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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Apathy, Atheism, and The Last Call by Dushyant Rakheja

I spoiled God’s divine plan at the age of 17. My mother was shouting at me to not throw a bucket of water at my sleeping brother, yet I did. As expected, she was as enraged as was my brother, but he’s not important for now. My mother, or rather her beliefs as a Hindu, however, are. According to Hinduism, God has a divine plan for the world and everything that happens in a human’s life happens for a reason that only They know. Hence, it is often preached that one should not give into rage because all bad things are Their plan. If one reads again closely, they will find that I was able to aggravate a firm believer of this notion. I had her, just for a moment, “step away from God” and commit a sin. That possibly wasn’t part of his plan. I beat God…or did I?

Later that year angering my mother became a second habit, and questioning Their existence became the first. That was because I had concluded at this point that there was no divine plan that we followed. Call me skeptical but I fail to understand why the plan called for people to die at the hands of others for money. If there was a God, would he make a plan that could lead to this? Though I did know the answer already I wanted confirmation, which I found in Alan Watts’s The Book: On the Taboo against Knowing Who You Are. He confirmed my suspicion in the very first chapter by saying:

God also likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. (Watts)

Hindu philosophy states that we are born of God and we are one with Him. Watts seconds this notion by stating “there is nothing outside God.” Ergo, inhabitants of the earth, we all collectively are God! He is more you and more I than he is in Himself. The fog dissipated at last, giving way to why the divine plan led us to an era where the majority is not happy to be alive.

“… Sometimes the reason is you're stupid and make bad decisions.” (Harmon)

Being the Devil’s advocate, or maybe the God’s advocate, I started questioning priests and learned people about whether they knew God or not. More importantly, had God given them what they asked for any more than their parents or friends did? Before the big reveal, however, it is important that one knows about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.

Consider a bunch of prisoners who were chained up in an underground cave ever since birth. Their only sources of light are the diffused sunlight coming from the mouth of the cave and the fire burning behind them at a higher elevation than them. From in front of the fire passes a road where showman and puppeteers perform casting a shadow on the opposite wall, the only wall that prisoners can see. Since that was the only thing they saw since the beginning of their lives, the prisoners accept the shadows to be true and hence start naming and familiarizing with them. If from a bunch of these prisoners one random person was freed and shown his surroundings – the fire and the diffused sunlight – he would start questioning his conception of reality.

Furthermore, if he was led through the mouth of the cave and into the outside world, his eyes would find the sunlight too bright and it would be hard for him to adjust. But once they do, he is introduced to a whole new world that he could not have dreamt of in his wildest dreams. He is exposed to figures that have depth and color, that cast shadows. After a while of discomfort and a lot of questions, he would recognize the sun as the source of light and objects as the source of shadows. He then deciphers what we consider basic reality.

Illuminated by this new knowledge, the prisoner returns to the cave to help his fellow prisoners differentiate the true from the shadows. Before making a decision, I would like you to try and remember your reaction when you figured out your mother’s name was not “mom,” or some other variation of it, but rather something else. I, personally, did not accept the fact and it took a lot of explanation to reconcile me. Or, try telling somebody that cockroaches cannot harm them and do not need to be feared. If one can be unaccepting of such minor changes, it would come as no surprise that the prisoners did not want to believe the free man. Since his eyes were more adapted to light, he could not see the shadows of the cave properly whereas the other prisoners could. They used that fact to establish their superiority and shunned him aside like a lunatic. The prisoners in this case could be exchanged with the priests I talked in my quest for sun. 

Some debated with me back and forth and strengthened my point that God resides in all of us, and prayer is just a way of reminding oneself what’s important to them in life. Others entered a state of absolute denial or even became a little hostile with their words and called me the personification of blasphemy.

