This I Believe
Confronted with the assignment of writing a one page paper about a belief I held as an integral part of my life, I was stumped. I believe in so many things (a list of 27 different causes to be exact), ranging from religion creates more problems than it solves to never wash your fruits and veggies. My infamous opinion that legings should not be worn as pants even made the cut. However, I chose to focus on a more classic topic, that I felt represented my immigration journey to the US: the importance of dinnertime.
All Great Change Begins At the Dinner Table
Ronald Reagan
In addition to my written piece, I also produced a video using After Effects to convey my message visually. This project not only helped my growth as a writer and video editor, but it also allowed me to reflect and gain a sense of clarity about my struggles with assimilation and cultural clashes.
If I have learned anything from my 17 years of life, it is that there is no problem too large that can’t be alleviated by a plate of my mom’s enchiladas de mole.
Growing up in an Latino family, our household was constantly spewing with chaos, overflowing our silent suburban neighborhood with yells, laughter, and the smell of braised barbacoa being prepared. Dinnertime in our household has always been a ceremony of its own; a culinary formality. No matter how demanding everyone’s day has been, we congregate around the dinner table at 8:30 P.M. sharp every night and chat away our day over a hot meal. Often, we’ll stay seated well into the night, conversing about any topic ranging from the purpose of human suffering to our aunt’s new haircut while snacking on cheese and dark chocolate.
I believe in dinnertime, and the importance of a shared meal.
I clearly remember the first time I stayed for dinner at a friend’s house, shortly after moving to California. Upon hearing her mom call “dinner time”, we put down our toys and sprinted down the hall in hungry anticipation. I scanned the kitchen counter in curiosity, only to lock eyes with a colorful arrangement of cereal boxes. As we poured ourselves a bowl of sugary oats and milk and sat across from the TV, I observed the rest of her family stop by the kitchen to serve themselves a plate of food and go back upstairs. I was baffled at this mystifying concept: why was everyone eating by themselves? I came home in utter shock, praying that I would not have to confess to my mom that my dinner had consisted of lucky charms and chocolate milk. Luckily, she didn’t ask.
Like many other immigrant children, all I wanted when I was younger was to fit in- and I didn’t. At school, I was embarrassed that my lunch consisted of beans and rice while the rest of my friends devoured PB&J sandwiches on white bread. I was embarrassed that my family didn’t speak English, and despised how I was forced to spend my afternoons translating emails and government documents for my mom while my friends attended piano lessons or baseball practice. I wanted to belong, even if that meant sacrificing my Mexican heritage.
But subsequent to attending my friend’s house for dinner, I gained a deeper sense of gratitude that I previously lacked about my family. My underlying shame slowly began to turn into appreciation, because for the first time, I understood how lucky I was to share such a powerful bond with them, a bond that we strengthened every night over supper. Dinnertime means something different to every person. For some, it is just the McDonalds they eat in their car to get their fuel for the day, but for me, it represents a lot more. It is a form of therapy and reflection, and an excuse to have a break from the madness that surrounds our everyday lives. Many of my most sacred memories have been shared or celebrated over dinner. I have eaten my way through countless weddings, pregnancy announcements, Bar Mitzvahs, holidays, graduations, and birthdays. And through each bite, I have learned to embrace my own culture: both the Mexican and American parts.
Honors Memoir Essay
The Power of Education
Tara Westover grew up in a household that opposed education, medicine, and the government. She had no birth certificate, and the first time she entered a classroom, she was 17. In her memoir Educated, Tara tells the story about her journey to self-acceptance through a detailed depiction of her personal development from a child facing abuse in a survivalist Mormon household to a flourishing historian graduating with a PhD from Cambridge University. Westover utilizes poetic diction, vividly reminiscent imagery, hyperbole, and metaphor to exacerbate the importance of education in enlarging our global perspective and personal growth.
Westover utilizes evocative imagery and unsparing clarity throughout her novel to grant the reader a detailed depiction of the events she experienced. In the beginning of her story, Westover describes her home in Buck’s Peak, Idaho in precise detail. She writes of the repetitive nature of her surroundings, and how she yearned to make sense of her world and its meaning despite not having formal schooling. “I had been educated in the rhythms of the mountains, rhythms in which change was never fundamental, only cyclical.” (pg. 10) Through this section, Westover grants the reader a deeper understanding about her education at home, and is able to familiarize them with her settings beautifully. As the reader begins to materialize her world in their eyes, they get the first glimpse into the author’s most prominent values: curiosity, order, and a yearning for knowledge. By communicating her childhood beliefs that her family was “a part of this immortal pattern,” the author foreshadows her desire to relate her education and knowledge to her own family. This line also communicates Westover’s belief that true change was impossible, that just like the weather, her life would be lived in a cyclical manner. As the author enrolls in college later in the novel, her perspective about the world and her culture drastically changes, yet she has difficulty overruling her early beliefs and recognizing her progress, believing she will eventually revert back to her childhood position.
