Lauren Johnson (LJ) CA 100W Thursday 6-8:45 Expository Essay

The Risky Business of World-Traveling

On standardized tests there is a section where the test-taker is to bubble in their ethnicity. Ten years ago there was no mixed race option for this section of the tests. Choosing which bubble to fill in was the first time I realized I was bicultural. Choosing a bubble was choosing which of my two cultures to identify with. Unknowingly, I was being thrust into one world without, for many years, exploring the other culture I am a part of. This concept of worldtraveling explored in Maria Lugones article Playfulness, World-Traveling, and Loving Perception is a catalyst in which Cherrie Moraga experiences the exploration of her mixed ethnicity. Her analysis and acceptance of her mixed culture is addressed in her article The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind. Through Moragas journey of uncovering her identity, she must travel between worlds, a journey that comes with inherit risks. World-traveling is a risky endeavor for someone who is bicultural because it involves the reconstruction of the self and perception of the world, as well as the acceptance that those perceptions, and ultimately the self, may change. In Maria Lugones article Playfulness, World-traveling, and Loving Perception she discusses world-traveling as a means to empathize through some other cultural perception. A world in my sense may be an actual society given its dominant cultures description and construction of life. (Lugones, 10) Lugones world-traveling concept is used to present a way for us as individuals and as a collective species to better understand ourselves and each other. Cherrie Moraga is of mixed ethnicity. Her mother is a U.S. born Mexican and her father

is French and British-Canadian. Her dominant culture has always been her Mexican culture, regarding her white side as something shameful that she does not want to claim as a part of herself. I am always hungry and always shamed by my hunger for the Mexican woman I miss in myself. (Moraga, 121) Moraga longs to feel whole in her Mexican ethnicity and dismisses her white heritage. It has taken Moraga a long time to realize that her inability to feel at ease with her identity is due to perceiving her white lineage as a stone in her shoe that needs to be plucked out rather than a beautiful component that will make her feel whole. In order for Moraga to come to terms with her identity, she must travel to the white world within herself. She does this by means of her late grandmother, described by her fathers sister. Youve got her spirit. Did you know that? (Moraga, 123) Due to her aunts comment, Moraga becomes hungry to know (Moraga, 123) and in that hunger allows herself to be willing to world travel. Moragas grandmother becomes a positive aspect within her white roots, and thus, within herself. As she explores the foreign white woman that is her grandmother, she discovers the foreign white woman in herself. But what would this mean for Moragas Mexican identity? In her exploration of her white culture she begins to feel guilt, due to the belief that she is abandoning the Mexican woman in her. She therefore tries to revert to her former beliefs of denying her other world. I learned to fear on the other side of the family, on the other side of me. (Moraga, 125) Accepting both sides of her ethnicity forces her to fully commit herself to world-traveling in order to come to terms with her identity. For Moragas journey, it is a battle between maintaining a connection with her Mexican and white heritage while under the constant threat of denial (Moraga, 127) of either half of her ethnicity, which would ultimately mean losing that connection. Asking me who I am in terms of my ethnicity is like asking if a zebra is black with white stripes or white with black stripes. People want to categorize me within an ethnic box that will make them feel more comfortable. But my two dominant heritages are who I am; I am blended. I

am the grey matter in a world that prefers to be black and white. Maria Lugones worldtraveling allows Cherrie Moraga to reconstruct what she thought she knew about herself ethnically. Her former inability to world travel prevented her from feeling whole and fully loving herself. Moraga takes a risk by traveling between her worlds, a process that produces guilt, confusion, and even denial. Through her journey she is able to find herself, ultimately setting herself free from a categorization.