An Autobiography Of My Cultural Identity - 1687 Words

I was born and raised in the Dominican Republic. My family was catholic and so I was taught to pray and by the age of 13 I had all my sacraments. For most of my life I lived the downtown area of the main city where my mother and her family had also grown up. I considered myself very lucky because even though our economic security was not the best as I grew up, my mother always strived for me to receive the best education she could afford. As a result, I learned to speak English from a very young age and then French, I learned to play the guitar and also to paint. I also took embroidery and etiquette classes and so on. Because of the location where we lived, I also took advantage of many cultural interactions with people from other†¦show more content†¦Then, I was born in 1989, her only child. Arguably, this story was an eye opener for me from an early age. I wondered, why wasn’t my uncle forced to stop his life and take care of his parents as well, after all they wer e both their children. Instead, my mother the female was the one who quit everything and took care of her parents. As a result I grew up thinking that gender roles were meant to favor men only, while women had to sacrifice their lives for others. Arguably, my mother is my role mother. As a single mother, she struggled to provide for me in unimaginable ways. Being a woman and a single mother in the Dominican Republic played an important factor on her decay in class and economic status. As a result, it created a sense of awareness for me, to understand that as women we have to work twice as hard than men to accomplish half of what they have. This statement was true not only in the Dominican Republic in the 90’s but also today in America. Looking back at my mother’s struggles I cannot say that I have overcome half as much as she did. However, I can see how being a woman has been a disadvantage and an advantage at times. A disadvantage because as women in my society, we tend to be victims of sexism and harassment. Yet, it may also be an advantage because the same society that subject’s women, at times favors these in the labor market. For instance, when my mother passed away I was 16 yearsShow MoreRelatedCult ural Autobiography : My Life Essay1556 Words   |  7 Pages CULTURAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY I was born in a small rural village in Western Nepal. A typical unprivileged society of Nepal, my then village was a consortium of poverty, illiteracy, and discrimination. I was a bit fortunate to have born in a middle-class family that could at least boast sufficient resources for subsistence and some savings. 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