Mexican Food Armando Montano Analysis

“The Unexpected Lessons of Mexican Food.” This essay follows a Mexican-American boy, Armando Montano, on a journey to find himself. He starts off with telling you just a little bit about himself, like how he grew up, his nationality, and the food his father used to cook for him. Then it evolves into his journey to find himself. From when he went back to the place his dad was born, and he discovered just how rich his culture was and how much they use food to connect to it, to his time in Brazil and the way his friends seemed to except him as Mexican even when his own family did not. The whole essay he struggles to find his identity and just where he, a mix of cultures, belongs. There are two parts of himself that he struggles with which one
I am also a mix of cultures, both Venezuelan and white, it is hard for me to identify with either sides of myself. I see the same struggle in the author. Though he tells his friends, “*/*/*I’m technically American, Guillermo,’ I told him as I started slicing the avocados. ‘My dad is first generation and my mom is white. I’m considered Hispanic.’” He identifies with his dad when he is in Mexico. With me I choose to identify with one part of me more than the other just because I look more like one than the other. It has been happening since the beginning, when someone is different they are mocked. When someone does not quite fit in with one group or any group they are ridiculed. Life is just like high school sometimes. When everyone has their own clique, or culture. Every other culture is looked down upon sometimes even
I cannot speak of it the same way though since I have never been there or I was not born there so it is hard to connect with my family about these things. Just like the Author and his family, we grew up in totally different places and we were born into total different cultures. When I speak about these things with the same passion as my dad, a man who was born there and was bred into the culture, I get looked at like a pretender even if I do have the same passion and fire about what goes on there. By my family and even by my friends who are also Venezuelan. Just because I was not born there and I was not always a part of the culture does not mean that I do not care as much as those who happened to be full blood born and bred