65 pages • 2 hours read
Winona Guo, Priya VulchiTell Me Who You Are: Sharing Our Stories of Race, Culture, & Identity
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “We Are All ‘Normal’”
The introduction to this chapter finds the authors meeting with Attorney General Sean Reyes at Utah’s Capitol Building. Some people in the building assume the authors are from Asia, and the authors notice how the passersby skew white, from the politicians to the visitors. Yet Reyes is Filipino Hawaiian and feels pride in his difference: He is “proud of being non-White and being American; to him, there [is] no gap that could make him belong any less to this country [...] He [makes] [the authors] feel that his power was as normal as any other White man in the building” (213). Segueing into the 11 stories that follow, the authors consider what life would be like if all people saw diversity as normal rather than whiteness as the norm.
Safia, a Black Muslim woman and pageant participant, embraces her difference and argues that the standard of beauty should not be based on whiteness. Footnotes describe the burkini (which she wears in pageants) and whitening advertisements in Muslim countries. Eryn’s former ballet teacher told her to change her natural Black hair. She then realized that God sees her as beautiful no matter her hairstyle or appearance. Footnotes address stereotypes about dreadlocks and natural Black hair, as well as the Black ballet dancers Raven Wilkinson and Misty Copeland.
In a group interview, Nastesho, Mohamed, and Hayat discuss the need to remind people that they are American; Nastesho and Hayat wear hijabs, Hayat is Ethiopian, and Nastesho is Somali. People, particularly the police, also ask Mohamed where he is from. Nastesho further argues for being both a Muslim and a feminist, saying that the two “are not mutually exclusive” (234). She sees feminism as about choice and argues that women should have the choice to wear a hijab and that Muslim women should be included in feminism. Footnotes detail the number of news reports on terrorist attacks in the US by Muslims versus other terrorists.
Ronnie B., who is Black, explains his father is involved in his life even though he is in prison. Standing Alone is an Indigenous American Mormon. She got pregnant and had an abortion, and the Mormon church made her “confess” her “sins” to a man who then asked about her sexual activities. She dealt with a mental health condition after that and then connected with Indigenous American culture, realizing that these cultures see people, especially women, as more equal. Footnotes outline the numbers of Black fathers who live with their children, statistics on African American versus white people in prison, the concept of racial profiling, and the history of the Mormon Church.
Claudette, a Latina chef, embraces the role of food in culture. She addresses the problem with mainstream grocery stores’ “ethnic” aisles, and a footnote details the numbers of chefs by race and gender. Another note addresses the concept of ethnicity.
Gerry, an Indonesian immigrant who does social justice work, explains how his name relates to his identity and his acceptance of it. He also discusses his mother’s marriage to a white man who is a conservative Republican (a footnote addresses conservative news media). Jane, a Hawaiian who married a Micronesian, describes how people discriminate against Micronesians in Hawaii. A footnote explains the history of US bombs tested on the Marshall Islands.
Neda, who is Iranian, felt like an outsider in high school in Orange County, California, so she embraced being different. Her strong interest in music helps her see its power to tell stories, change ideas, unite people, and help people understand each other’s cultures. She discusses the benefits of having two cultures, saying it makes her more flexible, conscious, and stronger. A footnote describes “in-group preferences” in young children in relation to the concept of fitting in.
Shoghi notes that African Americans are the only Americans who don’t have an ancestral association with a country. He explains how they avoid association with Africa because people stereotypically associate Africa with things like hunger. He was born in Cameroon and grew up in Germany, and he notes that Germans have their own stereotypes about foreigners. He has also dealt with problems with the police in the US, explaining that an officer stopped him due to a misunderstanding but then apologized. Footnotes describe the term “xenophobia” and statistics on police shootings of Black people.
Louise and her family were sent to concentration camps after Pearl Harbor and faced discrimination as Japanese American people after their release. She avoided sharing her story with her children but realized the importance of doing so after they were misinformed about the Japanese during World War II at school. Now she and her family support other immigrants and marginalized populations. Footnotes describe the Japanese concentration camps in the US, as well as the lack of sabotage or espionage by Japanese American people during World War II.
Chapter 7 Analysis
Chapter 7’s exploration of difference as normal argues that “rich diversity, not Whiteness, should be normal” (213). Whiteness has historically been constructed as the norm against which all other races have been constructed and compared, as discussed in “A Brief History of Whiteness.” The new normal that the authors espouse centers on difference and confidence in that difference, such as that shown by Safia and Eryn. Embracing difference means more than merely accepting differences in appearance; it can also mean embracing one’s culture, as the stories of Standing Alone, Claudette, and Gerry demonstrate. Appearance can intersect with culture, as with Nastesho and Hayat. Just as race impacts everything, as described in Chapter 1, difference impacts everything. However, when individuals embrace their difference, it can help others see their difference as “normal.” Because race underlies all parts of society, this would lead to people embracing different races as normal.
Because Identity Is Intersectional, reconceptualizing race in this way has implications for how people from other marginalized groups understand themselves and one another. What’s more, the book implicitly proposes centering difference—racial or otherwise—in all discussions of identity. Nastesho, for example, notes that she is both different as a Muslim woman because she is a feminist and that she is different as a feminist because she is Muslim. The fact that some people do not accept this dual identity harkens to Chapter 6’s focus on division, this time within the feminist community. However, Nastesho’s story suggests that difference and division are not the same thing; the latter is a possible but not essential response to the former.
The book therefore offers an implicit response to the idea that focusing on difference itself creates division. In fact, it suggests that ignoring difference can be as harmful as treating difference as abnormal. This is the critique the authors offer of the idea of “color-blindness,” and it also underpins stories like Louise’s. Louise neglected to share her story with her children only to realize the importance of doing so when they received incorrect information about their Japanese heritage at school. This also evokes the theme of Stories, Language, and Conversations About Race and Identity, showing how sharing stories can help correct misperceptions about oneself and others while also creating stronger bonds between people.
