Who owns your idenity?

All of these readings had very interesting comments about the identity of a person. Identity can refer to someone’s race, gender, sexual orientation or even the type of activities they like. However, identity is such a broad word, which has a different meaning for every person. In turn, people tend to try to simplify it. This is done by making identity an objective issue, with no grey area obtained. These authors relate to having multiple identities, as all of us do, rather than being defined by one thing. They lent to the idea that having grey area is necessary for a full, accurate description of themselves. In “Los Intersticios” by Eveyln Alsultary, she talks about being the child of an Arab and Cuban descent living in the United States. “ I am shocked by the contextuality of my identity: that my body is marked as Gringa in Costa Rica, as Latina in some U.S. contexts, Arab in others, and sometimes in spaces not adequately Arab or Latina, or ‘American’…”(292). The author is literally of multiple identities, but she feels that she can only be defined by one at a time. Alsultary shows that any person, either literally or figuratively, should be able to define themselves as an complexity. She is trying to exemplify that people can define themselves in many ways without having to separate one identity from another.
Lauren Martin also makes similarly interesting remarks in “Through Strangers Eye’s”. Martin identifies herself with being Asian, lesbian and a woman. Similar to Alsutary, she remarks that people generally see being an “in-between” as unfavorable and dangerous. Martin takes it one step further, and compares how others perceive her compared to how she sees herself. “’Who owns gender?’…[the phrase] seemed to perfectly sum up the ideas I’ve had about ambiguity, about those of us whose lives falls between the lines, and who are then subjected to outsides invasive curiosity,” (11). She means that no one should be concerned with how other perceive them or categorize them, rather they need to be comfortable with an “inconsistent” identity that won’t match up with what everyone else sees. Obviously, this is much easier said than done, as it is likely that the way I have already identified myself is based on how other people see me. I think that these authors strike up thinking about not only their own situations, but every persons individually. You do not have to be ‘ethnic’, gay or disabled to have similar issues to these authors. I think all people are faced with similar problems of identity, which is perhaps why we feel need to categorize others (because we feel that way ourselves). Theses readings emphasize the importance of looking at oneself holistically. Idealistically, if we all could begin to look at ourselves this way, we would be more comfortable with it, instead of seeing it as “dangerous” as put by Martin.