Staying True to Self Examining the Elements which Hinder...

Assimilation by any standard is conversion. A type of conversion into another’s culture with new beliefs, morals, and traditions that changes an individual. Forced or willingly done, this act of assimilation is a loss of a person’s identity within his/or her own culture, whether he/or she is African, Native American, Chinese or Latino. However, who says that one must fully assimilate into another culture, taking on another’s entire way of living and committing to those beliefs, ridding oneself of one’s own heritage? In Lee Schweninger’s essay, â€Å"Back when I used to be Indian: Native American Authenticity and Postcolonial Discourse,† he acknowledges â€Å"the importance of tribal identity, an identity maintained despite and separate from those†¦show more content†¦Never can one fully escape the captivity of their heritage. But rather they hold onto pieces of their culture through daily activities, hobbies, or simple interactions, restraining them from ever completely adapting into another’s culture. With the use of critical arguments from Frederic Nietzsche, Deborah L. Madsen, and Gloria Anzaldua, this thesis will prove that the characters within the works of Sherman Alexie’s Reservation Blues and Tyehimba Jess’ Leadbelly can never fully assimilate into the dominate culture due to driving elements such as storytelling and dreaming which heavily impact their individual lives, promoting acceptance of their own heritage and cultural identity over that of the oppressive dominating society. Frederic Nietzsche’s ideas of the Apollonian and Dionysus helps explore the power of dreaming and the reality it forces one to confront within them as they battle with the thought of assimilation. The existence of the two ideas is contrasting in characteristic, but they don’t merely fight each other; they need each other to exist. The Apollonian state is in which, the person who is responsiv e to the stimuli of art behaves toward the reality of dream much the way the philosopher behaves toward the reality of existence; he observes exactly and enjoys his observations, for it is by these images that he interprets life, by these processes that he rehearses it. (Nietzsche 440) This is coupled