A Taste of American Pie :: Ethnicity Mexican American Essays

A Taste of American Pie Sunday morning. The smell of flour tortillas warming on the kitchen stove would waft all the way to my room. I could hear the radio play uncut ranchera tunes to which my mother always seemed to know the words. If I lay long adequate in bed, my mother would walk in the room and try to invoke me up, resorting to singing my name or an old Spanish nursery create verbally if all else failed. Ask me w here home is, and Ill tell you just this. This is home. This is me. All Ive forever known is Mexican culture. Both of my parents were born in Mexico, and I myself strike never lived much than a few hours from the border. Ive never known a Christmas without tamales or a September 16 th without celebration. But I am non just Mexican. I am Mexican-American. Mxico may be home, but America is where I live. I find here in college that I am just beginning to learn what it heart and soul to be American. I used to think that I would find tha t essence through a sort of duality anything that wasnt Mexican or break open of the minority would have to be American. Ironi surroundy, the idea of Americanness was closer to home. Ive come to introduce that to be American is to know and share myself. America is a amass of many cultures. As such, it possesses no single, distinct culture. There is no unrivalled overarching American culture that is independent of all those that make it up. The supposed thawing pot of peoples is not exactly an accurate portrayal of America. This nation is specked with cultural enclaves that nurture their own customs and traditions rather than fuse them with others. I, for one, would not give up my Mexican identity to become simply American. I am sure that many would agree that we are all more than American. Each culture, therefore, remains fundamentally unique, never really melting into another. To call yourself American is to recognize that you are a small, albeit integr al, part of a great phenomenon.