Jon DeJesusWriting the Essay II 11/1/2018Immigrant Voices Acculturation: A Loss or Gain I remember growing up and coming home late after school, my abuela would have the stove on and the scent of sancocho filled the apartment. Sancocho was one of her favorite dishes to make: potatoes, beef, corn, sofrito, broth, and a side of white rice. I would always have it served in a bowl and mix my rice into the sancocho. For years my abuela would say that my bowl reminded her of this city, New York City. I never got what she meant until I was in high school--that was the first time I heard the term melting pot, which New York City is known for being. As soon as I heard it I thought about my abuela’s sancocho, different cultures like each ingredient coming together to make something new. Another term for this is acculturation, when different cultures come together and start to mix.As David Sam and John BerryAcculturation: When Individuals and Groups of Different Cultural Backgrounds Meet,they state “ The most widely used definition of acculturation is ‘those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original culture patterns of either or both group’”(473). Reading that definition I realized that it describes me. I come from a heavily Puerto Rican family, so my Saturday mornings were filled with waking up to bachata and the smell of Pine-Sol, but I also grew up very American, I am one of the only people in my family not fluent in Spanish. My mom’s side of the family, who still lives in Puerto Rico, like to say I am not Puerto Rican I am a Nuyorican (New York Puerto Rican). This got me thinking: is acculturation a loss or a gain of culture? Through literature, media, and my own family’s personal experiences I can prove that its a gain of culture. 1
