobs at one point so they could live a decent life. My mom took on a job as a cashier at JC Penney and Walmart and as a bank clerk. My dad took on a job as a limousine driver, bank clerk, and a cashier at a local department store. Even though these jobs seemed simple, it was tough for my parents. They had thick Indian accents and would get yelled at by customers to “learn English” and comments like “you should not be working here.” When my dad was a limo driver he had to learn all of New York City's streets and directions to get his clients to where they needed to be. He had no GPS back in his day and would get awful comments if he made one mistake, but little did the people know that he was just learning about America, let alone these locations! Both my parents always got the comment to “go back to your own country!”

These comments reminded me of Gloria Anzaldua’s remark, “We know what it is to live under the hammer blow of the dominant norte-americano culture” (Anzaldua, par 43). The white Americans around her felt as if they owned this country. They believed not knowing fluent English, not having an American accent, and not having white skin means that you do not belong in America. They viewed people with brown skin as inferior and stupid and that they weren’t “qualified” enough to live in this white man’s world. But my parents had tough skin. They were ready to endure these kinds of indifferences and not let it affect them. I give them so much credit for staying strong because they are humans, too, who have feelings, but were treated like subordinates. They worked 7 days a week to save up money for a car so they could have a vehicle. Before they had a car, they were walking to all their destinations and this was hard especially in the harsh, cold winters of New York. Both my parents and their cousins saved up $3000 to buy an old, used car. Even though it was a junk from a shady store in Queens, it was something they could use to drive places. They gave the car dealer all the money they saved up for months to get a car that stopped working the day after they bought it. Yes, they got played. They were just learning the hustle for money in America. But this experience helped them learn that not everyone is who they say they are. My parents struggled so much their first years in America. They went through these hardships and sacrificed everything they had and started a new life all over again just for my brother and I to live a better life than they had.

My brother, Albie, and I were the first generation to be born and raised in America. We were the first to go to school and to university in our families in America. Both of us were exposed to the American culture right away as we entered the school system. We grew up with English as our first language and Malayalam, which is a South Indian language common in Kerala, India, as our second language. My parents made sure that Albie and I became adjusted to both the American and Indian culture. But these two cultures clash at times. In India there is a hierarchy with gender. The male is the head of the family and is seen as superior and has all the freedom in the world. The female is seen as inferior and taught to be conservative and quiet. My parents immigrating to America and seeing a different viewpoint instead of sticking with India’s traditional ways helped build my identity. “Some women can escape social conformity and become conscious of the incredibly sexist, patriarchal society we live in. Others are trapped and are incapable of realizing their true identity because they are the product of someone else’s identity formation” (Solis, par 2). Since I was fortunate enough to grow up in America, I was given the opportunity to put my education first before anything else. I could get a job that did not include housework and I do not need to settle to be a housewife like in India, where it is common for 18-year-old girls to get married off. America holds opportunities to show that women are just as equal to men and can succeed in anything they do through careers and having empowering platforms. In India these opportunities are looked down upon, so many women put a hold on their life so their husbands, fathers, or brothers can live the life they want. I learned that I am more than what a man sees me as even if it is an object, reproducer, or inferior. I was born a woman and therefore need to hold strong to this identity, especially coming from an Indian, sexist community.

The South Asian community also has a persistent point of view when it comes to careers. If you had a daughter, she was supposed to be a nurse or a doctor. If you had a son, he was supposed to be an engineer. Indian parents have such a limited mindset for jobs. They believe only the STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) jobs can make you money and be successful. This gets me furious. As a woman not interested in any of the four choices, I feel as though my brown people look down upon me. I am a public relations major in the communications field, which is nowhere dominant with colored people. But this taboo on communications and how it is a “useless field” did not stop me. Constantly getting comments like “communications is not stable,” “you will never make any money with public relations,” or “you should switch your major before it is too late” did not hinder my decision. In fact, it encouraged me to prove them wrong! I chose Hofstra because it is one of the best schools for communications and will continue to go to this university for the next four years. “People might not always think the same way as me either because their identities have been more or less developed, or because their identities have been established in a completely dissimilar system” (Davis, par 9). The brown community does not see the value in communications, but I do. Communications is part of my identity. I am a social person who needs to see “the real” in every person and see the bigger picture of that person’s purpose. Working in public relations is not just a “hello” and “goodbye” conversation, which many people think it is, but investing value in a person, company, or venue. I knew that if I listened to these people, I would most likely be in a nursing program and dreading every second of it. These people have minimal capacity when it comes to career choices. I am proud of myself for keeping true to my identity and my own interests because my career in public relations will define who I am instead of being someone who I am not.

