Any identity can be found, lost, made up, shared, and related to. Whether it be from one’s culture, family, beliefs or experiences people find their identity or identities throughout life. For others it can be a struggle and a hardship to find their identity of who they are or want to be. Throughout life, humans find their role in it and what they choose to do in the life they live. Living the life one wants includes finding their self-identity along the way whenever that may be. One may ask themselves, Who am I? and that is why humans have an extraordinary lifetime to figure that out. Not everyone’s experiences will be the same, or positive, but it is others peoples stories we listen to, to understand and appreciate them as human beings and …show more content…
Richard Rodriguez was a young boy who grew up with Spanish as his first language. Both of his parents are Mexican immigrants and tried to provide a better life for their son. Rodriguez explains going to his school for the first time with only about fifty known English words. In 50 Essays; A Portable Anthology, Richard Rodriguez expresses, “Outside the house was public society; inside the house was private” (294). Rodriguez’s families identity was very different in the house than outside. Their identity was hidden from others as they went in public. The house was where they felt comfortable and at ease rather than in public where they could not be their true selves. For example, in the household when nobody else was around Rodriguez explains “We are speaking now the way we never speak out in public. We are alone—together. . .” (295). His explanation is referring to them all speaking their fluent language in a nonjudgmental and safe environment for them which is their household. Rodriguez loved hearing his dad speak Spanish to his mother and that only happened at home. Due to English constantly spoken around them, their identities were concealed as Spanish speakers in America. They felt the need to disguise that identity they have always had because of not knowing how to speak English and having a hard time trying to as minorities. His parents “. . . regarded the people at work, the faces in the crowds, as very distant from us” (Rodriguez 291). This was the life his parents unfortunately were living in American as Mexican immigrants. They had no “confidence of ‘belonging’ in public” (Rodriguez 291). Their existence was not even there as of who they really were due to the dominant culture, thus creating hidden identities for their