Stereotypes In Patricia Williams 'A Personal Essay Ethnic Hash'

Can you name a single thing that has no culture in it? Can you honestly say that you only belong in once culture? In the personal essay, “Ethnic Hash” by Patricia Williams, the speakers childhood struggles with being forced into her stereotype led her to her culture, or lack thereof, that she now identifies with. In the movie The Truman Show directed by Peter Wier, Truman Burbank is forced into an entirely fiction and human created world, but then later discovers there is much more culture than what he had been raised to know. In the novel Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee, Jean Louise returns to her childhood home only to discover how much a new culture presented to her as an adult has changed how she sees the world today as opposed to how

In the personal essay “Ethnic Hash” by Patricia Williams, the speaker expresses how her ethnicity forces her into racial stereotypes. When Williams’ family did fit into the stereotype, they would feel “guilty, even shameful” (Williams, 8) about hiding it. Being ashamed of fitting into a stereotype illustrates how she was forced into parts of her culture, even if she didn’t want to be. It makes her feel bad to be part of a culture that she was born in. In addition, in the movie The Truman Show, Truman Burbank has been selected even before he is born to live in his own bubble, separate from the world. From birth, it has been decided that he would live in an on-screen life, whether he wanted to or not. Since Truman is not given the choice to spend what will ideally be his whole life on screen, he is unknowingly forced into his world, his life, his culture. Truman does not know anything else since he has never been taught anything else. Even if one is forced into a culture, that does not mean that they can never go out and discover a new culture to apply onto the culture they have already been born

These small things come together and shape how someone views the world. In the poem My Mother Pieced Quilts by Teresa Palomo Acosta, the speaker recalls her mother making quilts during her childhood, and how each piece meant else, a feeling or a moment. The speaker then revels in how even after all of these years, the quilts her mother made continue to “sing on” (Acosta 57). These quilts are a metaphor for everything she has had as a child, the small pieces of textile bing bits of her childhood. After it all comes together, the fully constructed quilt is a representation of all of the cultures she is put together in one. Along with this, in the short story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, the grandmother of two sisters is an avid quilt-maker, who creates quilts out of pieces of clothing from her past. The amalgamation of these pieces of cloth shows how the small pieces put together create one single culture. Again, the quilt is a metaphor for the grandmothers past making her the person she is