UMM is working with our community to provide you issues from a global perspective. This month, we are proud to work with South Asian Parent (www.southasianparent.com) to explore negotiating identities.
Negotiating my Identity
By Sameen Amin
“I felt intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new, approved of on either side of the hyphen” – Jhumpa Lahiri, Indian-American novelist
The world is a funny place. Interconnected, yet so segmented. Affords so many freedoms, yet takes away so many rights. Celebrates your culture, but then laughs at your accent. So it is here, in these concocted contradictions and ignorant idiosyncrasies that I am faced with the question of belonging. It’s a loaded one, yet one that I’m asked most frequently. “Where are you from?” Often followed by, “but where are you really from?” Sounds like an innocent query. That is, if you know how to answer it. I’m from Canada by way of Pakistan, I guess. I grew up here, but I’m from there, I think.
I’m a Pakistani-Canadian, wait no, I’m a Canadian-Pakistani. Constantly oscillating between two countries with distinct cultures can really make your head spin.
Canada is my adopted homeland, and Pakistan is my birthplace. I’m your quintessential, confused, hyphenated person. The dreaded hyphen, it may look like an insignificant dash, but it is so much more. Oh yes, that sweet, smooth line carries with it the monumental task of bridging my two sides, and ultimately forging my identity.
For me, growing up ‘brown’ in the West meant a constant cultural struggle. The two sides of my hyphen were never at peace. One would only shine at the expense of the other. At home, my parents created a space steeped in our Pakistani heritage. This, cushioned by frequent trips to my birthplace, served as a constant connection with where I came from. But daily life in Canada began to affirm a whole other side of me. It was a bizarre feeling, wanting to be at two places at once, wishing to be two different people with just one body.
I couldn’t fathom talking about my Pakistani customs with my friends at school, for fear of being laughed at. No one likes the cultural “other”. My parents raised me in an open space and never pushed their beliefs on me, still I felt more and more disconnected from their reality. Their home was in Pakistan, constant and unchanged, mine was shifting. This once foreign land was my home now.
So, how do you learn to revel in the hazy grey area? Can you ever truly love straddling the fence? I did, eventually. But it was only when I stopped shutting myself out of me. I have come to embrace the blurriness in between. I’ve learned that who you are doesn’t have to be black and white. I stacked up the perks of having vastly different experiences to draw from; variety is the spice of life after all. Most importantly, I realized I am not alone. I’m among an entire generation of immigrant children who use these neat hyphenated monikers to describe themselves. My Pakistani culture will always constitute a large part of who I am, but my Canadian existence is the cornerstone of who I’ve become.
So just when I thought I had it all figured out, the fateful events of 9/11 happened. Suddenly, in a strange series of events my religion began to mitigate who I was. People started describing me as a Muslim-Canadian, my Pakistani heritage was just the cherry on top of the cake. Suffice to say, this perturbed me a little bit. Not only because I was more than just a “Muslim-Canadian” — the monolithic term that was being used to describe me, my Guyanese, Lebanese and East-African friend — but also because defining myself as just Muslim opened up a whole new can of worms.
My religious affiliation has always been a sidebar to my identity, now it’s front and center. And in this post-9/11, a climate of fear surrounds me, and the place I’ve learned to comfortably call my home, now looks at me with suspicion. So I must traverse these loaded labels once again and reconceptualize my already hyphenated identity. Only this time, I know the drill. I’ve been here before.
South Asian Parent (www.southasianparent.com) is the first magazine for South Asian families that provides information and perspectives with which to tackle the ever-changing domain of South Asian parenthood. As a voice for South Asian parents and children worldwide, it provides a forum for discussion of culturally taboo topics, information to increase understanding of parental and child development, and insight on the multitude of cultural and societal pressures faced by South Asians.
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UMM would love to hear from you on how you negotiate your identity! I am constantly navigating and juggling multiple identities as a woman, mother, wife, Asian Indian, British, American resident, a career women and a global citizen. Wow, it can be tiring! But one identity that remains constant is the desire to help others. And you?
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Uttama, Ulash Dunlap. Ulash Dunlap said: Negotiating My Identity – with South Asian Parent. http://understandmymind.com/themes/negotiating-my-identity/ [...]
Identity is an interesting concept. I am born in Australia to an Armenian woman who was born in Cairo who married my father who was Polish. My mother was brought up in a French convent and it is the language she speaks and reads and writes most fluently. I do not think my parents married for the right reasons in 1954 but that does not matter now. Their cultures though vastly different did not alter their undying loving for me and my two brothers. Oh my mother also speaks Arabic fluently and is very good at Italian and Greek. My father used to tell me that he used to speak German (he was a Christian and the Nazis made he work as a forced labourer during the war.) My dad died at age 84 on 29 September 2004. The only time I really connected with him was as a young child when he taught me chess and he used to hold me in his arms. No words were needed during those times. In the years after that he was rather cynical about the world always blaming the Jews for the the second world war and the continuing middle east conflicts ( and all the problems of the world ). Living in a developing Australia for my parents and us kids is interesting. I am olived skinned after my mother, my father having green eyes and white skin, my older brother taking the color of my fair skinned grandmother and my father and my younger brother having olive skin with more corcassian features.
To etch out my identity I clung to the Aussie culture. I played Australian Rules football and went to the hotels in my teens and twenties. I bombed out on many relationships and am still single. I am 52 and have no desire any longer for children. I have put my attention on world events and have drilled down further into my fathers beliefs. My father never explained or did not know about the conversion by the Khazars to Judaism in about 900 and their eventual spread to Russia, Eastern Europe and Germany. Typically known as Ashkenazi’s it is clear now that from these people developed the doctrine of Zionism who have gone on to claim and develop Israel at the expense of many others, not the least the Palestinians.
Though many will say it is amoral to take over another’s land like the Israelis have done, the problem is clear to me. I agree with Richard Dawkins when he says it is time to separate religion fromscience and politics. Being brought up a Catholic myself to dislike the 'Jews' the world become much easier to think and act in when He/She is taken out of the equation – much easier.
So what is my identity? Still not sure. I am just happy to be able to think with any FOG. Fear, Obligation or Guilt.
Cheers