Voices on the New Diasporas - an MIT student journal


Submission deadline for Spring 2008 issue is March 15, 2008.


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A Cultural Paradox

by Sunny Wang, Graduate Student

 

Sometimes, I sleep-talk in Cantonese.

This is according to my mother, who considers it a minor victory, the fact that I still speak Cantonese, and not English, when I am asleep. This, she argues, implies my cultural identity hasn’t been lost just yet, that there is still hope for me, even if my ethnic sense is buried deep in my subconscious mind. This is from my mother, who believes modern society is swallowing all forms of racial identity.

There is always a bit of urgency in her voice when we discuss the topic of our culture, a bit of anger and remorse, and also resignation. I speak to my mom over the phone in half Cantonese, filling in the words I don’t know with English. Over the years, these holes in my vocabulary have become more common. I know for certain there was a time in my life when I could have carried on a full conversation in Cantonese. Thoughts like these leave me feeling empty and powerless against the gradual attrition of my ancestors’ language. Then again, even if I retained my capacity to speak, my mom muses, will I ever pass those language skills on to my children someday? We both know the answer to that question. It is a sad impossibility.

But there must be more to a culture’s identity than its language, I think. I consider myself Asian, for example, and I have never doubted it. But aside from my genetic DNA and the language I speak so well when I’m unconscious, I find no reason to place myself in that category. I try and recount memories from my childhood but on the surface there is nothing diverse about my upbringing. It is, perhaps, a little unsettling to wonder not whether I have lost my racial identity, as my mother believes, but whether I possessed racial identity to begin with.

I was born in Washington, D.C., and spent most of my life in a peaceful suburb in New Jersey. My younger brother and I grew up in a nice house with blue shutters, white vinyl siding and a spacious green lawn. Our family had two cars, a basketball hoop, a large deck for barbecues, and a little tomato garden. We were well-off, and we knew it. But we were also not unlike anyone else on our street.

Images like these possess little vestige of the early struggles of my parents, when they first immigrated to America in the early 1970s. At the time, my father was a graduate student at George Washington University, and my mother worked behind a deli counter to make ends meet. She recounts one particularly hot summer day when she broke down and “splurged” on a bottle of Coca-Cola. She tells me how my dad once got into an argument with the manager at a fast food restaurant because he thought the portions were too small.

It is easy to forget the difficult times, especially if the notion of financial hardship these days feels so distant I can only consider it in the most abstract terms. My mom says I was born in the midst of their early struggles, which would explain the serious, pessimistic nature of my personality. My brother, born two years later, arrived after my parents had gotten over the hump, so he is carefree and eternally happy.

While my parents did not suffer, relatively speaking, when one considers the many hardships of the world, they endured, like many immigrants endured, in a strange country before taking root. Yet, for me, this is all still merely hearsay. Most of my parents’ hardships, I never directly experienced, and even if I did, I don’t remember much from those early times. I was born in this country; consequently, I don’t even know the first thing about what it means to have to struggle. All my life, my parents made sure of this.

* * *

Back when my grandparents were still alive, my family used to visit Hong Kong at least once a year. No matter how many times I’ve been there, I always get the sensation of setting foot in a strange jungle. Outside the airport, the humid and fertile air envelops you like a second skin. Once in the city, one is bombarded with exotic sights and sounds that are at once beautiful and garish: Lights everywhere. People everywhere. Traffic. Chaos. Humanity.

My brother and I are always welcomed into the city by our many relatives. Every night we are there, a different aunt or uncle treats us to a lavish dinner. Paradoxically, Hong Kong seems very large and very small at the same time, and our relatives are all extremely close. There is a true sense of community. This has always been one of my mother’s regrets—that we live so far from our extended family, my brother and I seem almost like strangers to them every time we visit. We are treated more like foreign dignitaries than as family members with the same blood. Our conversations rarely stray from the superficial.

In the land of my ancestors, I feel out of place, lost. Once, we walk past my mother’s childhood home, in a dusty part of town, near a hospital: it means little to me. There is a grand purpose to the trips we take, according to my mom, which is to expose my brother and me to other cultures. But can one truly understand a culture by being a casual observer of it, three weeks in a year? Can I really expect my relatives to treat me with familiarity if they rarely see me? What is it like to grow up in Hong Kong? What are the little nuances in lifestyle, in manners and habits, in value systems, attitudes towards the world, expectations for oneself? What is an average day in Hong Kong even like, if everyone suddenly forgot I was a tourist?

