Anna Lisa Raya Research Paper

Paper #2
Identity in America

Anna Lisa Raya is a Latina college student going through problems of being judged for being a Mexican American. She doesn’t know the Spanish language which makes it hard for her to fit in with the other Spanish speaking people in her college. She says that she is “stuck in a black hole of an identity crisis”. I personally believe that we and only we can decide what our identity is. (Raya, Anna Lisa 1-2) Only you choose your identity, not your friends, role models or any other person who may influence your life. All the things that build your identity like you’re actions, appearance and you’re posture are ways people will interpret who they think you are, when they have never met you. Also, the way you look, you’re heritage and bloodline gives you identity. Although Raya seems to suggest that others define us, I believe that who we are is a matter of the way you present yourself or the persona they portray for themselves and also the body they were born into.
I feel this way because people today see the way one acts or looks and makes assumptions off that. For example a week or so ago while I was working at the country club an older man approached me and said, “hello young man, we haven’t met but me and my pals come here almost everyday and you always seem to have a huge smile on your face and I was just wondering why it is that your so darn happy all the time?” The relationship between what I said and what the man had told me is just that I truly am a generally happy person and people can tell that by looking at me even while at