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Assignment 9

For me, growing up as a immigrant in the United States, it was a struggle to find my own identity. After moving to the United States from the Dominican Republic, I struggled to find my own identity, was I Dominican or American, perhaps Dominican-American, or was I just a immigrant in the United States. Assimilating to the American culture wasn’t too hard for me, I learned English quickly which was a good thing since the kids in my neighborhood at the time didn’t speak Spanish. Making friends wasn’t hard either especially since kids are able to play with anyone. I was becoming more assimilated into the American culture and was starting to identify myself as a American. I became doubtful when a group of kids at my school would bully me because I had an accent and was from another country.  I started to believe that it didn’t matter how much I assimilated and acted American since I would never be “American” enough. My struggle with identity became worst when I went to visit my family back in the Dominican Republic after two years of living in the States. Over there I didn’t feel Latina enough and I was consistently getting teased by my own family members because my Spanish wasn’t the greatest since I only spoke Spanish with my parents and no one else. They would tease me because I was too Americanized for them. They wouldn’t call me by my name instead they called me  “gringa”. For me, it was crazy just to think how much my family considered me to have change when I was still the same person from before. I pretended like their comments didn’t affect me and would silently count down the days till my trip would end and I would finally return to New York. It wasn’t until I was a little older that I forgave them for it and understood where they were coming from. It wasn’t until the past couple of years I began to find my own identity and began to not care what others thought about me. These kinds of experiences can teach us a lot about society and the nature of oppression. It doesn’t matter how much you assimilate to society, in many situation people can view you as an outsider only because you have a different background then they do. According to Collins stereotypes play a huge role in the self-valuation and self-definition.