Re-Examining The Rhetoric Of The Cultural Border Analysis

We live in a world full of borders. Every time we glance left or right, we notice that we are surrounded by borders whether they are the physical, mental or cultural. The physical borders are geographic borders that determine the territory we live in or the territory in which we can walk about as a citizen, these borders separate one place from another. The mental borders are limited to our imagination and our thought process, our mind dictates us what is right and wrong, it separates one thing from another. The cultural borders are the borders that separate one culture form another. These borders limit us to what we can and cannot do, they give us a sense of who we are and define our limits. The author, wrote in her essay that a combination …show more content…
Heewon Chang, in her essay-“Re-examining the Rhetoric of the Cultural Border” untangles the misguided idea that territorial aspects and the borders go together hand in hand. Her essay is entirely based on how cultural border impacts one’s identity and sets them apart from others. The cultural borders separate us from others around us and give us a unique identity. When, we embrace a culture we come closer to the people who share it and our values are somehow similar therefore it brings us closer to those people and form the bonds that are stronger than blood ties. Besides, it is a widely known fact that the people who surround us, and shape our identity hence when our culture forces us to come closer to the people with similar values. We spend more time with them and learn more about our shared interests which in turn define us for the long run. I am a Pakistani, and I grew up in a Pakistani cultural, my everyday life was overflowing with people who share my culture and therefore I felt close to those people. I felt like there were the people, who understood me and my reasons, hence I spent more time with them because it felt like home. So, today when I look at myself I can say that the people whom I chose to be with, the people who shared my culture are the ones who helped build my identity. You can see silhouettes of their personalities and our …show more content…
Our actions define who we are. When we take certain actions related to our culture we further grooming our identity and engulf those particular actions. People all over the world celebrate different cultures and most of them are multicultural, for example, on one hand I perform Zakat (charity) which is linked to Pakistani culture while on the other hand I at times celebrate Valentine’s Day. Both these actions are from different cultures and I have incorporated both of them. Chang explains that “Peter’s Korean is so limited that he usually speaks English, although his parents speak Korean to him. He is definitely an American in his mind and heart, perhaps a Korean-American occasionally”(99). At times when people who are multicultural can feel one culture more dominant in their personality because they practice one culture more than the other. For me it is the Pakistani culture, mainly because I grew up in that culture and it is engraved into my mind and my everyday life, I feel more at ease in Pakistani culture than in American one, whereas my daughter feels at ease in American culture because she is growing up in American culture and this is the culture that surrounds her everyday life. So, her identity will be linked mainly with American culture with a tinge of a Pakistani culture. It is the culture and the people who revolve around it make our