Skip to main content

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. 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

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Swinging into School

Well, kind of. We had orientation three days this week and had a chance to meet our fellow LLEES classmates. The program is truly international with students from Taiwan, Germany, China, Korea, Greece, Basque, Bangladesh, Iran and Mexico. There are only twelve of us right now but there are two students from Ghana and one from Nigeria who haven’t been able to make it due to visa issues. Besides being international, the areas of interest vary a great deal so it will be fascinating learning about everyone’s thesis topics and professional experiences. The inside of the cathedral Life on campus has changed dramatically. When I first got to Turku, you would see a few tourists hanging around the cathedral, which is on the edge of the University of Turku and Åbo Academy campuses (there are three universities in Turku, the third is Turku School of Applied Sciences). Now the area has throngs of students walking to and from the city center to the universities. Coming from a unive...

Reflections On Becoming A Teacher

This is something I wrote just trying to think about some of the things we have been learning and thinking about. My classes this semester are much more interesting and leave me feeling like connections are coming at me left right and center but the only way for me to process these connections is to write. So here is the first of (hopefully) many where I synthesize the ideas that are going through my head. I invite you to think with me and grow with me by commenting below (I do see your comments! I may even reply :) ) I want to spend some time reflecting on what I have been learning lately. My classes have been converging towards the practical spaces, realities and pedagogies that go into creating a multicultural, anti-racist educational system. I am drawing on three readings in this reflection that came from the same course. All were about teacher education. Two were easy to contrast. One was called the pedagogy of difference and the other was called the pedagogy of fear. The fi...

Change of Pace

A view of the Turku archipelago in the frigid weather. PC: Sami All of my time in the past month has been spent with doing one of two things: preparing for next year and making sure I get done with this year. The flurry of activity has been a welcome change to the rather luxuriously slow pace that had been defining my days up until now but in the process, this blog has fallen by the wayside. So what are these many things that have been taking up my time?   1.      Ice skating This is by far not what has occupied most of my time, but I think it has been the most refreshing. Last year I went ice skating only once and, as thrilling as it was, never got around to going again. Plus, the weather last year was so mild that you had to take advantage of cold days when they came to get much time on the ice. This year has been much better and ice skating has been a great excuse to bring people together. It’s this year’s version of chai. Thanks to my mo...