The Personal Essay A Cultural Autobiography

Multicultural Literature
Final Exam Assignment: The Personal Essay – A Cultural Autobiography (5-7 pages)
Consider all of the texts from this year. Despite their differences, they all have one major theme in common: Culture & Identity. Throughout our studies of all of these texts, we have analyzed the effect that culture (and micro-cultures) has on one’s sense of identity. Throughout the year, you have been invited to explore your own sense of culture and identity. This is your opportunity to put it all together into your personal cultural autobiography.
This assignment is broken into a four-step process below.
Step 1: Ask yourself some questions
What should you think about when designing a reflective, self-analytic story of your “total way of life” and the experiences that have shaped who you are? It’s a pretty tall order, so let’s begin with the basics. First, go through and provide answers to some of the primary micro-culture categories:
Age
Gender
Race
Language
Ethnicity
Religion
Socioeconomic status
Gender/Sexual orientation
Exceptionality (mentally/physically disabled or gifted)
Geography
Examine the subgroups and your roles within them, in relation to each micro-culture. The subgroups, are where you fall in the micro-culture. For example, in socioeconomic status it refers to underclass, middle class, upper class or somewhere in between. For race it refers to Caucasian, Asian, Hispanic and more. Ethnicity, on the other hand, refers to where a person is from: Africa, Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe, Central Europe or elsewhere. Geography refers to the region or environment a person is from like mountains or the ocean. For example, a Caucasian male would fall into the dominant subgroup in both race and gender but if that same man spoke only Gaelic in the United States, his experiences would be much different than someone who spoke only English or was multilingual.
Once you have this basic list, you want to begin to consider other elements of your experience and environment that are not usually measured as statistics.
Where did you grow up?
Where did you go to school?
Who was/is in your family?
Who are your friends?
What are some of your favorite places?
What was the most important/saddest/happiest moment of your life?
In what ways has your culture been taught to you?
What objects or artifacts are or have been important to you?
What was your first job?
How would you describe your style?
What’s your native language?
When did you learn to read/write?
What’s your career goal?
How would you define success?
Consider how your experiences within the cultural subgroups that you inhabit have shaped your personality and identity in relation to others in your life who may fall into different cultural subgroups. For example, the only girl in a family with six brothers will have a different societal and cultural outlook from another female, who falls into all the same subgroups but grew up an only child or with sisters.
Step 2: Turn your answers into a companion narrative:
Try to consider the stories that accompany your answers. Then, choose one experience that stands out to you as meaningful in terms of who you are today. Or, you may choose many experiences/stories. You have the choice to write about one experience in detail, or, about many experiences that make up a chronological timeline of your life.
Step 3: Organize your ideas:
Once you decide what you will write about, create a rough outline as a way to organize your paper. Write out your ideas and put them in the order you want to say them. Also, think about how you would like to introduce the essay and how you would like to conclude it – you can always write the introduction and conclusion after you write and organize the paper.
Step 4: Write your essay:
As you tell the story, reflect on how the experience has shaped how you value and evaluate the world around you, as well as how it has shaped your thinking and your behavior. In other words, how was this experience important to you both as an individual and as the member of a cultural community? Ultimately, you should present a paper that explores who you are and why – what do you think are the opinions, beliefs, assumptions, stereotypes, and biases that serve to form you and your opinions, and, even more importantly, where do you think they come from? You do not need to answer ALL of these questions in your final essay; rather, they are areas you may choose to explore.
One last catch: In addition to the written personal essay, you will create a VISUAL COMPONENT. You may use any medium you would like; however, it must be CREATED BY YOU. This creation should represent your sense of culture and identity as it is portrayed in your cultural autobiography.
You will be submitting a digital copy of your cultural autobiography and artifact (you will take a picture of your artifact). We will go over the specifics closer to the due date. Be prepared to PRESENT your autobiography and creation.
Age
18
• Gender
male
• Race
asia people
• Language
Chinese
● Ethnicity
None
• Religion
None
• Socioeconomic status
Student
• Gender/Sexual orientation
Famale
• Exceptionality (mentally/physically disabled or gifted)
/
• Geography
/
• Where did you grow up?
China
• Where did you go to school?
United States
• Who was/is in your family?
Dad,mom, Younger sister, Older sister
• Who are your friends?
Classmates,roommates,etc…I'm very easy to make friends.
• What are some of your favorite places?
Library
• What was the most important/saddest/happiest moment of your life?
Important:Successfully PASSed the interview and came to America to study.
saddest：The Death of My Grandma
happiest：I made my first American friend on the school basketball team.
• In what ways has your culture been taught to you?
Teacher teaching
• What was your first job?
None
• What’s your native language?
Chinese
• When did you learn to read/write?
When I was in preschool, I tried to read some little stories.When I was in primary school, I could write some simple stories.
• What’s your career goal?
Being a successful businessman like my father
Should the writer make things up?
This article is autobiographical, you can refer to the novel I read, if there is a similar situation in the novel you can be properly contact .The above is all I can give you now, and you can appropriate creation , but not too out of teacher’s request.