L’étranger

Loads of things get lost in translation from one language to another. Take, for example, idioms. In English we say “It’s none of your business,” but in French the phrase is “C’est pas tes ognions.” Which, directly translated back into English, is “These are not your onions.”

Hilarious! But sort of missing the heart of the matter. (Unless you really, really care about onions, which is… none of my business.)

Or the time I was trying to help my host-mother in France set something up on the television. Eventually, she got frustrated that neither of us were making progress, and told me not to break my foot about it. Which in English we might know better as “to bend over backwards”, but perhaps the French are more concerned with broken appendages than gymnastics.

The same happens with French philosopher Derrida. Except it’s the entirety of an essay on the complications that arise when you try to define someone as foreign from yourself. The entire concept of the word “l’étranger” gets lost, in fact. The French word “l’étranger” can mean foreigner, or simply foreign (if you take off the article). Or abroad. Or, ominously, the stranger. If that many meanings can stem from one simple word, what has translation done to his entire philosophy?

(Nothing good, probably.)

But he asks an interesting question: who are you, to call me foreigner? Who is anyone, to call anyone else foreigner? What does it mean, to be foreign? Studying in France, I had many experiences where I felt very suddenly very foreign. Or very strange.

I studied with other American students, both semesters that I was able to study in France. We sometimes flocked together to places, sometimes lazily lapsing into English when it was too late at night and we were too tired to try and think in French. One such night was my friend’s birthday, and we decided to go see a movie. (It was Twilight, don’t judge us too harshly, please.)

Our group decided that I was going to order tickets, because my French was the best. So I went up to the ticket counter, where the cashier had been watching us speak half-French-half-English with each other.

“Six tickets for Twilight, please,” I asked, in French.

“The film, it’s in French,” the cashier replied. In French.

“Oh that’s fine, thank you!”

“There are no subtitles.”

“Yes that’s okay, we still want to see it.”

She then rolled her eyes and sighed, turning to the ticket taker to complain loudly about American students who came to her country and expected her to speak English. I was baffled; had I been hallucinating that I was speaking French? Was my French that bad? Who was she, to call me foreigner?

In my second semester, there was a party for all the university students in the area. My friends and I were gathered together, chatting in French and trying to hear each other over the music. A French student and his group of friends asked us if we were in line for drinks, and I shouted at him in French and asked him to repeat himself because the music was too loud.

“Oh, I am an American student,” he shouted back at me in English, “I come to France to learn French but I speak only English.”

I was furious. I told him exactly what he and his friends could go do, using French I definitely didn’t learn in a textbook. He looked embarrassed, but a few of his friends clapped for me. Who was he, to call me foreigner?

I acknowledge I had an easy time, studying in France. I was a white American traveling to a predominantly white European country where I spoke the language. My accent is decent enough, or at least un-American enough that I could pass as being from another European country, if I wanted to. I will never be so foreign as to be completely other, like James Baldwin living in Switzerland, where he was the first and only non-white person most of the people in his village had seen. His experience of being singled out, of living in a country for years and still being apart from the others there will never be my experience.

Likewise, I will never have to hide my reasons for traveling in order to assimilate, like Hannah Arendt and all the people fleeing to other countries during and just after World War II. I’ve never had to pretend I’m someone other than who I am in order to just live my day-to-day life in another country. To be simply left to my own devices instead of constantly questioned – why are you here, who are you, you foreigner. You stranger. And that is a privilege that I hold.

To be unbothered during my travels, to be so unquestioned that I’ve been asked directions in a country that is not my own is something that I’ve never had to think critically about until sitting down to write these stories. That’s a pretty big privilege, too. Being able to wonder if my experiences were foreign enough to compare with other experiences that I’ve read about because I wasn’t ever truly pushed apart from other French people.

I’m not really sure how to end this, other than to have a brief and philosophical existential crisis while thinking about Derrida: who am I, to call myself foreigner?

The Streets of Paris

 

Departure

We boarded the bus early, before day, full of excitement and anticipation for visiting a new city in a country we had never visited. A city known for its beauty, food, art, fashion and culture. We, my mom, younger sister, little brother and I were all headed for Paris, France. By the time we boarded the bus to France, my mom, little brother and I had already been in Germany for a couple of weeks. It was our first time out of the U.S. We were spending time with my younger sister whose husband was in the army and stationed at Mannheim, Germany. As one of our planned outings, we wanted to visit Paris. The trip would be cheaper traveling from Germany to Paris than from the U.S. and take only six hours. We could take a day trip on a bus service offered to military families to travel between European countries for really cheap. The morning of our trip to Paris we boarded the bus sleepy but excited. My sister had already been to Paris once before but was playing hostess to us.

