Identity is formed and transformed continuously in relation to the ways in which we are represented or addressed in the cultural systems, which surround us. ~ Stuart Hall
When who you are isn’t who you were or what you will become. Self-representation brings out one’s unique characteristics that makeup who we are. "I" orientates us with an identity that encapsulates a broad range of possibilities and underlines how one can transform through self-understanding, force, and external identifications. How people describe and view themselves and how others view them may not be the same. The interactions people have with one another inform how we define who everyone else is. Since the rapid reproduction of “identifying,” many categories, such as race, gender, ethnicities, traditions, nations, and so on, have become as ambiguous as the term. Therefore, sometimes rendering its function as a mere idiom as opposed to how people have and do seek to construct and negotiate all forms of belonging.
In shape and function, the term “identity” becomes ill-suited to encapsulate the experiences of commonality and connectedness that lead to self–understanding. Yet, identity is not just a trend where multiple interpretative social and historical analyses can be construed. Instead, it serves to deconstruct the utility of the term so that it can stop having a contradictory and vague stance. To conceptualize the valid and important claims of legitimate analytic work based on how people everywhere and always have been active in creating ties, stories, histories, and self-understandings as this work attempts to do so. The argument is compelling, especially since today, our concern with cultural roots and cultural identities, dominates the world. Limitations and liabilities of the term identity abound, but how people construct and thus fight for their identities to have at least some sense of a cultural origin identified furthers our scholarship.
Me quedé echando la hueva todo el día. *
Literally: “I stayed here expelling the egg the whole day.”
* The phrase we have here is an example of a lazy person.
This brings me to the circumstances that have led me to investigate the nuances of cultural identity. Cultural meaning is the very thing we give value to and how we use or integrate these meanings, for what purposes, and what levels of representation are what drove me to understand myself better. Words, images, and emotions bind and classify the values we place on cultural meaning. The phrase above is an example of a type of association. This sentence uses Mexican slang, a language of my childhood, Spanish, growing up in my hometown of Nogales, Arizona, to which I attribute my identity, ethnicity, and culture. This is where my understanding of people and place was fashioned into a melting pot of what is an American from the border from a Mexican-American family. I grew up as multicultural as one might expect a city kid would, with a perspective of diversity, flexibility, and cultural sensitivity. Sure, Nogales lacked the ethnic variety of a big city. Nevertheless, my “Cuidad” was my cornerstone.
However, when those cultural meanings and our identity are questioned, and who we are and with whom we identify are suddenly challenged, everything is thrown into chaos. Such was my case. When I left Nogales, I faced considerable scrutiny- “I am Mexican,” you look white, puzzled on both faces, “White?” Where are you from? "I am from a small town on the border with Arizona and Mexico." Here follows a line of conversation that must have happened a thousand times throughout my life. Now that I am older, and my cultural meanings have been produced and renewed throughout my understanding of them, my responses have become more refined. I am from Nogales. I am Mexican-American. I am from Tucson. I am from New York; I am from here. It took a long time for my identity crisis to collapse entirely. That is, my culture, for a moment, was placed in a secret vessel and cared for because of the value I placed on it, but others did not validate it, and due to that factor, those cultural meanings were lost for far too long. Therefore, this research is as much a scholarly analysis as it is an emotional journey of the self. My culture, my traditions, and my status in America are constructed rather than found and given meaning, as cultural identity is continually being produced and exchanged in every personal and social interaction in which I take part. May every second, third, and even fourth immigrant generations fill their vessels with the meaning in which they produce and ideally share these with the rest of us.
. We see the shows not as a fundamental truth of the Iranian-American experience but as a link between identities viewed outside the community framework.
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