Where are you from?
It’s a question I’m asked a lot. Presumably because people can’t place me – they can’t pigeonhole me.
I used to answer this question by explaining where my parents are from, but never addressing the where I am from bit. No one ever clocked this with a follow up ’so where are you from?’ That was before I realised that I had never addressed where I am from – with myself.
Now when people ask, I ask what it is that makes them enquire. Not everyone has a ready answer, so I volunteer that perhaps they’re asking because of the way I look and sound, because of my attitude and the way I’m dressed.
And I explain: I believe you’re are asking me where my parents are from.
What I have been exposed to, how and where I have lived, what I believe in, this do not make me ‘from’ anywhere specific – especially not from where my parents identify with. And so I differentiate: there’s the ethnic lineage answer, and then there’s me. They are not interchangeable.
This is sacrilegious for many who believe you are an extension of your parents – you are from where they are from – your father especially. More so if there’s a political issue or a struggle of self-determination involved.
A friend told me she feels British, but is also Iraqi. She and her parents (both Iraqi) moved to the UK when she was 6. She would be condemned by many if she dared share her sense of self. She would be seen as betraying not only her parents’ heritage, but also the nation in view of the horrors that have befallen the country of her and her parents’ birth for over a decade now.
I know someone who, when a young school boy, was asked to choose between playing for the Arab football team and the English one – he was, is, both. He identified with the English team, but instinctively knew that that was not ok – that he ‘had’ to choose the Arab team. This feeling of not being able to be true to himself has stayed with him decades on.
Where are you from. It’s an immensely emotive issue.
Especially for displaced children.
We each carry inherent biases – based on our experiences, exposures and how much we challenge them. Perhaps if we publicly acknowledge that ‘where we are from’ is a malleable, changeable thing, that the children of immigrants or mixed marriages do not have to be from a place that their parents identify with, then we’d be happier for it.
Who am I. What is my sense of self, of identity. These are issues many of us struggle with.
Children of migrants, of mixed marriage especially so. Their parents can have an overwhelming need to stamp their credentials on their offspring. It does no good. It’s great to know where you come from. But where you come from is not the same as where you are from.
We need a neutral, safe place to discover or construct our concept of self and identity – one that will be different to that of our parents and grandparents. I think this puts it beautifully: A bird cannot carry its cage when it flies.
So. Where are you from?