Barriers 

We arrived in Paris on a day when I don’t think it rained. It had been raining often in Germany that October and November. Unloading the bus in Paris that fateful mid-morning I felt a total culture shock. The city was beautiful but there was a barrier. Language. In Mannheim, the German people we had encountered always seemed ready and willing to speak in English or my sister spoke a little broken German. Trying to communicate was always like a mini adventure. The Germans we encountered were generally very gracious and somehow, we could make communication work. At the time, I even picked up some German words that I could understand. In France, the French spoke French. Period. They expected us to speak French. I felt awkward and lost. Like an outsider. A stranger. A foreigner. American. As a Black woman in America, periodically I might come across people in certain situations who judge me based solely on the color of my skin. It’s not often, but it happens. I recognize that there will be those in this world who judge me to be less than based on the color of my skin rather than my character. In Paris, it was different. I didn’t feel judged based on my skin, but rather on my nationality and my inability to communicate intelligently. In Paris, I was another American, come to France, that didn’t speak the language. I was recently reading an essay called “Stranger in the Village” by James Baldwin in which he talks about the commonalities and differences between the Negro in America versus Europe during the 1950s. At the time of his writing, Baldwin was spending time in an all-white village in Switzerland called Leukerbad. Baldwin shares the experience of being the first black man that the villagers had seen, an anomaly, a stranger. He spoke of being viewed as less than. A common feeling Baldwin highlighted between America and Europe. As I tried to process Baldwin’s thoughts, it brought to mind my family’s trip to Paris. To a certain degree we were treated as less than. Yet, it wasn’t based on the color of our skin, rather on our nationality and our lack of the ability to speak the language. Over the last few weeks, I have been exploring a lot of world literature, reading various pieces that explore the idea of foreigners, refugees, exiles, migrants, etc. As I read, I try to identify with the writer. One writer that reflects on Baldwin’s time in Leukerbad visits the same village to walk the path that Baldwin traveled. The writer, Teju Cole, a black man shares his experience more than 60 years after Baldwin’s in an essay called “Black Body: Rereading James Baldwin’s “Stranger in the Village”. Cole compares his experience in 2014 to Baldwin’s experience in 1953. At one point Cole relays an encounter Baldwin had being the first black man that the villagers had seen. The children would shout “Neger! Neger!” as Baldwin passed along the streets of Leukerbad. Cole muses on this reasoning that while the children or grandchildren of those kids Baldwin encountered might share the xenophobia of their parents/grandparents, they were now likely more familiar with Blacks and Black culture some 60 years later in the age of Drake, Beyoncé and Meek Mill among others. I mention Cole and Baldwin’s experience to say that I know I was not the first Black woman the Parisians had seen. That was not the barrier between us. The barrier or border that separated us was the fact that I was American. An American that did not speak French. This is what made my family and I foreigners. In my readings, I came across a statement from the book “Strangers to Ourselves” by Julia Kristeva. In the book, Kristeva talks about France and how if nowhere else, one feels one’s foreignness in France. Kristeva writes, “Nowhere is one more a foreigner than in France. Having neither the tolerance of Anglo-American Protestants, nor the absorbant ease of Latin Americans, nor the rejecting as well as the assimilating curiosity of the Germans or Slavs, the French set a compact social texture and an unbeatable national pride against foreigners.” I get that. I feel that. In Paris, it was definitely not my color that elicited the looks of curiosity possibly even disdain. It was that we were not French. We were Americans. Foreigners. And we had come to their country and didn’t event speak the language.  

 

Hard Rock Cafe

Before our arrival in Paris, my brother had decided he wanted to visit the Hard Rock Cafe. So, after we received our instructions and warnings to be back at the bus prior to departure, we took off. We actually went to Paris to go to the Hard Rock Cafe. A distinctly American experience in a foreign country. 

Embarrassingly enough, we spent all of our time trying to navigate the streets of Paris to the Hard Rock Cafe. None of us spoke a lick of French. My sister knew a little German and could ask if the Parisians passing us by spoke either German or English. We had a map that we tried to follow. It was frustrating and hilarious all at the same time. Each time we stopped someone; they would look at us as if we were foreigners. And we were.

