Our Secrets

Identification by definition is the state of being identified, which means the characteristics and feature that set you aside from everyone else. Question is: What makes an identity? Is it the heritage of our parents? The people we interact with? Or how about the decisions we make on a daily basis? Each of these are components to our identities in different manners though they each have different levels of impact upon us. Depending on the person, everyone has different opinions as to how important their identity is. Some may say that their past identity is not of importance to them because they relate to who they have become throughout time and others tend to place importance of where they come from. In his book, In the Name of Identity, Amin Maalouf claims that "each of us has two heritages, a "vertical" one that comes to us from our ancestors, our religious community and our popular traditions, and a "horizontal" one that is transmitted to us by our contemporaries and by the age we live in (Maalouf, 102)." I emphasize both parts of these identities because as Maalouf states in his book, "(it's) not in the interests of fairness or balance, but because any other answer would be a lie." To say that for me I value one heritage more than the other is to lie because they each have equal value and are just a component of my identity. It is important to know that my parents inherited both Dominican and Italian cultures through their family because it gives me a sense of who I am. To know where my family has comes from and witnessing firsthand the Vittini 2 struggles that my family has tackled to provide a better life for their children has made me to appreciate where I am in life. The heritage I was born into is what enables me to have pride in what I am and in the history of my family. Every day I spend together with my family is yet another day we live by our "vertical heritage," our culture. We communicate in our native language of Spanish as we