Book 1 Post 2 - American Like Me

After continuing my reading for American Like Me by America Ferrera, I resonated with multiple anecdotes she shared about her childhood and her process growing up in the United States as an immigrant family. Being a racial minority with the name "America" was something that people always considered odd and what people pointed out to her by default. Having to clarify the misunderstanding and preconceived notions about her name and identity was an unpleasant experience that made her comprehend the social inequality within her society.

As someone with a similar upbringing as Ferrera, I understood the hardships and internal battles she had to overcome that stemmed from the constant misunderstandings laid out by her surroundings. I believe race is a social construct, not a way to biologically differentiate individuals. Surely, that may have its original intentions, but the concept of "race" has become distorted over the past few hundred years as a determination of power, class, superiority, and a justification for hierarchies. It has become associated with numerous political and social connotations rather than a scientific and biological notion to classify people. Hence, individuals like Ferrera or myself have been placed in circumstances where our race became an immediate disadvantage and label. Throughout the book, her ways of explaining the various experiences allowed me to construct this idea and analysis about what race entailed as a whole, and I believe it was an extremely valuable realization that allowed me to understand the deeper meaning behind societal matters. 

Although Ferrara's experience is more displeasing and undesirable in the beginning, one of the parts that made a lasting impact on me was her ability to learn how to embrace her culture and feel pride about representing the differences. America Ferrara, along with several other authors in this book take their time to share their stories, describing their journey of breaking barriers and cultivating an environment of acceptance/equality regardless of physical/geographical differences. Ferrera shares that despite her name causing discouragement and negative assumptions about her culture, she loves her name dearly and cherishes the variety of meanings behind it. Other stories, which also share different instances of racial injustice and discrimination, truly put the societal issues of diversity, discrimination, and ignorance into perspective for everyone to grasp. It teaches us the crucial lesson of asking questions before making assumptions and shutting down stereotypes with intentional motives.