The Rose That Grew From Concrete Analysis

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With society’s demanding high expectations and criticizing views, people get pushed around easily. This results in people wanting to separate from society, and become their person, as shown in Polanco’s “Identity,” Chang’s New York Times article, and Tupac’s “The Rose That Grew From Concrete.”

To separate from society and become their person, people must first show society they are not going to deal with them anymore, and not let themselves be pushed around anymore. New immigrants have recently been showing they will not deal with the pressure to anglicize their names anymore, as shown in Chang’s New York Times article “As American as Vartan, Luis, and Na.” Chinese immigrant Hongxia Liu questions why immigrants would not like to keep …show more content…

After all, the name is a big part of a person’s identity, as stated by Nayeli. The immigrants want to stay true to themselves. It is not like a person can just change who they are. The name is a part of the culture the person is from, it is their identity. Plus, changing it suggests they are dishonoring their parents, who gave them their name. Would they really want to go and dishonor their parents, especially as many foreign cultures have much more respect for parents? No, they are determined to change that once and for all. By not changing their names, they show society they will stick to their own identity, and will not be pushed around. Similarly, Julio Noboa Polanco showed society his feelings about being pushed around in his poem “Identity.” He states “Let them be as flowers always watered, fed, guarded, admired, but harnessed to a pot of dirt. I’d rather be a tall, ugly weed clinging on cliffs . . .” With the flower representing the average citizen, this shows everyone is protected, but they have high expectations to reach -most of which are probably unrealistic- about how to act, dress, speak, and so forth. Polanco then reveals his opinion of anything being better