Who am I? Where do I belong? Because it certianly isn't here

I started a paper today for my course on Diversity in the Classroom. I was asked to interview someone who is culturally and linguistically diverse from myself. I was to discover the struggles and successes they encountered while attending school. The purpose was to help future teachers like myself learn what they can do to be supportive of diverse students in their classroom.

I asked to interview my best friend on the Reservation. She is like my big sister. We talked for hours last night. I felt that I could identify with her plight, but only in the slightest way. I felt that I had been accepted on the Reservation and become one with the dirt...but I also know I fit in with the pioneer town just outside its boarders. I can enjoy and be accepted in both worlds, but I haven't decided which one I want to join.

I REALLY LOVED the introduction I created for my paper. I wanted to brag and share it with you. I feel it shows my love for dirt, and my love for the lush. It conveys how my heart can be connected to both worlds, but be torn by the contempt felt between the two communities. I hope you feel something. Anything. Just feel.

            "The Navajo Reservation is located where the four corners of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona meet. It is also the location where the desert floor seems to blend into the sky in a transition of brown and gold to orange and yellow. It can hold the hot piercing air in a stagnant haze, or it can blow and twist as if the sky were a giant swirling whip. The Reservation holds the Navajo Nation, a separate governing entity, surrounded by the small white pioneer towns common to the Southwest. It is on the border of these two worlds where April ****** was born and raised. “Who am I?” she asks.

           "Between the Navajo city of Shiprock and the small farming town of Kirtland, New Mexico, runs the invisible boarder of the Reservation and the “outside world.” In this particular location, the line is drawn with a physical mountain: one side is spiked and jagged; the other is smooth and bulbously rising from the ground. One side is dirt, with sharp edges of rocks, shale, weeds, and cliffs. The other is green, billowy, and full of trees. “Where do I belong?” she wonders.

            "April asks herself these questions, because she certainly does not believe this is where she fits in or belongs. This invisible line is simply that: a division. There is no blending of ground and sky, just as there is no blending of cultures. Stale and stagnant faces ignore diversity with heated contempt, and yet swirling and twisting emotions torture the air. It is where the two cultures meet and clash that April tried to find who she was"