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Dual Identities

A picture of my parents and cousin from Diwali.
In my house we celebrate Diwali and have a small Christmas.
I don't know many Finnish people, even after being here for five months. But I feel that I've done pretty well, considering I'm in an international program and can say I have four Finnish friends (one isn't quite a friend, but he has helped me out quite a bit) and I can say I have nascent Finnish language skills. I've grown comfortable here, though I still feel like a foreigner.

One man who has been living in Finland for almost a decade came here from an African country for his masters. He married a Finn but cannot speak any Finnish himself.

And yet, I have the sense that he still does not feel like he belongs here. In one of our classes, he told us how he still gets called racial slurs walking down the street. He commented offhandedly one day “I don’t know what I am.”

I understand this feeling, to an extent. I have never been called a racial slur but I know what it feels like to be straddling two countries, never quite belonging in either one.

People have said that coming to another country makes you more aware of your own nationality and cultural identity. This has been true for me as well. I’m starting to see how I am a mixture of Americanness and Indianness. And I realize how much I don’t neatly fit into either category. So when people ask me where I’m from and I am forced to answer the US, I feel like I am hiding a huge part of me. Most people do not ask any more questions and I, being shy and reserved, do not elaborate.

Even if I were to elaborate though, how would I explain that I am Indian in my respect for elders, in my care and attention to others and in my tastes in cooking, music and clothing but American in my need for independence, order and discipline? How do I explain that I simultaneously fall under both categories and fit in neither category? Indians born and raised in India consider me American and Americans consider me Indian. With both groups I am the “other.”
This question of identity has cropped up at various moments in my life and for various reasons. I feel it strongest though when I am outside of the US. When we were in South Korea on a ten day vacation, I felt it because my family and I so obviously did not fit in with the rest of the crowd. I felt it in India because I took great effort to blend in as much as possible. There, my Hindi was good enough that a student’s father asked me if I was from south India. He knew I Hindi wasn’t my mother tongue but He couldn’t tell that I was not, in fact, Indian.

And now I think about it mostly because I have been forced to. As part of the Fulbright program I was required to give a presentation on an aspect of American culture. To me, this question was daunting because I didn’t feel I had reasonable knowledge about any aspect of American culture to give a presentation to a room full of very intelligent, thoughtful group of people. So I chose to make my whole talk about why I didn’t feel feel like an expert on American culture in the first place. A friend asked me to give the same presentation for an organization she is part of. Here is a video of the presentation. I started the talk off by showing this video and then explained why "Where are you from?" is such a difficult question to answer.

In case the hyperlinks aren't working here are the direct links to both videos. Hopefully these work!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crAv5ttax2I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwyjLeH8Q2I&feature=youtu.be








Comments

  1. PRJanuary 17, 2017 at 11:38 PM

    As usual a profound observation that reflects all that we have felt as immigrants, Avanti. The video link does not work for me. None is second line is nine?

    ReplyDelete

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