In Barbara Ehrenreich’s essay, Cultural Baggage, she talks about the topic of ethnic heritage as the author in the paper is replying to a friend that’s asking her what her background is. Barbara states that her reason for writing her essay is to make readers conscious that having no ethnic background is in fact an ethnic background. She takes on an uncommon view of herself as most people pride themselves in stating where they came from and the traditions of the culture they abide by, rather than feeling embarrassed to claim their background. Perhaps Barbara is trying to get us to understand that a family that doesn’t cling to their culture and abide by its standards can be just as successful as those that do ,and also that being different isn’t always a bad thing.
Throughout the essay, Ehrenreich
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They even scoff at her attempts to get them to be religious as they point out that she didn’t even believe in God herself. At this time, it just seems like she’s trying to give her children a sense of identity that she never was able to achieve when she was their age. However, after she tucks them in bed, she asks herself, over an alcoholic drink, why she even bothered trying, since even their grandparents that knew their religious culture, didn’t even bother following it. So why did she expect them to follow it? Maybe because she was second guessing herself about not having any ethnic identity is a good thing. However, she does go on to point that her grandparents and great grandparents don’t believe in God either. So far, it just seems like Ehrenreich is portraying a high sense of disconnect from her ethnic roots, so much that it seems like she doesn’t have the ability to cultural pride like others do. However , she turns that into something that she quite proud of the older she