Subsequent to numerous injuries, and physical and mental abuse, Westover decided she could no longer conform to the life that would await her if she stayed home. After self-studying for the ACT, she was accepted and enrolled at Brigham Young University. As the author learns about the history of the world and Civil Rights movements, she begins to analyse the connection between these events and her own life. Alluding to an earlier part of the novel when her brother continuously called her a racial slur for having an oil-stained face, Westover writes “I had finally begun to grasp something that should have been immediately apparent: that someone had opposed the great march toward equality; someone had been the person from whom freedom had to be wrested. I did not think of my brother as that person; I doubt I will ever think of him that way.” (pg.228) This quote demonstrates Westover’s value for history, and her tendency to always see the best in people. Even though it is clear to us (as it was to her) that her brother exemplifies all of the traits of someone who opposed equality and displayed ignorance, she cannot bring herself to see him in a negative light. This tendency also helps explain why she was unable to recognize the abuse she was facing, because she still seeked out to see the good in him. By showing this flaw, but not directly stating it, Westover brings a certain sense of vulnerability to the novel because we see the family and social struggles she’s facing as a consequence of pursuing an education, written through emotional narration instead of a more factual style.
As Westover participated in a study-abroad program in Cambridge, we began to see her overcome the cultural shocks of leaving her home, and truly develop on an intellectual level. The author communicates this metamorphosis through a broad display of figurative language. Reading Mary Wollstonecraft’s literature for the first time, she describes her experience as if it “moved the world” (pg. 220). By utilizing this hyperbole, Westover communicates the significant impact education has in shifting her perspectives. This newfound knowledge is affecting her so profoundly, that she feels it is strong enough to alter the state of the world, more specifically, her world. As she goes back to BYU, Westover carries a new sense of confidence and courage that education granted her, convincing her to get vaccinated. Although she still possessed a negative affiliation with doctors from her parent’s teachings, describing them as having “sharp teeth and long, skeletal fingers” (pg. 318), she now feels that she is educated enough on the object to make the decision on her own. By utilizing bleak diction, she conveys a clear picture of her depiction about western medicine, and gives the reader an insight into the mental battle adhering to these practices is for her, and the immense impact education had in overcoming it. Ultimately, her decision to get her vaccinations demonstrates intellectual growth as well as personal courage
As Westover grows further apart from her family and begins graduate school at Harvard, she reflects that the purpose of her entire education had been “to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind.” (pg. 374) Although in earlier writing we had witnessed Westover absorb and make sense of her education, she had had a difficult time concretely applying what she learned into her own viewpoints. However, this sincere final reflection shows that she has been truly changed by education, and she believes she must discover her own reality. Marking a crucial turning point, Westover has chosen herself and her free mind over her family. The author continuously opens up about her struggles figuring out how the uneducated and afraid girl from her childhood can coexist with her adult, highly-educated and independent self. She describes these two versions of her as “two people, [with] a fractured mind”. (pg. 404) Yet to recap her story, both its atrocities and triumphs, we get the clarity that Westover has progressed in her journey of self-acceptance, through the glue and nurturer of learning. As she beautifully reflects, “you could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education.” (pg. 404)
Education is a process that happens through a lifetime. It consists of the traditions we learned from our parents, the way we correlate to our world, and facts we learn in school. Yet this encompassing array of knowledge is the most crucial process we undergo in our lives. It takes us from who we were, to who we want to be.
Addendum
Although the extraordinary circumstances Westover faced growing up may not be relatable to the majority of readers, Educated tells the story of how she was able to learn to love herself overcome cultural trauma by immersing her mind in education. Although my story has not been nearly as exceptional as Westover, I too use learning as an escape from my experiences, and have channeled an immense amount of personal growth through my education.
As I read Westover’s experience of moving to a new city alone, and enrolling in college for the first time, I related to a lot of the cultural and intellectual clashes she described with my experience moving to the United States from Mexico. Not knowing any English, months passed before I could communicate with my classmates. I felt alone; my mind swarmed with thoughts, yet I lacked the nerve and skill to express them.While my background, age, and circumstances greatly differed from the ones in Educated (I was a child overcoming a language barrier, contrasted with a young-adult who had never attended school), Westover and I both experienced feelings of constant frustration, anxiety, and overwhelming confusion. These derived from placing ourselves in an unfamiliar setting in which we lacked preparation to be in, yet they sparked a period of unconventional growth for both of us. I found myself engrossed in learning about new cultures, languages, and literature. Similarly, Westover learned of her love for school, and her desire to understand her world from an analytical point of view. Despite the hardship of these experiences, we have both developed into the people we are today because of them.
Like Westover, I come from a religious family that operates in a fairly patriarchal way. Moving to California granted me a new perspective, prompting me to question many of my own Jewish and Hispanic traditions as I perceived their misogynistic roots. In the part of the novel where Westover interprets her first feminist classic reading as a catalyst to distance herself from her family’s views, I felt that she had encapsulated my own mindset perfectly. My pursuit of education has allowed me to mature personally as well as intellectually, and discern for myself which parts of my culture bring me joy and development, and which parts are simply standing in the way of my goals. Westover’s decisions to get vaccinated, speak up about her brother’s abuse, stray away from traditional Mormon gender roles, and pursue a PhD are all concrete results of her flourishing mindset, and I aspire to one day approach life with the same courage and tenacity that she has.
The vulnerability that Westover conveys in her writing by detailing her precise thoughts through each stage of her life is consistent, and allows the reader to sympathize with her much better. By outlining her sentiments in depth, she allows the reader to connect with her thoughts and experiences and apply her message to their own lives, rather than just viewing her work as an outsider. Reading this book was both eye-opening and inspiring, and successfully communicated the message that education is crucial.
Works Cited
Westover, T. (2018). Educated: A memoir. New York, NY: Random House Large Print.