Meet Lori Lizarraga

What was the topic?/ Who spoke on it and what are their views?/ What are your views on the topic?/ Did they present the issue fairly?/ Was your viewpoint called into question?/ Did you change a previously held belief as a result of listening to this discussion?/ Mention anything else you’d like.

The topic is about a women named Lori who goes in depth with her actual name. In which she asks herself how/why people don’t go by their birth certificate name, except rather be called by their nickname. The people in this podcast who spoke is Lori Lizarraga, Calderon Lizarraga, Demby, and Parker. Lori Lizarraga’s view point on this is that nicknames are actually an important thing to recognize. For Instance, Lori says that people who immigrate with foreign names change their names to a simpler way to pronounce, because of the struggle to correct people who mispronounce it. This then guides us to people who are immigrants that change their child’s names to an American name. Just to make it easier to pronounce. They may probably do this to not be discriminated against or prejudiced against. Many like Lori never really asked themselves what’s the deal with nicknames that are close to their actual names. In so she understands that she considered her nickname, a norm. People who change their name to a nickname didn’t want to encounter embarrassment and wanted to be able to “fit in”. Immigrant names have a long history in U.S. culture that shows prejudice and discrimination against immigrants. My views on the topic is that I agree with this and I have never even asked myself why my mom chose the name that was given to me or if it correlated to any of this topic. The fact that Lori’s mom says “It felt like I was being assigned this name that I didn’t identify with.” makes me think are we being separated from our true cultural background just to fit in the society that you settle in. The place that we settle in or immigrant families settle in, to have a better future, a better life. I feel like the tiniest unconcerned thing that I have encountered during my childhood actually was a major thing that takes us way back to the late 19th century. Feeling of belonging is something that I feel many of us are struggling with today. Reject of cultural identity, shame, lower self esteem is all the things that you can encounter with just a mispronunciation. It’s scary to think about how your named affects your value in a society. In this podcast I feel like they partly issued the situation fairly because I wish maybe I could of heard the viewpoint of somebody who is American and never had to experience this and what are their thoughts when they mispronounced someone’s name. My viewpoint was called into question because it makes me ask myself now is my mother or father who is Dominican, had experienced this themselves?, when they immigrated. It even makes me want to ask them if they feel an obligation to fit in the society. I have changed a previously held belief, as a result of this podcast because now I am more aware of when I mispronounce somebody’s name and how they might feel. It makes me believe how when i got my nicknames it could be something to do with this topic. Also the fact that I’ve been trying to feel normal like Lori did just to “fit in”, in this society. This makes me want to embrace more of my parents home in the Dominican Republic. I found it very interesting this podcast. Especially how “people with Anglo-Saxon names are more likely to be called back for job interviews compared with people with identifiably Asian names, African American names, Muslim names, etc”. This statement makes me realize that people who come from immigrant places have to break this norm and start to embrace how they first came to this country. It feels like a mask from your true identity.