This Poem serves my culture identity ‘reasoning’ through my sense of being an American in the truest sense of idealism. Being an American in the sense that while you may see something in one light on a personal light you are able to either see or step into a position to see a multitude of different ways to look at any one thing, the sense of melding of ideas and cultures. This poem reminds me of one of the most ‘cultural’ defining moments of my life. Students who had some type of disability were automatically unable to take part in the AIG programs in the county that I lived in, the school kept a catch to that, while we could not ‘official’ take part we could unofficial take part by completing a number of assignments on our own and the school would place it on our transcripts. So I and a number of my classmates who were ESL students (this is considered a disability at that point) who were spend a recess a week completing these assignments to get this credit. We had to read this poem and analysis the poem for its meaning, literary elements, etc. I learned that day a few dozen ways to interpret this poem if you based off my fellows ‘home’ cultures but it was the “American” meaning that we all ultimately agreed that was the most interesting; that the poem was about enjoying the nature of the world around us in all its glory, but not forgetting our responsibilities to ourselves and the future that we are heading towards us. We decide that this was the ideal of American beliefs and that Robert was conveying it through physical nature but he implied all ‘natures’ of the world. That sense of connection I had with them in that moment and our one-ness is to me the one moment that I understood why a sense of culture is important. We are humans and we need a sense of one-ness and connection with our fellow man and a shared culture gives us that.
Monday, November 30, 2009
A Series on Cultural Identity: Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes, not really the poem is what this artifact is about. Langston Hughes for me is an American Poet, one of the greatest in my personal opinion; he is not a ‘black’ or “African American” poet. This is about my struggle to deal with discrimination, my childhood disbelief that this existed, discrimination against my own race in puberty and my fear of burying my head in the sand now. As you might have guessed from my earlier discussions you know that I grew up where race, religions, and background were of little importance in my neighborhood. I never noticed that my many of my fellow white students and/or their parents didn’t feel comfortable with my friends from other countries, religious, or races all the way through elementary school. We went to a school consisting of many Upper Middle class families and the ‘diversification’ neighborhoods, meant to ‘even’ out wealth and race numbers in the school, so it was closer to average; our neighborhood was one of them. In middle school I got prosecuted for being a poor white kid, by many of my ‘white’ Upper classmates, and the diversification cultures almost completely none white in race were my friends, needless to state I learned to hate my race, because it was confused with the all powerful issues of wealth and power in society. In High school I went to the middle ground of being extreme and determined that the Upper classes were using racial issues to stop the lower class, getting ‘together’ from rising up against their social laws stopping us from getting anywhere no matter how hard we worked. I decide that by calling Langston Hughes a BLACK writer, they were making sure that his message of rising against social discrimination was limited to a certain race in education. My opinion at the current is a little bit less extreme, but Langston Hughes represents the many cultural idea changes I went through about racism and other discrimination, and my identity as someone trying to fight them all, while still reconciling that no discriminating view is okay and that they must be lost.
A Series on Cultural Identity: Sweeney Todd Movie tickets
You may be wondering what does a movie about a barber in 19th century London, who went on a murdering spree, have to do with YOUR culture identity. The reason why Mr. Todd went on his rampage has everything to do with my culture. Often we think about Culture along the lines of physical borders, religions, or race, we often forget about the fourth barrier of culture. The fourth barrier being class; and maybe the greatest barrier to cross in today’s society. For me the movie represents the worse stereotyping and issues between the poor and those who are above them in class. The corruption, the lack of care for them, the hatred, the fear and the anger crossing those borders and controls its borders like a guard. The fear you can’t climb you can only fall. A sense that all ‘unfair’ practices that keep the poor poor are the leading cause for society evils that occur rampant in the lower class: drugs, prostitution, gangs and violence. They see it as a direct cause of the Upper class oppressing the lower classes leading people down those paths to help them ‘cope’ with the fact they feel incapable of rising above their poverty and that the next generation is equally doomed to this fate. It represents the stereotypes of the middle class I grew up, and the fight ahead of me, the fight not to continue to see it, to combat it, and to not become that stereotype as I rise from the working poor to the middle class as I get my degree a career, and hopeful grow in wealth.
