Cultural Synthesis Essay 'An Indian Father's Plea'

Lachlan Pettigrew Max Yelsa Blake Zimmerman A Cultural Synthesis Essay Have you ever thought about the love and culture your family brought you as a child? What they give you lets you develop a sense of identity in our changing world. In the following essay you will read excerpts from two pieces of writing that show how a child develops with and without their cultural identity. A child is lost without their heritage, and strives to find it, whether that be as an adult or when they are still young. In An Indian Father’s Plea, and essay by Robert Lake, the father writes a letter to the teacher speaking about his son. His son had a different sense of cultural inheritance and he was bullied for his actions. “Yesterday, for the third time in two weeks,

That comes to show how his cultural inheritance was different than the other boys in his school. His father tries to help him explain to him that his culture is his strongest friend but the son doesn’t want to listen. In the end I believe that the strength of his hair was a great example of how his cultural inheritance, in the form of physical things, affected his life. In this situation it’s seen as a negative , but his family – his father in particular – helped save the sons cultural identity. In My Mother Pieced Quilts, a poem by Teresa Paloma Acosta, the girl's cultural inheritance in the story was determined by the quilt her mother made for her because it represents her past and what she needs to be successful. In the poem, the girl says “They were just meant as covers.” This shows how the girl thought that it was way more than that. Even though that’s what the girl used it for, she thought of it as more every time she saw it and rubbed her hand down it. It would make her think of all the family memories that were happening with it while it was made. Some of these memories being the spinach and cotton fields she grew up with, and the river she lived