Societal pressure, however, did not stop my investigations. I had progressed to finding the meaning in every mundane aspect of life: each blink, each wink, the flutter of the bees that I now consider my equal, each breath we take. The last question popped up to me during my grandfather’s funeral. He was clinging to life with an oxygen mask as Alzheimer’s took away his ability to breathe. My uncles and father gathered around him and were showing him images of the deity he worshiped and whispered, “They are calling you. You want to go to Them, right? You can go.” Among the loud sniffles, cries, and wailing, this sentence rang loud in my mind. If one believes in living a better life after death, why do they fear it or get sad when a close one dies? 

“Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die…” (Whitman)

Walt Whitman’s 52-piece series called “Song of Myself” covered most of what I would like to know about life. It is true that the way I assimilate the message may be radically different than what he intended, but it resolved my issues. From Song 1, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself…,” I learned what it truly means to live and bask in the glory of oneself while enjoying the moment. Song 6 talks about leaves of grass, affirming oneness among humans and the earth; all of us being part of the same, being born and dying to be the same. Why should I then treat anything or anybody any different than others? The grass I walk on is not less deserving of my respect than the stranger I share a smile with at the coffee shop. My reaction on my phone falling out of my pocket and breaking must not differ from when I found out it was just my tempered glass protector. Some people mistake this for my apathy, but I am merely taking things as they come, like the Chinese farmer.

The Chinese farmer, in Alan Watts’ The Story of the Chinese Farmer, as one may have guessed by now, was a statute of the Buddhist principle of impermanence with an eye to the tao (zen). When dealt with seemingly good or bad situations, the farmer stays calm and waits for them to play out on their own, much like Arjuna learns in the Bhagavad Gita, that is, non-attachment to the fruits of one's actions. Divergence of the actual outcome from our expectations is what causes our sadness and not the outcomes themselves. This happens to be an unrealistic thing to chase after, but we all hope for a miracle every day.

Through my journey of life till now, I have been transformed into an atheist who does not believe in god, but after being acquainted with Alan Watts and Plato, I believe in humans and our power to change our lives as well as others. Hence, I would rather say that I am non-theistic but still pursuing truth. I believe in questioning what I see and am told to believe without reason. Walt Whitman gave me new questions to think about and a new perspective to view things from. The Chinese farmer challenged me to not over-think too much and to take things as they come. I was resolved and challenged to break the shackles and go to the light, to stand at the edge of the cave and learn about all the new parts of me that I see and not be overwhelmed by it. I have a new rail to take my train of thought on, and this is the last call. All aboard!

Works Cited

Clay, Becky. “Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.” YouTube. 5 Jun. 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoOVFO4Qnqg&feature=share.

Dhyani, Divya. Haridwar. Jan. 2015.

Harmon, Marion G., Ronin Games, Vol. 5. USA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015. Print. 6 vols.

Living, Raw. “Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in Cartoon!” YouTube. 4 Nov 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0GLmYm-SRw

Plato. Allegory of the Cave. Trans. Jowett, Benjamin. Los Angeles: Enhanced Media Publishing, 2017. Print.

Plato. Great Dialogues of Plato. Edited by Eric H Warmington and Philip G Rousse. Translated by W. H. D. Rouse. New York: Signet Classics, 1999. p. 316

Watts, Alan. Chapter 1 “Inside Information.” The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. Aylesbury: Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd, 1973. Xvii. PDF

Watts, Alan. “The Story of The Chinese Farmer.” YouTube. 20 Nov 2016. Web. 02 Dec. 2018.

            Whitman, Walt. Song of Myself. Dover Publications, 2001. Print.

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

"America Is Coping with Black Excellence" by Madison Spence-Moore

Approximately twelve percent of the people living in the United States of America are black, but as a child growing up in the tiny hamlet of Boyertown, Pennsylvania, I could have sworn my family was the only black family in the world. Then, of course, I got a little older; my world got a little bigger. I found out that there is much more to the color spectrum than just black and white. I realized just how different I truly was, and I was unwilling to accept it. It was difficult for such a shy girl to stand apart from everybody in such a way that I could not hide. It took my entire childhood to grow into my identity. My personal sense of self was constantly being challenged as I was surrounded by people who just did not look like me; this helped me to build endurance when faced with racism and injustice. My identity grew once I stopped holding certain elements of the color spectrum to such a high standard.

