National & Personal Identity

Mary Crow Dog, writing about her life as a "Lakota Woman," says, "It is not the big, dramatic things so much that get us down, but just . . . trying to hang on to our way of life, language, and values while being surrounded by an alien, more powerful culture" (35). I survived some big, dramatic things, but I still have more trouble remembering the value of a story my grandmother told me or a word in Russian that means something slightly different from anything it could be translated into in English than I do remembering the history I was able to see firsthand.

I was born in Vitebsk, in northern Belorussia, when it was still part of the U.S.S.R. All my relatives are from that area of the world. My family moved to Riga, in Latvia, when I was 6, and we were living there when communism ended in 1991 and everyone in my whole world had to figure out new ways to live. Belorussia became a different place when communism ended. It was not the place in which I was born, even though it looked a lot like it.

I have always thought of myself as Russian, which mea

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Approximate Word count = 871
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page)

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