As I read the excerpt from Richard Rodriguez's The Hunger of Memory, I related to it in many ways. When he mentioned, "I was a bilingual child, a certain kind — socially disadvantaged — the son of working-class parents, both Mexican immigrants" (Rodriguez 6), I related to that statement. My mom immigrated from Ukraine to the US, and my dad from Uzbekistan. I, too, was (and still am) a bilingual person. When I was young, I spoke Russian before I learned to speak English. Like Rodriguez stated, going to an all English-speaking school is incredibly challenging while barely speaking any English. When he mentioned his reaction to hearing other people in public talk in Spanish, I felt like I had the same response to people speaking Russian. My eyes widen, and I always try to listen to their conversations. A second, third, or fourth language is part of one's identity. In this way, one could tie their experiences in the Progression 3 paper with another language and how it affected them/built them as a person.
After watching the video "Intro to Intersectionality," published by Taryn Crenshaw, I found this video to be incredibly useful in learning about intersectionality. As Crenshaw stated, intersectionality is when things that identify who we are (such as gender, race, sexuality, etc.) intersect each other somehow. I love how Crenshaw used a familiar idea, such as an intersection on the road, to explain what intersectionality is. Using something most people are familiar with can make it easier to digest and understand new information. I love how she mentioned, "think of identity as a window into seeing how and who someone is." She said identity includes how we perceive the world, our gender, sexuality, etc. Thinking of identity as a window, an important question to ask yourself (especially when writing the progression three paper) is: what do you see when you look through your window? Sometimes, something like someone's age or religion may not be a significant identifying factor compared to other things such as language or gender. Sometimes it could be the opposite. Seeing identity as looking into a window is a great analogy to consider when writing the progression three paper.