Alex Monaghan
Mrs. Wooten
English 5th Hour
10 March 2011

In Mary Pipher’s quote, she says that “history is inextricably linked to identity.” History is very important to a person’s life and background. History can’t decide what kind of a person someone is, but how they live their life and their actions toward others will ultimately determine their identity. When I went to a concert, they had a guest speaker at the concert that talked about his past and how he created his identity. He came from a broken family. His mom was a prostitute and his dad left him and his mom when he was at a very little age. Instead of letting his past bother him and making that his identity, he set out to create his own identity by using his past as how not to treat his family. He talked to us about how he found Jesus Christ and made him his savior and accepted him at the center of his life, and now he goes from city to city talking about God and how he has created his own identity for himself with the help of God. The speaker told us about how through all of those things that have happened in his past have caused him to become a strong person, but how anyone can make their own identity regardless of their background or the actions that they have done in the past. In the essay “On Being a Cripple”, Nancy Mairs talks about being crippled and what it is like. She says “I made the choice” of whether to be called handicapped, disabled, crippled, or another term used for physically disabled people. (Mairs, 231) She goes onto to talk about how she doesn’t let her disability bother her as much, and how she has become the person she is today. When people let their disabilities or other problems affect them it changes the way they think, and the way they act towards other people, hence creating a poor identity for themselves. Mairs tells about how she has created her own identity regardless of her disabilities and how any person can create their own idenity. “The Way to Rainy Mountain”, an essay written by N. Scott Momaday, is about a group of old mountain people. When the author returns to the mountain and talks to her grandmother, her grandmother tells her how they were “no longer slaves” to the “simple necessity of survival. (Momaday, 267) This is an excellent example of how people have not let their background’s bothered them and developed their own identity through struggle and hard work. In Shelby Steele’s essay, “On Being Black and Middle class”, she talks about how Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X didn’t let their race affect their identity. Steele says “the particular pattern of racial identification” that come out in the sixties and that continues today insists on average-class “blacks in the opposite direction”. (Steele, 369) They sit how to create their identity and didn’t just do that, but they did more. They laid a foundation and a pathway for other people to find their own identity. The actions that people do ultimately affect their identity way more than their background and past. When someone treats another person kindly, it makes that person seen as a helpful and friendly person, regardless of their background. Whether someone comes from a rich, strong family or a poor, broken family, they can control their identity and the way people think of them by their actions towards themselves, others, and the world.

Works Citied
Nancy, Mairs. “On Being a Cripple.” 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology. Ed. Samuel Cohen. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. 231-244. Print.
Momaday, N. Scott. “The Way to Rainy Mountain.” 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology. Ed. Samuel Cohen. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. 265-271. Print.
Steele, Shelby. “On Being Black and Middle Class.” 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology. Ed. Samuel Cohen. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. 366-379. Print.