Identity Essay

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IDENTITY

 ‘I am an American, not an Asian-American. My rejection of hyphenation has been called race treachery, but it is really a demand that America deliver the promises of its dream to all its citizens equally.’

What is identity? Many of us would think that the answer to this question is simple but once placed on the stop and asked to answer it, the answer creates more of an issue than the question. Identity can be defined in many different ways and there is more than one identity. The most obvious of these is an individual identity, regarding one person and their ability to establish their identity and locate themselves. There are also social identities, and collective identities. Usually identity is to do with ideas that are derived from society and often requires some reflexivity as it is to do with being a social being part of a society. It is mostly acquired through social interaction and the meanings we decide of social positions and is often marked through symbols. Identity is all about similarities and differences. These help one identify their sense of self in relation to others who are similar or different. For example it can help identify distinctive characteristics that make one different from others, or identify a shared viewpoint or physical features that make one similar to others. Identity is about how we think about ourselves, other people around us and what we think others around us think of us, many people would imagine social life unimaginable without a social identity.

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Mukherjee grew up in a Hindu, Bengali-speaking and middle-class neighbourhood. The general belief in her birthplace was that ‘one’s identity was fixed, derived from religion, caste, patrimony, and mother tongue.’ One did not need to ‘discover’ their identity because it was unchangeable and one hardly had an individual identity. As the society was one consisting of similar people, there was a sense of a shared and collective identity, even if not socially, at least within one's family it was shared.

Her neighbourhood had influenced her identity greatly, especially when regarding social divisions. For example; gender. In the article, ...

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