Reading Response (10.16)

Email: jp7228@nyu.edu

 

In chapter 4 Geographies of Selves-Reimagining Identity of Light in the Dark. Anzaldúa skillfully explores the complexity of personal identity. She emphasizes that each of us has more than one identity and that these identities are given by different relationships. “As our bodies interact with internal and external, real and virtual, past and present environments, people, and objects around us, we weave (tejemos), and are woven into, our identities. Identity, as consciously and unconsciously created, is always in process—self interacting with different communities and worlds. Identity is relational. Who and what we are depends on those surrounding us, a mix of our interactions with our alrededores/environments, with new and old narratives. Identity is multilayered, stretching in all directions, from past to present, vertically and horizontally, chronologically and spatially” (Anzaldúa, pp. 69). In this way, I would like to explore the traumatization of women in China who have been “kidnapped” by their identities through the definition of identity.

 

In China, a lot of people in my generation would grow up being taken care of by their grandparents. My mom told me that my grandma used to say to her, “I won’t help you take care of your children when they are born, because I still have my own things to do…” Perhaps because of my grandma’s influence, I have believed since I was a child that the responsibilities under our identity are not as much as what that identity gives us. I think society has given us so many identities that sometimes we forget which one we are living in, especially women. “Citizen, laborer, wife, daughter, daughter-in-law, mother…” Many of these are roles assigned to a woman by society and the family. But what I mainly want to emphasize is the identity of women as mothers in Chinese families. There is this saying: Mom is Superman (Superman is used here because in Chinese the word doesn’t distinguish between male and female). There was a debate thread centered around this phrase. “Is the phrase Mom is Superman an encouragement or a shackle?” In many traditional Chinese families, since many women have been given the identity of a mom, it is as if all their other identities in society have disappeared. Their lives seem to revolve around what they cook at home, their children’s health, their children’s grades, and so on. It seems that after their children are born, their children are the only focus in their worlds. So back to that phrase, who defines a mom has to be a Superman?

 

My mom, after my brother was born, quit her job to become a full-time mom. So that means she hasn’t had any chance to reconnect with the society since 2011. She usually complains to me about how things are not going well at home and the arguments she has with my father. But she endures with my father no matter what. Because I know that after she quit her job she kind of depended on my father to live. It’s hard for a person who has been out of touch with society for so long to become “independent” in an instant.

 

But I would often advise her, “You shouldn’t take family matters too seriously, and I’ve matured to an age that you don’t need to watch over me all the time, and I’ll take care of my brother, Xi’s grades. I don’t want you to kidnap yourself with all sorts of identities. I want you to know that while you are your father’s daughter, your husband’s wife, and your son’s mother, you should keep in mind that you are yourself. Think more about yourself before you hold yourself accountable to others.”

 

I recounted my mother’s entrapment in it due to the identity given to her, but I would like to emphasize more the women who are “kidnapped” by the identity of motherhood in China, and even in many regions. Motherhood gives women a lot, but in another way, it seems to fragment the whole woman into a part of her that is only “mother”. The reimagining of identity mentioned in this chapter is, I believe, an act of reconstitution for them. Like Anzaldúa emphasized the need to understand our complex geographies and embrace the fluidity of our identities, we can reimagine and reshape our individual and collective narratives.