Who Do You Think You Are Belonging

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Essay on AOS – Belonging: Immigrant Chronicle and Who Do You Think You Are? An individual’s perceptions of belonging evolve in response to the passage of time and interaction with their world. Belonging is not given, it has to be achieved. Sometimes a long journey, that takes time must be endured before one can know their place in the world and where they belong. My study of two of Peter Skrzynecki’s poems ‘In the Folk Museum’ and ‘Post card’ has shown that Skrzynecki’s experience was that he really needed to come to terms with his cultural identity before he could accept who he really was and what it meant to belong. In the folk museum reflects Skrzynecki’s response to visiting an Australian museum. This visit makes Skrzynecki realise…show more content…
Skrzynecki has struggled to come to terms with his cultural identity and his sense of belonging. Skrzynecki seems to have had a sudden intuitive leap of understanding of what he must do to find himself. Once he finds himself he will be able to belong. The supplementary text I will be using is a BBC documentary, “Who do you think You Are?” The text explores the relationship between cultural identity and the concept of belonging. For Natasha Kaplinsky, a British news presenter and her distant cousin, Benny, the need to revisit the past; to engage with their cultural background is again very important. To find out who you are, where you come from and what your cultural background means to you is to gain a sense of your own identity and, without that, you will never have a true, authentic sense of belonging. Belonging can be a choice. The documentary begins with Natasha summing up what her cultural identity means to her. The technique of her engaging directly with the audience in a conversational tone enables viewers to empathise with her attitude. She relates that her first editor stated, “Kaplinsky, that’s not a very…um, telegenic name. Would you consider changing

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