Alan McLawhorn

Aaron Kashtan

UWRT 1102

7 May 2017

Introduction to American Identity

Before I took this class this semester, I had never thought about what makes up American

identity. However, as I wrote my first artifact, I decided that a person doesnt have to be

American, but he or she has to have lived in the United States and that he or she must speak

English. Over the course of the next five artifacts, I basically kept the same opinion of American

identity, but I started to think of identity in a bigger sense. I found that many things have

determined our countrys identity, including religion, wars, race, and other historical events.

Im not sure how I developed as a writer over the course of writing these artifacts,

because I wasnt thinking about American identity on the last two abstracts, to be honest. I did

see, however, after I wrote them how they fit in with American identity. Also, to be honest, I

dont think I got better as a writer as it went on. In other words, I think I did better on some of

the earlier abstracts than the later ones.

Overall, the collection of abstracts shows the many things that make up American

identity. The first abstract is about me and my childhood up until now. As I say in that paper, I

was born in Japan, but I think of myself as an American because I have lived here most of my

life. In the second abstract, I expanded some to show that religion also has played a part in

American identity. We have many different people with different religions, including

Christianity, Mormonism, and Scientology. With the third abstract, I showed that events in our
history affect our American identity. I asked the question which war affected us more, World War

I or World War II. In the fourth abstract, I show how education affects our American identity. I

compared public schools and private schools, and tried to figure out which one was better. The

fifth abstract also shows how events help shape our American identity. It has to do with child

labor laws during the Industrial Revolution. The last abstract is an email I sent to a grocery store

manager looking for a summer job. This shows that young people looking for summer jobs is

part of American identity.

All these together describe American identity. I started with our identity as people that

have lived here for a while and speak English. Through writing this portfolio, I realized that our

identity also is caused by history, education, and religion.