In It’s Hard Enough Being Me by Anna Lisa Raya, Raya describes the crisis in her identity crisis. In a very personal style she discusses how her experiences helped her understand the culture that she is a part of and ultimately who she is. While the essay provides in-depth details of her experiences she fails to bring the reader along to her viewpoint. In her essay, Raya writes about her experiences as a multicultural American at Columbia University in New York. She describes the confusion she felt about her identity once she arrived there and tries to explain all the factors that led to it. She takes us back to her past where grew up in a predominantly Mexican neighborhood in L.A, where all of her close friends were Mexican, As Raya she…show more content… First of all, she never gives credible evidence that any of her statements are true or happen generally. For example when she says “ You can’t even speak Spanish without being called a ‘spic’ or ‘wetback’, this seems like the use of hasty generalization. Raya never really says that she has ever been called any of those names or describes an instance where she has heard of someone being addressed like that. The funny thing is that back home her friends call her “whitey” because she has pale skin and green eyes. The author cannot even speak Spanish so that statement does not apply to her at all. She also uses oversimplification fallacy by stating “To be fully Latina in college, however I must know Spanish., I must satisfy the equation” Latina equals Spanish-speaking. There is no law or rule that states that to be considered Latino/a you must know Spanish or understand Spanish. Raya rambles on about how life is unfair to her because of labels and stereotypes but she doesn't exactly fit any of them, so in the end she does not gain the empathy of the reader. She also never gives ideas of how she could help herself in this
