There’s a question I’ve come to dread in my life: “Where are you from?”
I’ve been asked this question many times by many people, in multiple languages. Taxi drivers in Beijing. People I’ve just met in the U.S. The woman giving me a pedicure in Thailand. In Beijing, if I said I was from Beijing, people would argue that I wasn’t, and ask again. They would want to know where I was really from, because it was obvious by my skin color that I was not “from” there. In the U.S. I can name the place I grew up and no one bats an eye, although I feel like I’ve just lied about who I am. In Thailand this winter, I just gave the obvious answer of the U.S. because there was coronavirus stigma attached to being from China, but it hadn’t spread to the whole world, yet. But that also felt like lying.
I know that I have been formed in significant ways by different places. But it is hard to capture that in a two or three word answer to to the question “where are you from”. And so in these days, I fumble for words when the question comes up, as I try to figure out how much of my story to share in the given situation.
A friend of mine shared this TED talk on Facebook today, by writer Taiye Selasi, which is helping give me language to think about this identity crisis I’m facing. It is really thought provoking, and well worth watching.
Selasi suggests that instead of thinking about or asking where are you from, we ask where are you local. Some people might be local to one place, but many of us are multi-local. Selasi proposes a three step test to figure out where we are local–rituals, relationships, and restrictions. What are the rituals of our lives? What do we eat for breakfast, where do we drink coffee or tea, where do shopkeepers know us, and so many more things. Where do we have significant relationships, which she defines as people we speak to at least once a week, either in person or online? Finally, how we experience our locality by restrictions–where are we able to live, given citizenship, visas, racism, classism, etc. Thinking about these different aspects of our experience, give us a much more overlapping picture of our identities. Using me as an example (with some location details withheld for internet safety):
Rituals: from Beijing–Taking shoes off when I enter the house, not using ice, cooking Chinese food, walking a lot, longing for public transportation, baristas who knew I would order a vanilla latte, journaling and using a bullet journal (this doesn’t originate in Beijing, but it is when I started doing it regularly)
from West Michigan–grilling and eating on the deck, seeing the tulips come up in May, visiting the Lake Michigan beach, camping in the summer, driving down a country road, driving down a snow-covered country road, watercolor painting
Some of my rituals I’m not sure how to categorize. For example, I often make a breakfast of pancakes (with blueberries, if they are available) and eggs for my Sabbath day. I learned to make pancakes in Michigan, grew up with blueberries as a “local specialty” (to use a Chinese phrase to describe it), learned to keep a non-Sunday Sabbath in Grand Rapids, and adopted this as a ritual while I lived in Beijing. I’ve carried it back across the ocean as a Sabbath ritual in Michigan again. It is a multi-local ritual.
Relationships:
from Beijing–Chinese and American/other foreign friends I talk to frequently even with an ocean in between us (although right now many of my foreign friends are stuck in places other than their home in China), expat congregation
from West Michigan (especially the Holland and Grand Rapids areas)–parents, extended family, friends, churches
Other spots around the U.S.–sisters and friends spread out across the country
Restrictions:
from Beijing–The need for visas to live in China, China’s borders being closed, and the relationship between the U.S. and China
from the U.S.–where will I be able to find a job in my field (concern because of my gender)
So I am currently local to various places in West Michigan and Beijing. I’m a multi-local person. And I expect to add some localities throughout my life. Now I just need to figure out how to simply explain this. I wonder what would happen if the next time someone asks “where are you from?” I say, “I’m local to West Michigan and Beijing.” It could lead to some interesting conversations.
Selasi also suggests that the primacy of putting one country as the most important part of our identity leads to the myth of being able to “go back” to a country. We can’t go back, even to a place we’ve spent significant amounts of time, because countries and places change.
This rings so very true to me. Many people want to say I am “back to the U.S.” or “back home”, and often it is with a sigh of relief. But the U.S. has changed since 2014. There is polarization and division that feels foreign. The amount of attention given to police killing people of color has (rightly) increased. And we’re in a global pandemic, which is changing us all. And I know that although I will hopefully be able to visit Beijing again (as long as the borders open at some point), it won’t be going back to the way things were before. My physical home is no longer there. My items have been boxed up to be shipped back to me, given away, or left for the next tenant in my apartment. The pandemic will end up shaping daily life in China, I’m sure, even if I don’t know how, yet. And I’ll be different. I’ll have grieved from afar the loss of a life I loved in Beijing. There’s no going back to the way things were before.
So here I am. I’m a multi-local person. I’m grieving the loss of being physically in Beijing, and trying to figure out how to honor how it shaped and changed me as I start a new chapter of life in the U.S. Selasi’s insights are giving me vocabulary for describing who I am now.
P.S. I also found this post that offers “10 Alternatives to ‘Where Are You From?”
Photo used under a Pixabay License
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