Mossman's cultural identity

Mark Mossman describes cultural identity as something one discovers, especially over a period of time. Cultural identity is developed because of many things that are present in our lives, and the many different masks we all were as ourselves. Mossman speaks of a friend's father who coined him the one-legged wonder because of all the physical activities he could do along with how this child met these challenges head on and succeeded. This name definitely played a huge role in Mossman determining what his own cultural identity was. Even though adolescents struggle with their own person identity, many things that make up their identities are formed from their earlier childhood experiences. For Mossman, a big part of his identity was not only his disability, but was also how others viewed him with this disability, how he played several different roles concerning his disability along with the different audiences and how they treated and looked at him. Mossman is well aware of the different roles that he played and how this aids in his identity. He talks about what he considers is the normal side of him. When doing this he is speaking of how he seems normal to others, especially when he is sitting down with his artificial limb intact. Here he plays a role of the average person. However, Mossman played several different roles depending on the situation, the people he was dealing with, and of course, what he considered to be the desired outcome for him. While trying to sell papers in order to make some extra money, he wore shots and removed the artifical limb in order to play on the consumers sympathies. This of course worked. During this role, he was a disabled and disfigured boy. He used this role to not only because it was true that he was disfigured due to medical problems, but he also used this role to get sympathy from people as well. This disability is a big part of his life, but it is not the only thing that defines who he is. Because he went to church, religion became part of his identity. Even though he says he was speaking to God, he admitted that he was actually speaking for himself. While he is the one-legged wonder though, he takes on the role of being brilliant despite his disabilities. Yet when he is sitting down working with something, he takes on the role of normalacy. Mossman's description of all these different roles clearly demonstrates how identity is made up of many different things.