The Crises of Dual Identities
- Eric Douglas Statzer
Rooted
in America’s Declaration of Independence is the idea of the American dream, a
national ethos of the United States. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “All men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” This
is the framework of the United States of America, and through it created the
ideals that with hard work, regardless of social status or circumstances of
birth, one has an opportunity for prosperity and success. For immigrants, the
adaptation to the American society and culture can be a formidable challenge, yet
very rewarding. The difficulty to preserve the intimacy with one’s native
culture when immersed in the depths of American culture is clearly prevalent. With
an immigration rate higher than any country in the world by a wide margin, the
United States is the Empire of Liberty and prosperity. Whether immigrants cling
to their ancestral traditions, language, and customs, or whether they fully
adapt to the American mainstream, they will endure a crisis of identity and
will surely undertake a challenging task of personal development and enlightenment
when chasing the American dream.
Richard
Rodriguez’s “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” details how a young boy,
growing up in the United States amongst a white, English speaking society, struggles
to manage two separate identities each affiliated with a different language.
One, identified as being intimate and personal, is his identity when he is
speaking his native language of Spanish with his family. The second is his
identity as a child, born from Mexican immigrants, struggling to learn English
amongst a multitude of los gringos, a
Spanish term he uses to describe a white, English speaking person. Rodriquez
writes of his struggles of being educated in a bilingual environment, portraying
them in detail to support his stance against bilingual education. He details
the difficulties he endures while trying to adapt to the English speaking
language, which is imperative to the American culture that will enable him to
encapsulate the true opportunity of capturing the American dream. He advocates
against bilingual education mainly because of his experiences with how it
alienates him from one world or the other, yet he fully understands the
importance of adapting to the English speaking culture in order to flourish in
society. Reluctantly in doing so he alienates his native identity, looses that
intimacy that was once shared with his close family and friends, and initiates
a sense of betrayal from his relatives in the process of fully adapting to his
public, English speaking identity.
The
identity struggles are evident in Rodriquez’s writing. “It is not healthy to
distinguish public words from private sounds so easily. I remained cloistered
by sounds, timid and shy in public, too dependent on voices at home.” (312) Aria
serves as a framework to study the experiences of others similar to Rodriguez’s
such as immigrating to America or adapting to unfamiliar surroundings. We can
also use it to analyze and interpret relationships, whether between people, or
even humans and their environment. We can then closely examine the issues,
struggles, and situations of others using his detailed examples of public
identity, private identity, and intimacy.
Comparable
struggles can be found in the writings of Bharati Mukherjee’s “Two Ways to
Belong in America.” Mukherjee writes a story about the differences between her
and her sister Mira’s adaptation to the culture of America. These are two women
from India having lived in the United States for 35 years, Bharati, deciding to
fully embrace the benefits of United States citizenship, and Mira, who has
refused. “After 36 years as a legal immigrant to this country, she clings
passionately to her Indian citizenship and hopes to go home to India when she
retires.” (281) As for Bharati, she fully embraces the oath of citizenship, the
culture of the United States, and the American dream. “By choosing a husband
who was not my father’s selection, I was opting for fluidity, self-invention,
blue jeans, and T-shirts, and renouncing 3,000 years (at least) of
caste-observant, “pure culture” marriage in the Mukherjee family.” (281) This
explicitly details traits and characteristics of Bharati’s public identity
including her embracing the popular culture, fashion, and freedom that American
culture offers. Rodriguez distinguishes in his memoir the differences in private
versus the public identity and Bharati is fully immersed in the culture of
America having achieved public identity, as Rodriguez reluctantly did. Bharati
achieves a public identity by embracing all that America has to offer, language
and culture, even citizenship. “America spoke to me – I married it – I embraced
the demotion from expatriate aristocrat to immigrant nobody, surrendering those
thousands of years of “pure culture,” the saris, the delightfully accented
English.” (282)
With
Rodriguez, achieving public identity came at the expense of his private
identity. During his early childhood Rodriguez speaks to his siblings and
parents comfortably at home, in his true native tongue. “During those years
when I was first conscious of hearing, my mother and father addressed me only
in Spanish; in Spanish I learned to reply. By contrast, English, rarely heard
in the house, was the language I came to associate with gringos.” And it was in school where English was an imperative form
of learned communication. His teachers even encouraged his parents to speak
English in the home so that he would better adapt to the language, thus adapting
to the culture and identity of public. In doing so, this separated him from the
intimacy that he had longed coveted; this alienated him from his roots, and
forced him to forfeit his private identity. The very same thing seems to occur
in Bharati’s life, she alienates her roots, and forfeits her cultural
connections, rituals, and family expectations to embrace a new, public
identity. “I need to feel like a part of the community I have adopted. I need
to put roots down, to vote and make the difference that I can.” (283)
In
contrast and for reasons of comparison, Mira is a prime example of one who maintains
two separate identities, never fully embracing her public identity. On one hand
she lives, works, and dedicates herself to a position in America teaching children.
She speaks fluent English, pays her taxes, and invests her time, energy, and
talent to the benefit of the American preschool system. This is the most
apparent form of her public identity. On the other hand she has refused to
become a United States citizen, and has no interest in embracing the culture of
America. Her sister says it well: “but we probably pitied one another. She, for
the lack of structure in my life, the erasure of Indianness, the absence of an
unvarying daily core. I, for the narrowness of her perspective, her
uninvolvement with the mythic depths or the superficial pop culture of this
society.” (281) Mira’s passion for her roots and native culture has enabled her
to stay intimate and comfortable within her private identity. “I feel some kind
of irrational attachment to India that I don’t to America.” (282) She is fully
at peace in her private identity and loyal to her native cultural background.
