Analysis Of Barbara Ehrenreich Cultural Baggage

In ‘Cultural baggage’, Barbara Ehrenreich described her personal experience and opinion about ethnic and religious heritage. Barbara was born in an immigrant family, With all the information she got, Barbara was unable to find her own ethnic identity. While been frustrated and embarrassed for her incapability of locating her own root, she eventually come to realize that she belongs to the race of “none”, those who think for themselves and try new things, and the race of “none” marches on.

A very important (also interesting) binary opposition is eyes gleaming with enthusiasm versus I was blushing by this time, describing the emotion of author and acquaintance when they each talked about their ethnic background. This binary opposition not only shows that people are interested in ethnic background and are proud to know their own ethnic identity but also highlight the frustration and embarrassment the author experienced

It conveys a strong admiration for new things and the importance of trying new things. Also, since “Try new things” is a motto to author’s mother, the repetition of new thing may imply that the author is greatly influenced by her parents. Another very interesting binary opposition is “old” versus “new”. Here, the author regard religion and ethnic tradition as old things (some ritual had been performed in the past). The author connects old with poverty, superstition and grief to emphasis the bad nature of old things, and connects trying new things with skepticism, curiosity and wide-eyed ecumenical tolerance (human traditions that she appraised). This sharp contrast causes the writer to make her interpretive lead, that the new things were better than old. One strange thing here is that, although the author has made very strong thesis with those repetition and binary opposition we mentioned, the thesis itself actually come from the author’s parents and are not yet adopted by the author until