Caroline Franco
Mrs. Buckley
Writ 101
25 August 2016
“Notes of a Native Speaker” by Eric Liu and “Lawyer’s League” by Sherman Alexie discuss the power of identity and the common struggle of assimilation for those who are of color. However, Eric Liu discusses his success and how assimilating means that “ he cannot gain the world without losing his soul” while Sherman Alexie discusses the hardships and thoughts that come with being a person of color in a primarily white political world. Though they both have different outcomes to their lives and stories, their hardships shaped them and made them think about their own identity and place in the world.
Eric Liu discusses what it means to him to be white even when he technically isn’t really a white person. Eric came from immigrant parents who cared about how he turned out as a person and not as an Asian. To him, his whitness was thrust upon him but yet it was not his own conscious choice. He doesn’t understand his own identity because it is a mix of what he thinks he should be and what he has become. “Now I want desperately to see my face, to see what time has marked and what it has erased. But I can find no mirror, except the people who surround me. And they are mainly pale, powerful” shows that Eric Liu doesn’t see that his identity lies in who he is and not where he comes from.
Richard feels his identity is what he can do and how successful he can become as an African American and as a Native American. He doesn’t see his identity in himself but only what he can do to climb the political ladder. He turns down love because he feels as if marrying a white woman would hurt his political agenda as becoming one of the true and excellent African and Native American politicians. He gets angry at the thought of racism and takes the easy way out but he never comprehends the consequences of his actions because to him he will never be Bill Bill. “Okay, true, I broke Big Bill’s nose but he was ugly to begin with”, he will never feel the power and the immunity Big Bill has and that plagues him because being who he is he feels he will never get to the root of his identity and that is success.
Eric Liu and Sherman Alexie both make points on identity and how it is rooted in every individual. Eric Liu makes the point that he gave up his identity as an Asian man and received the power he wanted where Sherman Alexie’s character Richard tried to keep his identity as an African American and Native American but never received the power he wanted because the way other would people view him warp his view on the world. The common theme of identity shows that no matter how one lives their life they will still struggle with who they are.