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18111 Nordhoff Street

Northridge, CA 91330
25 October 2023
Makaio Jeffrey Wall
18111 Nordhoff Street
Northridge, CA 91330

Letter to a Friend

In today’s society we have normalized all the different identities that the people feel more
comfortable using. This goes hand in hand to being understanding towards people's choices and
differences when it comes to background identity or recent changes. A major factor that
influences such changes are typically life experiences and the specific perspective we gain from
them, either it’s good or bad. Even though certain issues have been understood, we maintain the
assumptions and stereotypes of people when it comes to identity and its background.

Initially everyone had faced a certain type of discrimination based on assumptions that
were successful in causing change within ourselves simply to avoid certain judgment. The
experiences that we face leads us to finding ourselves adjusting into something we are not and
eventually abandoning touch with our original language and culture roots/background. Youth
tend to experience the most transnational experiences due to inheriting a certain culture from
early years and later being influenced by American culture (Baltz, 2010). In this case, youth that
come from Central American immigrant families do develop the language and culture that they
had felt comfortable with but throughout the years of transnational experiences, many had faced
judgment simply for coming from a different culture which leads many to include themselves in
another culture, most common into the Hispanic culture. Throughout such changes, many had
come to accept the identity and language of the Hispanic community to avoid any sorts of
discrimination and confusion (Yarbrough, 2016). While adjusting within a new identity, a big
amount of people result in putting little to no importance about their background culture which
can also be for feeling ashamed of not being the same. The feeling of being ashamed also
connects to experiencing transnational experiences when it comes to feeling a need of belonging
and connecting with other people to avoid judgment. Resulting in lack of culture and language as
well as low performance from the youth. Language and culture begins getting influence into
shifting accents and traditions that feel more comfortable throughout time. Along with this,
schools and other youth environments had guided young ones to believe and see themselves part
of a community for the fact that it is most common.

To conclude, transnational experiences influence many immigrant families and first

generation youth to find themselves adjusting within another culture and identity which results in
abandoning original culture roots. Society has made it more complicated for those who identity
outside a common identity to be able to express their side of culture and language.