It was nearly impossible for me not to notice that my dreadlocks and tanned complexion were so different from the blond strands and pale skin that surrounded me. It had been this way from kindergarten through second grade. I was sick of it. I did not like all of the random kids touching my hair without asking, or the adults in the mall asking me how I washed it. All of this attention simply did not appeal to me, which led to a very little Madison marching up to Mom and proudly stating, “I want straight hair,” which led to my very confused mom replying, “What?” However, she could not refuse me for she had been straightening her hair all of my life. So the next day we bought a box of relaxer, chopped off my dreads, and straightened out my hair.

At the time the change was fantastic. I could brush and style my own hair, I felt like I was more like my peers than ever before. Little did I know what I was really doing to my true identity. As stated by Rosheen Awais, a brilliant Hijab-wearing Muslim,“We are victims of our own conscience. We work for this audience, we earn for this audience and often we do what we hate to do in order to reach the infinite expectations of this audience. However, we should not fall victim to these expectations and the expectorants, who hide us from our true self” (Awais).  I was never trying to be more like me; I was trying to be more like them. I was putting on a mask; I was performing to fit a mold that simply was not meant for me. It was not until the end of junior high school that I was able to let the curls grow and cut the broken ends.

Now I had entered high school with brown skin made darker by the sun and curly hair that I did not know how to style. This is one of the troubles with being a brown girl attending a dominantly white school. I had no one to turn to for help within my school and no one who could give me any advice on how to take care of it. No one within my school shared the same struggles. The loneliness stung. As Muslim writer Arbaaz Khan, who was born and raised on Long Island, wrote: “This oppression is something that I dealt with throughout my high school years, which aided in masking my true self” (Khan). What questions would they ask? What racist remarks would be made? My overwhelming fear of judgement and ridicule caused me to keep my curls out of sight. I usually kept it braided, twisted, in a bun or in a ponytail. I could deal with the fact that I could not hide my skin, but I kept trying my hardest to hide my hair. I was holding on to fitting in for a little bit longer.  

There comes a time when it all becomes too much. Pretending to be somebody you are not just to please everybody else is actually quite exhausting. Dr. King expresses it best in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” stating, “If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work” (King). King’s words truly helped to deal with criticisms in a smarter way. For my whole life I had only been doing what was expected of me based on the critical eyes of the white people who surrounded me. I never took the time to focus on myself and understand who I really was or what I actually wanted. I was offering less time for my own self work. I had to understand that my true identity is more important than the identity expected of me by others. For my situation, the only way that I would be able to focus on my own identity was by first blocking out any and all hateful and ignorant comments. I had to stop seeing white people as white people, and just see them as people.

I thought all of the white people around me were the same, and I was the only different one. However, I realized that I was only categorizing white people the way they had been categorizing me. We are not all only black or white. We try to divide ourselves, attempting to fit into these different boxes labeled by shape, color and size. I needed to understand that each individual person is different and should not be characterized based on things like race and gender. I had to look into one of the most well known Martin Luther King quotes for help: “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” (King). In a way, I was creating barriers around myself as my peers had been creating barriers around me. I was believing that I was the only one who was different, but in reality we all are. At face value I was seen as different in my small town, but I came to appreciate that the ignorant people who stared at me in the hall or made racist remarks are just as different to each other as to me.

