Superman And Me: The Importance Of Cultural Identity

Identity is who you are and who you want to be, I have studied texts that tell me the importance of cultural identity. The text that I have studied look at importance of cultural identity. The texts that I have studied are: ‘Being Black’ by Trevor Noah, the speech ‘Brown Brother’ by Joshua Josefo, the poem ‘Still I rise’ by Maya Angelou, and the personal essay ‘Superman And Me’ by Sherman Alexie’.

Sherman Alexie is a native American and talks about his identity, his essay is called ‘Superman And Me’. ‘Superman and me’ is about Alexie’s own life story when he was a young Native American Indian. In the essay he describes how he taught himself how to read and how he wanted to go to school where he was accepted by other students because he says

She is African American, she wrote her poem because she was sexually abused and became traumatised. ‘Still I rise’ is based on her life story, we see this when she tells us in the text “Did you want to see me broken?” This is related to her, and how she became traumatised, another example is when she says “You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your lies, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I rise.” Her identity is getting better because she is starting to talk, and her identity is stronger than ever she is also a lot more confident because she says “Does my sassiness upset you?” In this poem we learn that no matter what happens you will rise and there will always be brighter days. No matter how long it might a take the brighter days will always

It is a speech by Joshua Josefo who is a Pasifika. In his speech he talks about racism and stereotypes. He sees himself as a proud Pasifika and he wants to let the world know who he is. An example is when he says “Whenever someone tries to breach my comfort zone or whenever I don't have anything else to say in defence in an argument I'm going to say that ‘you’re a racist”. This is clearly shown in the first paragraph where he repeats “I am brown” twice. He also gives multiple examples of how he is “Brown”,”Brown like the table…” He is proud of his identity and his culture. In this text we learn that you shouldn't listen to all the negative comments people say, You can be whoever you want to