This past Friday for one of our stories we were supposed to read Cultural Baggage. Overall I felt that this story was very interesting and offered a very different viewpoint on cultural identity. The narrator feels that America today is very much so immersed in the idea of our roots. On one hand he describes the people who state that they know exactly what their ancestors were doing while he sits back and says that he does not have any roots. The narrator discusses how growing up his parents did not force him/her to follow any type of guidelines but instead let him make his own decisions when it came to religion and ethnic choices. The narrator suggests that parents are in a way forcing their children to follow their own beliefs instead allowing them to make decisions of their own hence the title Cultural Baggage. Personally I would have to agree with the narrators assumptions on the concept of cultural baggage. For last Friday's class we were also supposed to read a story entitled Pet Milk. Personally I enjoyed this story a lot more than Cultural Baggage. I felt that the descriptive nature of the story gave a much more realistic feel to the characters and what they were doing. While reading the story I could almost feel the characters and could to a certain extent envision what they were doing. For example while reading the part of them on the train I could picture in my head a couple kissing on the train as they raced through Chicago. This story in my opinion is a perfect example of what can happen when detail is added to the setting of the story.