Cultural Baggage By Ehrenreich Summary

Boundaries in United States and People’s Worldview

People can be grouped automatically by their culture, age, class, beliefs and so on. Perhaps on a subconscious level, we were thinking people with the same worldview were able to get along with each other. Not only people from broader society, but also American college students have their groups often defined by language. Someone goes out with only fixed number of people, and rarely change all the time. Someone is even isolated by others because of his/her language ability. Is that because people are content with their status quo, and do not want to adapt new ideologies or environment? Or, people like to hold stereotype to others. No matter what factors, I want to conclude that in one word, which is boundaries. So, what role do boundaries play in people’s lives? To be more specific, how do
In addition, Erdrich’s story from the article, “Two Languages in Mind, but Just One in Heart”, let me change a new way to see boundaries. Erdrich was interested in another language, Ojibwe. Although she did not communicate well in that language, she tried to learn it and even fell in love with that culture. Also, she enriched many ways of expressing her feelings in writing by using Ojibwe words. By blend two cultures together, Objiwe benefited

her by widening her horizon. From this story, it cannot deny the fact that language could cause problems, but it can be solved by trying to embrace new culture and apply them in life. By combining the two readings, it can be concluded that by eliminating language boundaries, accepting new ethnic culture with different language can be positive and also can expand people’s