Pogosyan 1

ARMEN POGOSYAN
PROFFESSOR ALTMAN
ENG.101
NOVEMBER 16, 2015
We are Limitless!
Having had the privilege of belonging to two cultures simultaneously, I grew up with a
great deal of experience trying to identify myself. Having my home life culture different in taste
and color from my social life, made space for a lot of confrontation between the two worlds. As
open minded and innovative as my parents are from real traditionally based immigrant families,
there were still many contradictions in my childhood. If all the things Ive said, done, thought,
wanted to do, happened to, and somehow affected by, created the person that I am now, my
identity and the more consistent I become about what I like and dont like, need and dont need,
the more I started finding patterns and consistency in my identity, the more questions grew.
Identity becomes undefinable because there are too many variables for our limited perception to
comprehend and commit to a final definition.
As I write this, I hear my big black Labrador, laying by my feet a few steps away, loudly
licking himself clean. I am trying to focus on my thoughts in this almost dead quiet room, but I
cant help tuning into the only other sound besides the tapping of the keyboard keys; A tongue
trying habitually, continuously, relentlessly to lick half-existing genitals clean. My gut is
screaming at me to scream at him to FUCKEN STOP! but I must accept him.

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I remember my love for him, and this helps me not judge the situation or my dogs
identity. Not to think of him as some dirty scum bag animal that just needs to get away from me
right now, because he is not that he just has no hands. So I must tolerate. So can tolerance be
the key to understanding Identity?

In Amy Tans Mother Tongue the narrator speaks about

the love she felt for her mothers unique way of speaking English. And how she had adopted this
for herself, It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to
family talk, the language I grew up with. Pg1. Ln. 12, The defect, or incorrectness that was
her mothers English, became to her a fond memory of something unique that she valued and
appreciated. In other words she didnt allow the pressures of life to leave her with no tolerance
for the abnormal.
It seems to me, based off these articles and my own personal conclusions, that identity is
something we experience living through life. It is not something to define, because it defines us.
Our environment changes our skin color and affects our general height and hair type or language,
etc. These things happen to us, we are born into, or somehow fall into one way or the other. So
with that stream of logic I would say that identity is a social phenomenon. Its a formula for
organization and categorization, the essential building blocks for modern society. I guess in a lot
of ways I find identity overrated, because it places us in a pattern that could be highly repetitive
and boring.
In A Giant Step Henry Luis Gates Jr. the identity of the bully that witnesses the boy
pop his hip out changes from tormentor to caretaker. Pg.1 Ln. 26, Who can say what will happen
in the next moment of your life that will define the rest of your existence. Amy Tans mother in
Mother Tongue spoke her own version of English because the sum total of both the lands she
grew up in had two different languages. She simply infused them together to create a language

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that makes sense to her identity. But some of Tans friends understood her more than others. It is
safe to assume that her friends had equal knowledge of the English language. So how come some
identified with her, understood her, and some didnt? To me these observations point back to this
idea of tolerance allows for better identity understanding. Maybe not on so much in broad
general terms, but more in the nuances of identity. It is possible that Amys friends werent in
touch with their need to understand beyond their identifications, where they came from. They
didnt want to listen beyond the technicality of Amy Tans mothers word structure. Maybe they
were listening more academically and less compassionately. Whatever the reason, the process of
understanding it is proof that there are multiple variables in peoples identifications in life, and
not one definition can be a satisfying blanket statement that explains what identity is.
The solution for a better understanding of the multiple, undefinable aspect of identity
would have to be in the exercise of tolerance for the differences in others and what cards life has
dealt them. If the doctor in A Giant Step Henry Luis Gates Jr., without evening needing to
have compassion for black people or the need to understand their situation, could have only
tolerated the fact that a young child felt he can grow up to be a doctor such as himself, and
avoided needing to prove anything by making him walk on his torn joint, Pg.1 Ln. 42, then the
boys identity could have been drastically different. In placing other people on the same level as

ourselves and allowing ourselves to receive a deeper and more accurate understanding of who
the other person is, creates a great opportunity to start to experience what identity really is.