For this 4 to 5 page essay (typed and documented in MLA style), I’d like you to analyze one facet of your own cultural identity, focusing on an area of your social self which you find most significant. Some areas you may choose to work with include ethnicity, race, gender, religion, social class, sexual orientation, age, regional or geographical influences (place, home), family, nationality, body type or markings, obsessions, clothing, media—whatever elements in our culture you feel define one important part of who you are. You are looking for strong influences that awakened you to an aspect of yourself, experiences that changed you or that made you aware of what you wanted or lacked; that helped you set goals or define limits. Ultimately, your task is to show those parts of your life which you feel reveal important aspects of who you are, connecting experiences and incidents you have had to the broader cultural context of American society.
You must choose as a topic something you share with others so that you can read about it and deepen your understanding of this identity issue as “cultural.” In your essay, you will have to cite and use information from at least 2 sources, so the topic must connect your identity issue with something out there in the broader culture that others have also experienced and written about. (NOTE: Do not choose something so intensely personal and sensitive that you would be embarrassed to write honestly and fully about it; choose instead an identity issue whose personal nature would not make you uncomfortable to share with classmates as well as your instructor.) You must conclude with an analysis of ways in which your individual identity marks you as a part of a larger group—ways in which our very selves are shaped by a complex interaction between us and the surrounding culture.

Structure: Your essay is not merely the narration of an important personal experience, i.e., you are not just telling your life story. You must find an aspect of your life which reveals your identity as a product of the cultural environment in which you have found yourself. Begin with an introduction which identifies one or more areas of culture which have impacted your sense of who you are. Your thesis should then locate as narrow a focus as you can.
Develop your essay in three ways: 1) give details about those experiences in your life relevant to the cultural focus of your essay; 2) analyze the impact of culture on you (and perhaps you on your culture), defining terms and concepts and explaining how your sense of identity was molded by these experiences; and 3) bring in research information to provide background and supporting evidence for your analysis of the ways in which culture helped define your sense of self. You want to conclude by answering this question: How did I get to be the person I am? You will answer this question not through a philosophical analysis, however, but through an analysis of the people around you (i.e., your culture). Your essay will then explore your life through discussion of a vital element of your cultural environment. You will use lots of detailed examples and descriptions of experiences to explain—with the help of ideas from a few sources—something central about your identity.
You may choose to structure the paper around an experience, a moment, that changed the way you think about an aspect of culture as it relates to your sense of self: establish how you looked at things before, describe the changing experience(s), and analyze how you looked at them afterwards. Be sure to define the pivotal moment in great detail and to situate your experience in the larger context of culture (you can agree or disagree with the ideas you found in your research). You may instead choose a sequence of experiences illustrating the development of an aspect of your identity over time.
Keep in mind that you’re writing to a reader who does not know you well and is interested in your background as well as your assessment of your own life. Though your essay is exploratory, you do want to convey to this person your understanding of yourself through the lens of culture, whether in rebellion against or in conformity to social and environmental influences.

Criteria For Grading: The general standards for any effective college essay apply here. An “A” paper for this assignment has fresh and clear ideas, displays a consistent and genuine voice, presents a focused thesis which unifies the entire essay, exhibits a controlled paragraph organization and sentence structure, develops and supports its ideas fully, uses clear logic and convincing evidence, demonstrates apt choice of words, and adheres to the conventions of standard written English. Especially important in this assignment are the focus on one cultural influence key to your understanding of yourself, analysis of this cultural issue through specific details and examples from your life, and integration of your ideas and sources to create a rich cultural context for your definition of self—your cultural autobiography.