The strangest thing to realize as I walk through the crowded crosswalks of mid-day is how well I blend in, on the surface, with everyone else. On the multi-tiered campus of Hong Kong University, where my uncle teaches, I could be any student going to classes. And yet deep down and more than ever, I feel alienated. Cultural differences often override racial similarity. In the same way, cultural similarities can override racial differences. This is not necessarily a bad thing. But to try and attach to myself a culture that was never mine, and to expect it to stick just because of the color of my skin—well, that would seem almost prosthetic.

Perhaps even my mom realizes this. At the end of a couple hurried weeks of sight-seeing and four-star treatment on the part of our gracious relatives, everyone is longing to reclaim their familiar habits and lifestyles. It’s the end of another family vacation, my mom would always say, her voice hinting of both wistfulness and relief. Will we have many more together? she ponders. But no one is thinking about vacations right now. We are all thinking of home.

* * *

I think back through all the years growing up, and even in this era of racial tolerance, I find it impressive that I recall only a single incident when I was openly insulted with an ethnic slur. This occurred one summer afternoon, when I heard a woman tell my parents and me to “go back to Japan.”

I was probably in my early teens, and I was sitting behind my parents in the back seat of our station wagon. Our car was blocking a ramp that would have allowed this woman to push her grocery cart to the parking area. It was raining at the time, and the woman had a baby with her. I remember feeling stunned—I still feel stunned, thinking about it now—but not because her insult hurt me in any way. Rather, I just didn’t hear words like those spoken in public, so I was surprised more than anything else. Then again, while I don’t condone what happened, whenever I do think about this incident, I always keep thinking back to that summer rain. I think about the baby that woman was clutching. I think about all the possible burdens being shouldered by this individual, none of which we would ever know anything about. Then, I think, perhaps this woman was just having a bad day. After all, we all have our bad days. Then, I conclude, she probably didn’t really mean what she said.

Perhaps this is an overly optimistic view. Perhaps in other parts of the world and in other social circles, racial slurs and discrimination are more common, and accompanied by malicious intent. Maybe I was just fortunate to have been sheltered from such abuse. But maybe I’m not really as fortunate as I believe; maybe I am just typical. But that would imply I am no different from anyone else. That would imply my mother was right all along: Modern society is swallowing racial diversity. If so, are we the victims or the benefactors?

Four years ago, I made my first trip as a graduate student to MIT, and the rich diversity of its students was immediately clear. In a single year alone, I had roommates in Tang Hall who hailed from Taiwan, Jamaica, Argentina and nearby Brookline. The woman I later subletted my room to was Russian. One of our neighbors was Austrian. There were people of all races working behind the building’s front desk, taking the elevator, doing laundry side by side. It was comforting to be a part of this. But at the same time, I was now in an environment where almost everyone possessed a different cultural heritage. We were different in that respect, but we were also suddenly very similar.

I have come to realize that despite our cultural differences, many of my peers and I share very similar views about our ethnicities. Like everyone else at MIT, we are united by our ambitions, and like many others—not all, but many—we lived through generally prosperous times. We are also mostly very fortunate—and typical. Occasionally we might feel a twinge of sadness or nostalgia for the perceived loss of our cultural identities, even if it is unclear exactly what is being lost, when it started, or who is to blame, if anyone. We have grown so accustomed to life in this country we might even feel displaced when we retrace the steps of our ancestors. Intuitively we know we are diverse but in ways we have difficulty explaining. We accept the community we live in, and our community accepts us. We neither use our ethnicity as an excuse nor as an advantage. But at the same time, we are also very proud of who we are.

Perhaps that is the inevitable way of the world, that in order to move forward we must jettison a part of our past. Such harsh abandonment may sound cold and ruthless at first: We will never reclaim what we have recklessly discarded. Yet the end result, that we are able to consider ourselves both typical and diverse, is a paradox that can strengthen and enrich our life experiences. My mother is probably right in that modern society is abrogating racial identity. Despite this, I feel no need to reclaim what has already been forgotten. I feel no urgency over what might be lost in the future. Rather, one develops an understanding that such changes, while unwelcome, are unavoidable. It is a difficult concept to explain, not made any easier with my broken Cantonese. Even still, slowly and with carefully chosen words, I try my best when discussing it with my mother.