My identity

Who I am,

 That a question that everyone ask to themselves once in a while, even at this moment I really dont know who really I am, but this are the things that I can assure that are part of me.

I am a human, that the term or name that was given in order to identify  our "race",

I am a Female which that the sex I fall under when if was born,

I am Kimberly Flores, that the name my parents decide to give me when I was in the womb of my mother, 

 I am a daughter, of two couple that had been marry over 25 years and counting , Ana Maria Flores Aldama born in El Paso Tx but grew up in Ciudad Juarez, and Jesus Manuel Flores Renteria who was born and rise in Ciudad Juarez but become a U.S Citizen. 

I am a the granddaughter of Maria Aldama, Dominguez the mother of my mother, and Angelica Renteria y Erazno Manuel Flores the parents of my dad.

I am a sister of 2 older ones and 2 younger one, Ana Karina Flores, Jacqueline Flores, Amerika Flores and Andrea Jessika Flores.

I am also an aunt  of a beautiful little girl, Angelika Ann Marie Flores HillHouse.

 I am a friend as well, of very interesting people 
I am a friend who has being defined has helpful, generous and responsible. 

I was born in El Paso which that what makes me fall under the " White" category  

but my roots are from Mexico which that is what would make me an "Hispanic". 

These two different categories of two different worlds but yet 

 that are neighbors, this makes hard for me to belong to a classification. 

I don't belong to just one, I belong to a new category, a new world that was born due to these two categories, which is a Latina or Chicana. 

My first language is Spanish 

Second language is English  

Which that makes me a bilingual  

I am a strong person who survive in a way the laughs of other due to my accent, even tho I was capable to speak more than one language, I would still feel less. I am a person who once fear to speak due to the fact that didn't wanted to be bully by others, I am the person who handle nicknames such as "beaner" or handle comments such as "go back to Mexico", even  if was born and grew in the U.S. 

  

I am a person who once feel that didn't belong anywhere but also, I am a person who dominate those feelings and become to a fighter. I am a fighter when its need to be. I am proudly a Latina/ Chicana who not only celebrates "5 de Mayo" or "16 de septiembre" but also celebrates 4 of July. 

I am a person who grew in a Hispanic environment and received a lot of love. 

I am a person who loves its family and works hard to see them proud. 

I am a person who learn to value education and trough that I learn to value different types of personalities, cultures and points of view. 

I am a person who has expectations to learn and to seek for new opportunities. 

I am a person who graduate form an Early College high school at age 18, 

I am a person who didn’t knew English, which self-steam was attacked into a person who already got its associate degree at age 18. 

I am a person who believes in fairness and have a view of accept everyone no matter their differences 

A person who is willing to give in order to improve someone life. 

These characteristics lead me to seek a career in Political Science with the purposed to help those that don’t have a voice. 

I am a person who hopes to have a successful future and once show the world how capable I am. 

I am someone who has a brown skin, which is also could be named, “Morena”, that put me into a certain level of stereotype of the society, 

Yes, I am someone different, but everyone is different in a way  

I am someone who has hope and determination, which with all the qualities and classification I fall under. I will always hold a bright future; these is who I am. 

                             Connections and Argument 
The connections of The Master’s Tools Will Never dismantle the Master’s House and And When You Leave Take Your Pictures With You is not only about the white people taking power and credit of the Mexicans but in a more open picture is represent the different levels that a person has to go through and by being suppress by the stereotypes that the society have create. Just like the fact of the women having been treated lowly for centuries like objects, but there is different types of suffering.  

In the Master Tools will never Dismantle the Master House,  talks about the “dealing with the role of difference within the lives of American women” which mean that it talks about the thing that women in general need to lives with, yet this “ particular academic arrogance”  of putting stereotypes on women leading them being less, is change into categories since a white women American doesn't compared to the ignorance that a black lesbian women need to deal with form other people. It's about a black lesbian woman making a conference of the right of the women which in a way is sad since it shows that the world become a place where “ racism, sexism, and homophobia are inseparable” and the types of levels that the women need to go through  that lead them  to create  interdependency movement since “is the only way to the freedom”. It talks about the differences of categories where the people have to confront and to only making about just women it should be about getting the rights of any type and  having to unit strengths in order to “seek new way to actively “be”” part of the world “no matter the level of differences that it exists. 

In the And When You Leave Take Your Pictures with You talks about different version but yet they all connect to the fact that the women are being seen less and the levels of what someone has to deal with. Once story is about the fact of balck women being see less yet they contribute a lot to several things and even when the women rights are being fight for the balck women are not filling into that category, once again it relates to different of confrontation that person has to deal with “ as third world women we clearly have a different relationship to racism than white women, but all of us are born into an environment where racism exist” which pretty much that we all suffer a type of injustice but a balck women suffers differently than a white women since “women of color do not have such power, but white women are born with it,” which demonstrates that some struggles more than others. The poems related to the fact of white women being terrible with the black and other race but  they don’t see that they  the “white sister radical friends should think again” since they don’t see the whole picture of the situation they only see what they want to see which they don’t comprehensive the levels of injustice. 

 In the How To tam A Wild Tongue, in a way the message present in the way of the suffering that the Mexicans have to deal with once they come to the United States and those children that came from Mexican parents. It shows the feelings that they need to suppress just by the fact that they have their “accent”, they are obligate to leave something that they are part of just because other people don’t understand that a new culture was born. Which they will receive comments such has “If you want to be American, speak American if you don’t like it, go back to Mexico where you belong,” which the question is where they actually belong to.They were born in the United states so clearly they belong where they are, not only they suffer racism and being force to hide their identity since “repeated attacks on our native tongue diminish our sense of self,” these people suffer this treatment, now imagine the treatment that the women would have. Which in this case is the Chicana which not only have to deal the fact about their race where “they have been told form childhood that their language is wrong”, when the reality their language is  what “ connect their identity to, one capable of communication the realties and values true to themselves, a language with terms that are neither espanol ni ingles but both,” but they also have to suffer their own family the fact of being a women. They live in a place where they have been told “mal criada”,”well-bred girls don’t answer back”,”flies don’t enter a closed mouth”, calladita te vez mas bonita  which this are terms that women “never heard them applied to men”, which not only confront the fact of being seeing less for being a women but also the fact that are Chicanas. “Chicanas who grew up speaking Chicano Spanish have internalized the belief that we speak poor Spanish”,”to be closed to another Chicana is like looking into the mirror we are afraid of what we see there, pena , shame, low estimation of self. It shows the types of struggles that their culture has to deal with and also the fact of women having to deal with racism of being Chicana but also the fact of being women and being see more less than being criticized for only one thing. 

   The connection between these two are the fact of different levels of struggles of racism and injustice that they deal with just for the stereotypes that the society put. Is not only about different levels but also the fact that the women not only having to deal with the ignorance of being see less just by the fact for being women but it also involves the levels that women that are combined with another characteristic that have to deal with a type of racism. Such as being a balck women, or a Chicana woman or a lesbian black woman, or a lesbian Chicana women or white women or lesbian white women, the fact that the more lager the description is the more racism and injustice they need to deal with. That what the connections of The Master’s Tools Will Never dismantle the Master’s House. And When You Leave Take Your Pictures With You and In the How To tam A Wild Tongue, have, the different levels of struggles or racism and discrimination. 

Citations:

Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza

This Bridge Called My Back, Fourth Edition: Writings by Radical Women of Color 4th Edition

by Cherríe Moraga (Editor), Gloria Anzaldúa (Editor)