As Julia Kristeva writes of the foreigner, there is a consciousness of difference between the foreigner and native. The fact that we could not speak French, didn’t know the city and were essentially lost aroused a consciousness of my difference from the people we passed on the streets.  We were so out of place unable to communicate in French. 

My sister had suggested that we ask the young people we passed on the streets. She reasoned that as part of their school curriculum, they likely had taken English. It didn’t work. Next, she suggested we go to the Disney store to ask the store workers how to find the Hard Rock. She again reasoned that the Disney staff likely had some familiarity with English dealing with tourists all day. 

It was a great idea. However, the young worker we approached, looked at us and shrugged indicating that he could not help us. Thankfully a nice older French woman, a customer, in the Disney store offered to direct us. She helped us even though we were clearly foreigners. Strangers really who didn’t speak her language.

Foreigners

In Paris, I experienced the feeling of being a foreigner. If you asked me what it was like, all I could say is strange. It was awesome seeing the Eifel Tower, the Louvre, walking the streets in such an iconic city. But, being a foreigner in a foreign land is strange. Without being able to clearly communicate, you remain on the outside looking into an experience. What's worse, those on the inside are looking out at you as if you came from another world. There is a barrier between you.

Kristeva brought up an argument in her writing in reference to foreigners in France that I totally agree with. “Their [the foreigner’s] awkward use of the French language discredits them utterly – consciously or not in the eyes of the natives, who identify more than other countries with their beloved, polished speech.” We didn't even have an awkward use of the language. We had no use of the language discrediting us in the eyes of most of the citizens we stopped on the streets.

The kind French woman from the Disney store who helped us set aside any positive or negative feelings towards foreigners to extend a helping hand. We thanked her profusely recognizing her generosity of spirit. I learned a lot from her example. Before my experience on the streets of Paris, I always considered myself a helpful person. Now, I go out of my way to be helpful when I see someone who is clearly lost or having problems communicating.

Photo credits:

Paris: Photo by Ilnur Kalimullin on Unsplash
Hard Rock Cafe: Photo by Marcin Supiński on Unsplash
Louvre: Photo by Irina Lediaeva on Unsplash

Signage: Photo by Sophia Brakcshaw on Unsplash

A Short Record in a Sleepless Night

This night, after failing to finish some academic pieces and deleting those mental efforts by pushing a keyboard button, I am sitting in front of a small bright screen, spending unproductive time, contemplating my indecisive future unplaced in between or both two countries, the United States and South Korea.

At some moments like this night, I usually open a poem book, written in Korean, not for reading but for perusing to enter the poet’s world for a while. The book I am picking up is Sky, Wind, and Stars by Dong-Ju Yun, composed when Imperial Japan invaded the Korean peninsula and colonized the Chosen Dynasty forcefully and brutally (Chosen is the name of the last dynasty before the founding of the Republic of Korea government).

During the Japanese Colonial period, his family chose to migrate Man-Ju where is near both Korea and China and had conflict territorial disputes between the two countries (but uniquely, this place functioned as a neutral zone for the two countries' peaceful residents as well), and he had been well educated through attending colonized Korea's various schools.

Sadly, Dong-Ju was killed by the Japanese military’s bio-experiment in 1945 after being arrested by Japanese police because he was doubted as a resistance for Korea’s independence by publishing Korean literature when he was a foreign student in the English department at Rikkyo University in Tokyo.

More sadly, before his death, he was in the continuous involuntary exiled status (in "unhappy, poor, bitter nostalgic about the society left behind, self-righteous") due to the homeland’s fall, even wanting the voluntary status (in "happy, comfortable"). As his works show, he looked like to seek an opportunity to actualize his vision to become a professional poet, but it never happened – his book had pressed after WW II and The Korean Independence Day on August 15, 1945.

Anyways, after opening the book, then, I am perusing “A Poem That Came Easily,” which is one of his sentimental poems, considered as endlessly pursuing moral justice, individual (also national) freedom, and self-reflection through expressing the feeling of shamefulness and helpless from the sadness of losing his native country by the external power.

It is as follows:

A Poem That Came Easily

(Translated by Kyung-nyun Kim Richards; Steffen F. Richards; Hyeo-Kil Kwon; and edited by DH).

A night rain whispers, outside the window

Of this six tatami-mats room in others’ country.

Despite knowing a poet is a sad karma,

I am writing another line of poems.

Having received tuitions from home in an envelope,

Holding the cozy scent of sweat and love.

Tucking my college note under my arm,

I go off to the lecture of an old professor.