A Series on Cultural Identity: Flowers
The spring of my sixth grade year, I got Daffodils picked from his neighbor’s yard the day before so they could cut the grass, from a boy who had been my best friend for a long while. He knew my love of flowers and my knowledge of the meaning of flowers. To the less trained eye, I got flowers from a close friend, and if you knew us you might suspect we both liked each other more than we were saying; but if you knew what daffodils meant, you knew so much more. You knew that he was asking me a question, silently on a bus full of people. His Question: Unrequited love? How the rest of that story goes is really none of your business but it’s a great way to show the value and my culture identity through flowers. Yet another ‘old school’ culture theme in my little notebook, the meaning of some flowers runs across nation, religions and races. Other sifts between the three subjects. I come from a long line of farmers and amateur gardeners, and many of my friends of multi-culture orients also had parents like that, so on the ground of the learning of that knowledge its cross cultural and I love to learn about flower meanings from other cultures when I can find someone who is knowledgeable and likes the subject. My forte in the subject is the general European/Christian attitude towards flowers, so you do get a glimpse at my European culture background right there. With a few exceptions like the fact I only send white flowers to funerals, as I feel that white is a more appropriate for funerals, some leaked Buddhism from both my father and mine’s experiences with Asian cultures. I feel like I accomplished something in this notebook now!
By the way Purple daisies are consisted to mean: The impossible being possible or impossible to forget love.
A Series on Cultural Identity: An Iron necklace and Superstition
“Wear Silver to blind the demons of you, Iron to keep the fey at bay, and Gold to be watched by Angels above:” My very bad translation of a family superstition. I am superstitious, seems a little too ‘uneducated’ to be part of culture, but it is in my opinion it is an important part of people’s day to day culture. When I lose something that I find it in a place I knew it was not before, I live a small cap of milk outside my house for the fairies whatever they may be called. I wear iron and silver more times than not from my family’s adage. I pray for my food whose death was done for my benefit to find happiness in the next ‘whatever’ (my grandmother swears it from my great-great-great grandmother who was part native American and we never had problems with food in tough times because of it). I have always held the idea that while it may seem strange, I know for a fact stranger things are out there, and maybe just maybe there is truth, and reason and rhyme to why people taught this through generation, and I am not one to take chances with the powers that be. I included it because my attitude towards some things, which fall under being superstitious, is maybe the strongest sense of my familial culture background, as it shows my large ‘blood’ background in Irish, and the other Isles of Brittany; and also of my family’s background in Germany, France, and Sicilia.
A series on Cultural Identity: A handkerchief
I identify myself as being one to try to preserve the past, specially the ‘useful’ arts. The handkerchief was chosen to represent that, mainly because it was found while I was looking for another piece of my sewing works. My parents have instilled a sense of need to save the working arts for future generations even if technology has made these ‘arts’ and skills unnecessary. I can sew, using both a sewing machine and by hand; lay bricks, wielding, minor smithy work, I can work a hand loom, clean silver, set a table for a full five course meal, and shear most farm animals for their wool/fur. For my generation having these skills is considered weird. Not sure how this plays into the idea of culture we have been talking about this semester but its culture and those of us who are preserving it view ourselves as subculture of modern culture. It also has to do with my culture identity as a female; therefore I am automatically a teacher of the next generation and must be able to pass on valuable skills and ideas to the future generations. So maybe I am bound by the ideas of feminine duty instilled by society?!? Though every culture I have ever been in seems to instill that idea to a certain extent, so it kind of fails at defining my culture for this project.
A series on Culture Identity: the Crown of a Flute
This is one of those kinds of silly, identity things, but I cultural identify myself as a music listener/appreciators. Seems weird, I guess, but everyone else in my family all the way to my fifth cousins are musically inclined, they all play at least one instrument and can sing a least a bit. I CAN NOT DO ANYTHING THAT DOESN’T SOUND LIKE SOMETHING DYING. I am seriously not musical inclined. It took met years to realize that I shouldn’t try to make music because it was not my forte. The Crown of my flute is a remind of Mr. Connor (who was a fed living next door working on busting a drug ring, it was weird), who told me that not being able to make music and appreciate it was an important part of culture and that it was my responsibility to listen to those who did, when he found my flute crown when I lost it because I was crying at the fact I got kicked out of band in middle school. And I listen to music, I don’t particular remember a band or group or even one type of music. I listen to everything and take every song as an individual moment of human expression. My ‘tastes’ run from R&B to Bubble gum, Mozart to techno, rock in all forms, Musicals, classical pieces of European descent to African drum stories to Ballywood film music. I listen to pretty much anything as long as the music is ‘clean’ of hate messages.
