Reflection: "The Classroom and the Wider Culture"-Fan Shen

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Our reactions to self identity relates to "self" preservation. What we do can and will reflect how people can perceive who we are. What shapes who we are is broadly enough related to how we talk, what we look like, how we walk, etc. Within this article by Fan Shen, he talks about identity as his way of connecting to his English self from his Chinese self.

His Chinese self relates to the idea of "we" instead of "I". This article made me look beyond what it means to have an English self and having self individualism differed from those of other cultures. What makes us different? My logical identity is what makes who I am, but I can see how ideological identity can alter my personality and make a difference in what I become.

In conjunction, upon reading, I found that rules are in effect of how English Composition is supposed to be. In high school, yes we wrote allot ourselves. "Be yourself" the teacher always said. "Its not for a grade, but just write something and don’t pick up your pencil". American lifestyles have dictated self individualism to be a main priority within writing. Journals upon journals, crystal clear writing is a guideline to literary tradition especially west to Shen's Chinese culture where he subjected to "we".

"I am subordinate to we". With this, I believe that the Chinese culture is saying that we have an English culture are selfish. That we do not like to include others with the same ideas. This is just an assumption, but American ideological tradition is to attempt to glorify, "I" and accept self as something to not be ashamed of.

Its hard to talk about oneself, because I as a writer find it very hard to talk about myself because I believe there is a right and wrong to everything. What I may think can be different in terms of what someone else thinks. So upon writing, I become indecisive and idealize what I should write about.

This week I have read some challenging articles that alter the way I view writing and how its supposed to be done. My writing has been very hard to produce becuase I have not only confused the people who read it but myself as well. I found that it was interesting to see that my identity within my community is something I have grown up to understand and build on for the 18 years I have lived in this planet. My Ginger bread man shows the idealogical ways of how to be based off my culture. I showed it using my African Amercian side and then my white. I have found that family is of course in both, but when referring to how to act, one is alot more tolerated then the other. On my white side, I have to act and be a certain way. I have to have correct grammer, walk a certain way, and be what my family wants me to be. Within in my african African American side they focus of the culture. On the idea of family being the priority,