Staying true to my identity as a brown-skinned Indian woman was like fighting a battle with myself. Growing up I realized that I was different from other people in my elementary and middle school. The kids and teachers had lighter hair than me, different colored eyes, and fairer skin tones. To be honest. I felt out of place and wanted to fit in and the only way was to be white. This mindset of fitting in with the white kids destroyed my self-esteem entirely because the reality is that I am brown. I wanted to be from Europe and not Asia. In middle school we had culture day where we talked about our heritage and I was extremely embarrassed to tell everyone that I was Indian. I avoided using words like “curry” and talking in my native language so kids would not laugh at me and see me as the “weird girl.” I wanted straight, thin hair and not thick, curly hair. I remember one white girl coming up to me in elementary school and asking me, “Why is your hair so curly and black?” I just stood there and questioned my hair as well because I did not know why my hair was different. I wanted to be superior and not inferior. This hierarchy between races that I mentally created really affected the growth of my identity. When I was younger I viewed white people as a higher race. I belittled myself because of my own skin color.  I was one of the few colored people on my school bus in elementary school. This led to the white kids bullying me and calling me names like “Indian warthog” and such. This created the fear in my mind that the whites had power and control over me. If I saw a white person standing behind me on the lunch line, I would let them go in front of me. If I needed to pick a partner for projects, I would instantly pick the white girls first. In a sense, I idolized having white skin. I saw white skin as the key to having a successful, easy life.

Oh boy, was I wrong! As I got older I realized how limited was my mindset. There was no real reason to think of my brown skin and my culture with a negative connotation.“...you’re dumb enough to walk around continuing to identify yourself with that Party, you’re not only a chump, but you’re a traitor to your race” (Malcolm X, par 13).  I needed to accept that I was an Indian, brown-skinned girl and that will never change. I had to be proud of who my parents were and who they raised me to be. I had to get out of this narrow-minded environment where I superiorized white people.

Going into high school everything changed. I viewed everyone as equal and that no one was better than another because of their skin color. I realized that skin color is part of one’s heritage. Everybody is still human, as cliche as it sounds, it is true. If you live closer to the equator you will have darker skin. If you live farther from the equator you will have lighter skin. This is just geography and not something you can control. So to belittle myself off these factors that I could not control was insane of me. I started accepting myself for who I was and started being more confident in my heritage. If I could go back to the girl who asked me why my hair was so curly and black, I would tell her it is because I am Indian and this is what most South Indian girls have. I learned to embrace my Indianness and become aware of the rest of the world. As I grew older I realized that there is more than the white race and so many other cultures to be exposed to. "Whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or, in other words, of the good” (Plato, par 46). Plato explains how I felt with my entire Indian crisis. I needed to find strength within myself to identify as an Indian and not be ashamed of it. I was stuck in this close-minded mentality that limited my capacity and power to find acceptance in myself. My viewpoint needed to be expanded from this “white supremacy” to seeing all races as one.

My viewpoint changing really helped develop my identity. I am nowhere the same person I was a few years ago. My homeostasis changed. My parents made a pathway by immigrating to America to be exposed to many opportunities which I will forever be thankful for. Being in communications field for my career adds onto my identity as a socializer and a barrier breaker for the Indian community. Accepting my skin color and being proud of my Indian heritage, while conquering my irrational fear of white supremacy, evolved myself to be true to who I am. As they say in Malayalam, നിങ്ങൾ നൽകുന്ന ജീവനെ സ്നേഹിക്കുക (niṅṅaḷ nalkunna jīvane snēhikkuka), love the life you are given.

Works Cited

Anzaldua, Gloria. "How to Tame a Wild Tongue."

www.everettsd.org/cms/lib07/WA01920133/Centricity/Domain/965/Anzaldua-Wild-Tongue.pdf.

Davis, Brittany.  "Mastering a Free-Thinking Perspective." 1 Jan. 2017, giantstepspress.blogspot.com/2016/03/mastering-free-thinking-perspective-by.html.

Plato. The Allegory of the Cave. VII, ser. 514a-521b, faculty.ycp.edu/~dweiss/phl224_human_nature/Plato%20republic%20allegory%20of%20the%20cave.pdf.olis,

Solis, Lola. "Is Feminism the New F Word? From Resistant to Responsive,"  giantstepspress.blogspot.com/2016/04/is-feminism-new-f-word-from-resistant.html.

X, Malcolm. "The Ballot or the Bullet." 1964. www.infosec.aueb.gr/Besides%20Security/TALKS/TALKS-10-X%20(The%20Ballot%20or%20the%20Bullet).