Journal Prompt #2

"Our readings today dealt with many themes that most of us can relate to on some level: the feeling of being an outsider, especially an outsider in a place we had hoped or believed we might fit in; the search for identity through tracing one's roots or revisiting the past; the way immigration affects the generations of a family. Please choose one theme from our readings today.

In other words. could you relate to anything we have read?"

The closest connection I felt with our readings today was with with Rudolfo Anaya's "In Search of Epifano". The idea of searching for identity through revisiting the past resonates most with me. Growing up as a child, I was never one to look back and ask questions about the past, but I feel that the older I get, the more curious I am about where I come from. I often wish my roots could be traced via ancestry.com, but I know how impossible it must be to have my Mexican past, Indian or Spanish, archived in the internet. The best one can do is ask the eldest of the family, and even still, I feel like I often get a faded picture of what once was. The connection that the main character of "In Search for Epifano" had with her great-grandfather, Epifano, is something I believe we all wish we could have with our past, well, at least those of us who enjoy learning about our roots. One might ask oneself how is it that one's identity can be found through the exploration of our roots? I used to think that my identity would be found upon the future discoveries I would make along the course of my life, but how can one forget about the links that have made us who we are today? I like to think now that I can choose to take a bit of both- the future and the past. The past, I feel, makes one have a strong base of self-knowledge, while the future, provides a strong sense of direction.