Khaliuna BayasgalanThroughout my life, I have been taught the idea that it is bad to be different and to avoid being unique. As a teenager, conforming to society may be the best path forward since you are still discovering who you are, but it can lead to powerful internal conflicts if you lose your identity completely. Some will say that being yourself will make you happier by not pretending to be someone you're not. Others insist that being yourself will separate you from others and always make you feel alone. On the other hand, I believe that being true to ourselves will allow people to see our true identity without disguise. People will see what we are really like inside and will be able to appreciate our true selves. In American Born Chinese, Gene Yang argues that staying true to yourself rather than conforming to society's norms is beneficial since you do not have to hide your true identity to fit in. Specifically, Yang reveals how fitting in requires letting go of who you are and being self-aware. For example, the Monkey King returns from dinner and issues a law throughout the mountain of flowers and fruits: “All monkeys must wear shoes” (55). The Monkey King wishes to change his physical characteristics to adapt to the other gods. He thinks he'll fit in if he just wears shoes and looks like them, but it's not practical to change because you cause more problems with the new changes. The monkeys could not function like normal monkeys because they could not climb trees and they had difficulty adapting to the new changes. They had to sacrifice the skills they were born with to carry human values. Although some may say that conforming to society will help... middle of paper ... not knowing what they were really thinking and feeling like I wasn't as good as them. But now that I've become more mature, I've realized how immature and dense I was. I realized the negative aspects of conformity and how wanting to change who you are to fit in would make you insecure all the time and that if everyone had ordinary names no one would be special and everyone would have the same name. Even though my name has no special meaning, I decided to keep it because, in American Born Chinese, Gene Lang emphasizes that an individual must make an effort to understand others and be themselves. In Black Boy, Richard Wright argues that conforming to a threatening environment is natural and cannot be prevented. I agree with ABC and believe that accepting yourself and knowing who you are will benefit other generations and yourself..