After reading several novels and stories in class, I was able to more clearly see my own culture by comparison of others’ cultures. Some characters in various cultures held beliefs or acted in such a way that I either saw similarities or differences to my own culture. Of all the books we’ve read, I felt that I was able to most closely relate to Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You. There are some key differences between my family and their family, but there were enough similarities to understand them more than I could the other stories.
I am a white American with very little, if any, culture directly and knowingly obtained from one other singular country. Much of my family could be considered to be very average in comparison to a “typical” American family. We are middle class, my family is Protestant and live in a suburban area. All of my great-grandparents have lived in America and all of them (to my knowledge) have lived in or near Ohio. However, there are enough differences from this typical American culture to that of my own family.
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We don’t make many purchases that are large and flamboyant, but our family is not in a struggling socioeconomic class either. This also in line with how our family tends to go for bachelor’s degrees; it is an easier way to provide opportunities for higher pay and a middle class life. Some other aspects of the frugality of our family includes my mother cooking meals from home. She stayed at home while I grew up and my father worked. We would eat out only on occasion or for occasions. The foods we usually ate were either standard American foods or Americanized versions of others’ cultures foods. We also didn’t have cable television when I grew up, so we tended to watch either shows on public television or rent movies growing up which was cheaper than cable. Even now, I don’t really see a need for buying cable, especially with the prevalence of online television and movie