Taking
an initiative to interpret a challenging comparison between human’s
relationship with nature in the past and present, much is learned while
analyzing Rachel Carson’s “The Obligation to Endure.” Through the convictions
of Richard Rodriguez and his theory about private and public identity, we can
identify considerable differences in the way humans interact with their
surroundings today compared to centuries past. “Only within the moment of time
represented by the present century has one species – man – acquired significant
power to alter the nature of his world.” (83) This specific reference is
something on which to focus. It explains that at no time over the history of
human existence has man impacted nature such as it has in the last century. “It
took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the
earth – eons of time in which that developing and evolving and diversifying
life reached a state of adjustment and balance with its surroundings.” (84)
This is the explanation of how adaptation occurred in the past from as far back
as the hunters and gatherers, to the present day chemical based, mass farming
procedures that are permanently contaminating and endangering nature.
The
private identity of the human race is characterized by trends during these ancient
times, when humans were one and the same with nature and the environment. Men
and women actively sought out food and shelter in moderate gains without
destroying the ecosystem. Living off the land and sourcing human necessities
naturally met the basic needs of mankind. The primitive agricultural practices
in the preceding centuries are characteristics of the private identity that
Rodriguez explains as being intimate and personal. Humans were intimate and
personal with nature and the environment and because of that intimacy, nature
and the environment was able to adapt, adjust, and balance over time. “The
environment, rigorously shaping and directing the life it supported, contained
elements that were hostile as well as supporting… Given time – time not in
years but in millennia – life adjusts, and a balance has been reached.” (84)
This personal relationship between humans and nature benefitted nature well,
and essentially humans also. Even though food, shelter, and necessities were
more difficult to acquire, humans were living in a more natural nature, without
the contamination and impurities that are prevalent in today’s world that
ultimately affect human health and wellness.
Carson,
who is considered the mother of the modern American environmental movement,
continues her essay writing about the detrimental effects humans have recently
had on nature. Again looking through the scope of Rodriguez’s theory of
separate identities, two entirely different worlds, the current practices by
humans fall on the opposite end of the spectrum. We will now explore this
quickly evolving relationship between humans and nature in the present. “During
the past quarter century this power has not only increased to one of disturbing
magnitude but it has changed in character.” (84) Over time human identity has
evolved from the intimate and private explained previously, to a more
widespread, rampant, public distinctiveness. We notice in Carson’s writing a
sense of ubiquity, specifically in the following text, “In this now universal
contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and
little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the
world – the very nature of its life.” We as humans are destroying the earth,
and it is in this public identity that we do so. The struggle between
identities has come at a cost, not only to nature and the environment, but
human health also.
Richard
Rodriguez and Bharati Mukherjee achieved public identity because in this
character they found it easier to adapt to the culture of America, thus easier
to capture the essence of the American dream. Humans have achieved public
identity because in this character we find it easier to mass-produce food and
create artificial products by the use of lethal materials and dangerous
chemicals. “They are the synthetic creations of man’s inventive mind, brewed in
his laboratories, and having no counterparts in nature. (85) We are living in
an age of industry dominance and making money is an immense priority, even at
the cost of human welfare. With Rodriguez and Mukherjee the public identity
came only at the cost of their own personal, private identities and their
intimacy and cultural connections of the past. Both are able to manage well in
their new public character and the popular culture, language, and American
characteristics are unaltered in any fraction. For the human race, the public
identity comes at the expense of its private, intimate relationship with nature
and the environment, and also at the expense of nature, the environment, and
the overall health and vitality of the earth. “To adjust to these chemicals
would require time on the scale that is nature’s; it would require not merely
the years of a man’s life but the life of generations… Among them are many that
are used in man’s war against nature.” (85)
In
the crises of multiple identities one must consider the most vital
characteristics and cherish the most important aspects. In Mira Mukherjee’s
case, managing two separate identities fit her well. Though never fully embracing
her public identity, she dabbled in some, but only few of the characteristics,
language being one. For Rodriguez, reluctantly adapting to his public identity
served him well, as it did for Bharati, who willfully embraced it, both
capturing the American dream. As for the human race, we should revaluate the
identity into which we have evolved, for it is destroying everything from our ecosystem
to our health and vitality. We must preserve the intimacy that was once endured
to perpetuate the vigor that is still sustained.
Works Cited
Jefferson, Thomas. “The Declaration
of Independence.” 50 Essays: A Portable
Anthology. Ed. Samuel Cohen.
3rd ed. Boston and New York: Bedford, 2011, 191-195. Print.
Rodriquez, Richard. “Aria: A Memoir
of a Bilingual Childhood.” 50 Essays: A
Portable Anthology. Ed. Samuel
Cohen. 3rd ed. Boston and New York: Bedford, 2011, 408-416. Print.
Mukherjee, Bharati. “Two Ways to
Belong in America.” 50 Essays: A Portable
Anthology. Ed. Samuel Cohen.
3rd ed. Boston and New York: Bedford, 2011, 408-416. Print.
Carson, Rachel. “The Obligation to
Endure.” 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology.
Ed. Samuel Cohen. 3rd
ed. Boston and New York: Bedford, 2011, 83-90. Print.
