Lucas Pires dos Santos

Rhetorical analysis from the text Cultural Baggage from Barbara

Ehrenreich, 1992
Finding your own heritage or at least the origins of your family is
an issue considered to be of great importance for some people.
These roots are usually related to the idea of carrying a legacy
from the family and passing it forward to the next generation. The
author, Barbara Ehrenreich, explores the idea of pursuing this
legacy questioning herself the reasons why it would be relevant
and always trying to make references to the way her parents raised
her and the way she raised her children.
During a conversation with an acquaintance the author found
herself intrigued after being questioned about her cultural heritage.
She uses the word None to represent her nonidentity to any kind
of familiar heritage, at least not long dated, and uses examples to
emphasize this idea saying that she is a mix of different customs
from different nationalities, that she doesnt identify herself with
any ritual regarding ancient generations.
After being put in front of such deep existential matter, the author
sets as objective to define whether or not carrying a cultural
baggage is truly important for her life in specific, because this is
not clear for her yet.
Analyzing her family experiences the author finds a pattern to
formulate her thesis. Barbara believes she is part of a group she
called Who do not believed, who do not carry on traditions, who
do not do things just because someone has done them before. She
supports this conclusion exemplifying through an answer she had
from her children about not believing God, just like her
antecessors, and noticing that her parents always told her to look
forward and think for herself, and this her true legacy, to belong to
the Race of none as she described and proudly recognizes she
could guide her children the same way. Therefore, this idea of
independence explains her non identification to any other tradition
but the tradition of not having one.
Cultural Baggage was originally published in The New York
Times Magazine, so the audience of this content is the public, the
readers of the magazine.
I disagree with the author in some specific points, because
claiming that she doesnt carry a cultural tradition maybe reflects
that she is just unable to see. In countries like the United States,
which receive lots of immigrants, the mixing of cultures process is
more intense, but in spite of this factor it is possible to identify
some characteristics from older times. What I mean is that if you
do not notice what you do come from a tradition (consciously),
doesnt mean that there is no tradition involved.
The idea of simply ignoring the past or the traditions as I
understood that the author proposed should be more balanced in
my conception. Because looking back helps not to repeat mistakes
so doing it is not always a waste of time. Besides, it is important to
understand certain traditions, because they exist for a reason, and
maybe that reason is interesting, maybe not, but it is not possible to
evaluate it if it is simply ignored.