This realization led to my curls coming out of the cave and into the light. At first it was difficult wearing my hair in an Afro style surrounded by such flat strands. However, by the end of the day, it truly felt right. I was more confident than ever. I focused on the love and support of my close friends, and the hateful ignorant comments slowly started to fade away. It was only after I stepped into this part of my identity that I became able to inspire my mom to go natural and for my sisters to stay natural. It took a little while, but once I was secure with myself, I could, like Raymond Chappan, a Syrian Jew growing up in Brooklyn, focus on leading others (Chappan). My mom cut her relaxed hair a few months after me, so we actually embarked on our curly hair journeys together. My younger sisters did not really have much of an opinion on the state of their hair. I was happy to know that they had our curls to look at and be inspired by.

Watching my sisters grow up in that same neighborhood I did, I realized just how much black community culture I missed out on as a child, especially music and dancing and food. An interesting question arose in my writing class: “Do you think you’ll be able to experience the culture that you missed out on now? Will the experiences have the same impact as they would have when you were younger?” Yes and yes. I did miss out on a lot culturally growing up, but that does not mean that I cannot grow to become a part of the culture. “...My sense of freedom came from going to college. I left my 'bubble' cave and went on to learn things on my own. It took me some time to adjust to the light, but now that I see clearly, I am learning a lot about the world and can finally begin to morph into my own” (Chappan).

I repeated the words of Malcolm X in his speech, "The Ballot or the Bullet" to myself: “So, where do we go from here? First, we need some friends. We need some new allies” (X). At Hofstra University, I have been able to do just that. My number of black friends has grown tremendously from high school (zero) to now (eight), four of whom live in my building. I know it does not seem like much, but after growing up in an all white area, I will take what I can get and be grateful for what I have. My new black friends do not even realize how much they are helping me to grow my identity as a black woman. Ditto the many clubs and organizations centered around black culture, such as the NAACP and the Black Student Union.

I was shocked at how perfectly Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” mimicked my situation so well. As a child I was ridiculed for how my hair looked, so I changed it. I was being chained inside of the cave, and when the shadows told me to change it because that is not how it was supposed to be, I did. I then became more aware of just how unhealthy my habits were for my hair and my health overall. I had to break free of the chains and walk out into the sun. It took my eyes a long time to adjust to the brightness and beauty of the sunshine, but soon enough, I was able to proudly walk into the sun. After I made it out, it was all Brother Malcolm. I was now able to accept myself, even though some of the white people around me could not. I had pulled my chair up to the table, but I was still unable to eat. Does this mean that I should sit back, relax and watch as Caucasians eat at the table while I stare down to an empty plate? (X) Of course not. Only when I ignore the hateful comments and embrace the color of my skin will I break down my barriers. Only when my hair grows so high that it touches the sky will I truly be satisfied. Only when my sisters can grow up to fully embody their curls as I have will I have done my job. We are all different. However, more importantly, we are all people. Only when we embrace our perfections and imperfections can we come together as one and really be happy.

Unfortunately, America was only designed for the success and prosperity of white people. It is even worse because they know just how powerful black people are, but they refuse to give up any of the credit. They cope with my excellence by telling me that how I look is wrong, and how my appearance should be changed to something less intimidating. Many folks are going to have a rude awakening once they learn that they are just as different from me as I am different from them. However, it will be a good thing. Their world will grow to be a little bit bigger, and the color spectrum will not matter as much. The chip will fall right off of their shoulder. My brown skin and curly hair are a huge part of my personal identity, and I recognize that I am different, but I also understand that we are all members of one cohesive unit, and that “every individual is an expression of the realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe” (Watts).

Works Cited

Awais, Rosheen. “A Hijab-Wearing Muslim Reflects on Identity in the Age of Trump.” TakingGiant Steps. February 2017. Web.

Chappan, Raymond. “Bursting One’s Bubble to Discover One’s Identity.” Taking Giant Steps, March 2016. Web.

Khan, Arbaaz. “Internal Jihad: My Identity as a Muslim American.” Taking Giant Steps, December 2016. Web.

King, Martin Luther. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” August 1963.

Plato. “The Allegory of the Cave.”

X, Malcolm. “The Ballot or the Bullet.” 1964.