Rite of Passage Essay - 675 Words

In Conrad Philip Kottak’s â€Å"Rite of Passage† he mentions the three stages of a rite of passage. Anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep defines these stages as Separation, Margin, and Aggregation. Victor Turner, another anthropologist, focused on Margin, which he referred to as liminality. Not only can a rite of passage be an individual experience, but it can also be a communal experience which Turner called â€Å"communitas.† Many of us experience this â€Å"communitas† in different ways such as my Hispanic culture that experiences quinceneras. Quinceneras are a rite of passage for young girls’ transition from adolescence to womanhood. I for one never experienced this rite of passage. In my culture it is traditional for a young girl to go through the†¦show more content†¦As a Latina girl, I grew up thinking I was going to experience the most memorable night of my life once I turned fifteen but that was not the case. At thirteen I knew that once I turned fourteen I needed to start planning everything out a year ahead. It is August 13 and I am officially fourteen and I’m excited because now I can start planning with my mother but she breaks news to me that she can’t afford this rite of passage. At first my only thought was â€Å"I hate this! All my friends are having a quince, why can’t I?† and I remember just loathing the fact that I wasn’t able to have one for quite some time. I understood where my mother was coming from. She was a single mother and was raising two other children other than myself so it must have been hard to say â€Å"No, you can’t have a quince.† She would tell me how much she wishes that she would have thrown the biggest party for my rite of passage. As the year passed me by it gave me time to think and time to realize that it did cost money to throw such a festivity and that it’s not as important as many traditional Latinos see it. All I really needed when I turned fifteen was my family and most of all my mother who raised me to be a reasonable, smart, mature woman. What I learned from this experience was that I didn’t need a big party to know that I made the rite of passage to become a woman; all I needed was those who were close to me, responsibility andShow MoreRelatedEssay on Rites of Passage1580 Words   |  7 Pagesï » ¿ Rites of Passage Although there are many different types of rites of passage they differ in many ways, some much more extreme than the others. There are so many different cultures that have a ton of different ways of expressing rites of passage. The three different cultures that will be discussed are the United States of America, Malaysian, and Balinese adolescents. 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