The Boy Without A Flag By Abraham Rodriguez

In the United States of America as of 2022, 14% of the U.S. population are immigrants. While 14 percent doesn’t seem like a huge percentage, that means that 46.2 million people in the US are non-caucasian. Each of those people in that statistic faces some type of racism, race bias, or microaggression because of their race, even as young as birth. One example of this is shown in the piece “The Boy Without a Flag”. Written by Abraham Rodriguez, this short story follows a young 11-year-old Puerto Rican boy trying to find his identity and place in the world, torn between his father and his Puerto Rican pride, and his peers and their American ideology. This story starts off by focusing on the boy and his experience at school and his home life. His

Every immigrant at some point in their lives faces some sort of prejudice, but this story is unique. This story took place between the ‘70s and ‘80s which is important because during this time was the peak of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement with the discrimination of Puerto Rican Americans being at an all time high in the US. In “The Boy Without a Flag”, when he decided to remain standing during the assembly he was taken aside by his administrator for his act of ‘disobedience’, berating him of his self worth: “I felt humiliated and alone. Miss Marti’s reptile face kept appearing in my notebook, her voice intoning “Let me tell you, you’re nothing.” Yeah, right. Just what horrible hole did she crawl out of? Are those people really Puerto Ricans? Why should a Puerto Rican salute the American flag?” (TBWAF). The boy not standing up for the flag was him standing up for his beliefs and his culture, things he learned from his father. His administrator reprimanding him so severely was an example of racism, with her comment about him being nothing showed what she actually thought about him because of his race. Rodriguez showed this racism through the administrator because she is seen as an authority figure, the typical types of people who have these racist beliefs who then push these beliefs onto the younger generations, and so on and so forth. Rodriguez incorporating this into his

One way Rodriguez uses symbolism is through the obvious use of the flag. Not only is it used in the title of the story and as the main starter-of-conflict in the story. Flags are a symbol of a country and the identity of their citizens; Rodriguez’s character not standing up for the flag was a symbol of him rejecting his American identity because he feels as if he can’t conform to the US’s expectations of him to choose: "The flag flapped in the wind, a symbol of pride and belonging, but to me, it was just a piece of cloth, a reminder of everything I wasn't. I watched as the colors blended together, red, white, and blue swirling like a whirlpool. It was a beautiful sight, yet I couldn't shake the feeling of being an outsider, a foreigner in my own country." While the flag itself is a symbol of not belonging, there’s more to its symbolism, including the significance of both flags color. Both the flags contain the colors red, white, and blue. The boy seeing the colors blending together represents the way that his Puerto Rican and American culture came together to create him. The whirlpool was a reflection of his struggle with his identity and how to make both his heritage and his future proud. Rodriguez talently used the flag and its colors to show the struggles of being an immigrant, and the conflict that they face trying to choose