09-11-2019 PADAWER

Padawer, Gay, and Chabon all express themes of a crumbling self identity in their works, yet show many different situations, causes, effects, and long term outcomes in regards to the respective subjects. One may not think that an adopted 62-year-old woman, a woman in her 40’s, and a 13-year-old boy from a well off family have much in common, but society ruined their personal identities by thrusting unwelcome opinions, definitions, and trends onto them. If it wasn’t for the obsession that modern age has with exactly defining oneself as specific percentages of various heritages, Sigrid Johnson would still feel stable in her life as an predominantly African American woman, much like how Gay and young Abe Chabon would feel if those around them ceased their attempts to stuff them into tiny, unnecessarily specific boxes. In Padawers article about Johnson, she quotes David Brodzinsky, who says that “our identity is what grounds us and gives our lives meaning” (Padawer 6). This statement perfectly sums up how the disruption of these subjects sense of self could have caused catastrophic effects in their psyche.