Andy Rivera

Andy Rivera
Professor Ditch
English 113B
16 February, 2015

Two Worlds
Cultural identity is the building block of a culture that helps people in the culture or not
to understand the culture in a different way and show how they can develop new identities for
their cultural ways. Cultural identities also includes one's ethic background, like religion, race,
academic career, and family. My two major culture identities would be my Salvadoran family,
my Americanized family and my Student career in my Academic career. In each culture, I act
a different way so I can adapt to all the surrounding around me.
In my Salvadoran family, we are not that traditional Salvadoran family that speak only
to each other all the time and spend all the whole day with each other. In those family, men
always have to find a way where they can be in some assistance to their family. The men have
to always be a call away from help in a sense. In my Salvadoran family, we are a total of five
brothers, one sister, mother and step-father. We don't always have time to spend with each
other, but every time when it someone's birthday or just some celebration we all have to make
time and get together to have dinner at some restaurant. But when our mother gives one of us
a call me have to answer, because we have to respect every single person in our family no
matter what.
My family also has became Americanized, because the older one is the family are
always busy working and as for my little brother is frequently busy with with school work. As
for me, I'm always busy with college homework, loads of it every night. We don't always get

Andy Rivera
together to have family bonding time, but we are always close by, like being in the same
house at the same time. What make us an Americanized family is the fact that all my mother's
sons and daughter were born in the United States of American, so our Spanish is not as good
as it should be. Not having great Spanish language speaking tongues, this makes it harder to
talk and understand most of the words that full Spanish speaking person can say. But I have
well enough adapted to the fact that my Spanish wasn't so good and I have learned that it is
fine my Spanish isn't good.
The good that thing that has came with my Americanized -side is that it gave me
assistance in my Academic career as a student. My role as a student that I set out to be was to
learn as much as I could and do the best as could. But now that I'm in an university, I'm free to
learn way more than I would have ever image, like the different types of cultures there are
between just one culture and for an Academic school can be a whole culture of it own. Like
from an someone's major to someone's club. I'm apart of the Electrical engineering culture, but
the great thing is that I can also experience so many other different cultures in the university,
from race, religion to majors. And the great part of being apart of this growing community I
get a first look at how other culture are with each other. And this kind of thinking makes me
want to take time out of my hands to get to know the cultures I want to to add to my cultural
identity. The best way for me to understand these culture would be to treat every single one
differently, like I'm learning a whole new lesson for the first time. I would have to take each
one as a new lesson to get the best understanding so I can have a better understanding of a
person with in that culture.
Although there are some people who believe bring all their culture together into one
giant unit filled with different culture is good thing to do, like Alisa Valdas-Rodriquez in her
essay, My Hips, My Caderas (Caderas means hips). Valdas-Rodriquez is Cuban/American,

Andy Rivera
and her main thesis is that mixing your cultures together is a positive thing. She says But
still, I dream of the day when bicultural Latinas will set the standards for beauty and success,
when our voluptuous caderas won't bar us from getting through those narrow American
doors. (Valdas-Rodriquez pg. 75) What she means is that she hopes one day, bicultural
Latinas will set high achieves in the American culture to be love for their minds just not their
body and not to let their body get in the way of what they set their standards to be. But I don't
necessarily agree with Valadas-Rodriquezs main thesis, because everyone in each culture is a
totally different person, who might think differently, even if they are part of the same culture.
So a person has to adapt to each culture to understand another individual. For me, I have
adapted about being a student with an Academic career and learn that my university comes
with many different cultures within cultures that have opened my eyes and mind to a too
bigger picture that the world, itself has to offer. And also adapting to both of my sides in my
family, which my life more interesting and ready to experience new thing in life.
So treating every individual's cultural identities as something different or even unique
can help better where he or she is coming from and leading to a relationship between that
person. I have learned adapted to both my Salvadoran family, Americanized family and as a
student with an Academic career in all different ways to make my life much simpler than
having to mix and thing think every single culture is the same as one unit. I noticed a
routine I do throughout the week which is spending ever morning as a Student with an
Academic career then after my classes I move on with my Americanized family, where we are
all too busy for each other at times, then at night we all come together to ask each other how
were day went and if anything new happened. So I stronger believe see every culture as one
unit and within the one unit there are many more units of people that share the same brief, but
have different thoughts about it.

Andy Rivera
Work Cited Page
Valdes-Rodriguez, Alisa. "My Hips, My Caderas."MSN's Underwire (2000): 73-75. Print.\
Hanks, Reuel R., and Stephen John Stadler. "Geography--Encyclopedias."Encyclopedia of
Geography Terms, Themes, and Concepts. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2015.