Book Two: Post One "American Like Me" by America Ferrera

I'm excited to be reading American Like Me, a collection of personal essays about the American identity written by accomplished Americans about their struggles with their American identity. This anthology has been thoughtfully compiled by America Ferrera. I have always been a big fan of her work which is one of the main reasons that I chose this book. Her acting is fantastic, and her I deeply concur with her advocacy for better depictions of underrepresented groups in film and TV. America makes the point in her introduction that being American is about the blending of cultures, and America’s story will never be completed until everyone can see their story represented in the shared culture. This section made me think of an ideal America as a giant complex and beautiful tapestry that all Americans weave together, an image that deeply resonates with me.

America’s commentary and the stories that I have read so far have really re-shaped my viewpoints about what it means to be an American and opened my eyes to the privilege that I hold. Although I’ve always struggled to connect with my Irish identity (even though I am a citizen there) and discover more of that side of my story, I’ve never even questioned whether or not I was truly an American. I have never had to experience the struggle of attempting to balance multiple cultural ideologies at the same time, like how America was forced to sacrifice aspects of her Latina identity in order to fit in with her white friends, and I can’t imagine how hard it must have been dealing with those cultural identity issues at the same time as you’re being forced to grow up and deal with the angst of middle school. I barely made it out of Middle School alive without the added stress of having to worry about whether people were going to interrogate me in school about whether I was really an American or not.

The story of Reshma Saujani. an Indian-American woman who is the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, made me reconsider how privileged I was growing up. She had trouble fitting in because of her Indian name, and lied about it in order to make things easier and fit in. She talks in her essay about how as a child she was crushed every time she would see one of those souvenir keychain racks at a gift shop but couldn’t find her name because it was ‘too exotic’. She took it as a sign that she didn’t belong in America, and she would never fit in. I was always lucky as a kid because Ryan is a super common name. I even have a small collection of shoddy souvenir name keychains to prove it. I was never ashamed of my name and I didn’t have to face the pain of feeling like I didn’t fit in like Reshma did. It’s strange how sometimes the smallest stories can be the ones that connect the most, and this book has used a collection of tiny anecdotes to make me better realize what it’s like to struggle with one’s identity.