Looking back, losing my childhood friends

One and two at a time and all of them,

For what,

Am I solely sinking down to the sedimentation?

Someone says life is meant to be burdensome,

But it is shameful to me this poem is being written easily.

Of this six tatami-mats room in others’ country,

A night rain whispers, outside the window,

After driving out the darkness a little by lightning a lamp,

The last me is waiting for the morning that comes like an era, in closing.

Then, there is the first handshake with me.

By offering my small hand with tears and solace to me.

Now, I am talking to myself like, usually, reading his poem is always dangerous (in particular, like in this dark dawn) due to my tendency to overly identify me with him emotionally, as a foreign student. And already, my emotional reaction toward identifying me with him is drawing me to one poem that I clumsily imitated his style:

Dae-Shin Farmers Market (translated by DH)

Wearing on Gap shirt,

Pony shoes,

And H&Ms, from Grapevine,

I go through Dae-Shin Farmers Market in Singil 7-dong street, 

Having full of familiar-scent and mood.

My favorite side dish shop 

that sold spicy fish cakes, tasty egg rolls, diced radish Kimchi, and various herb salads,

My favorite rice cake store 

that had the chewiest steamed Injeolmi,

My favorite old white-haired shoemaker 

who remembered my unusual feet sizes and adjusted shoes,

My favorite clothing store’s old lady 

who was greatly proud of his son and his fashion design major,

They are all there and all the same.

But because of my sudden nausea from the landscape’s unfamiliarity,

And because of an abrupt familiarity with the foreign things that I am heavily wearing,

at the moment on the way back home,

there was the only blinking yellow traffic light

on the returning crosswalk.

Despite some images and sentiments’ similarity between his and my work, unlike him, who resisted the colonial age’s unfairness and can be defined as both involuntary and voluntary exiles, struggled during the period of the politically ruined and colonized dynasty, where oppressed each Korean individual, I am just a naïve, common person who always fears to face the political turbulence and urgency of my age.

However, I was wondering what makes us share similar images, and I guess it is because we are sharing the suffering from placing us invisible borderlines that make shaded identities. The invisible borderlines, I think, will echo Azaldua's explanation of borders and borderlands as, they “are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition.”

Finally, this night's thoughts guide me in a conclusion. I am expecting that having vague borderlines will continuously lead me into an identity crisis as a naïve Korean international student but a husband and future father in the United States simultaneously. But in opposition to that, staying and living in this foreign but my new family’s land in-between invisible borderlines also make me feel glad since there will be more possibilities that I can compose more beautiful poems like Yun, Dong-Ju, as a great immigrant poet, being with involuntary eternal sufferings from endless nostalgia.

Yes, this is my short record of a stream of unconsciousness (or consciousness?) from unstoppable thoughts on this silent sleepless night.

Stranger in the Lunchroom

 It was 11:00 AM. “No talking in the hallways. And please stand in a single file line,” Mrs. Wagner encouraged her carefree second graders. Some students rushed toward the line to be the first in the cafeteria and get their school lunch. Others swiftly grabbed their lunchboxes out of their cubbies before joining their friends. Meanwhile, I reluctantly paused in front of my cubby, making sure I stalled just enough time so my classmates didn’t notice me too much.

Mrs. Wagner’s class was busy excitedly chatting while I stealthily made my way to the end of the line of students. We obediently strolled into the lunchroom full of children speaking over each other and sat in our designated tables for everyone’s favorite time of the day—lunchtime.

Jessica unzipped her bright purple-colored lunchbox, moved around the reusable ice packs, and revealed her meal: white bread PB&J sandwich, sliced apples, a small bag of Doritos, and a Capri Sun. Brittany ripped her brown paper bag, which contained a Lunchable, Go-gurts, and a Sunny-D. Zach, who had been the first in line for his school lunch, brought his lunch tray organized with four pieces of chicken nuggets, a spoonful of sweet yellow corn, a buttered dinner roll, a fruit cup, and a carton of cold chocolate milk.  

It was inevitable. I silently rummaged through the clear plastic bag encasing a styrofoam food container. With my heart thudding inside my ears, I found a big bag of Welch’s fruit snacks and bottled water. Checking that no one at my table had noticed me yet, I continued to open the foam container. Inside the to-go box lay a plastic condiment cup of ranch dressing embedded in a mountain of green lettuce leaves sprinkled with thinly sliced deli turkey and garlicky croutons. In a matter of seconds, Zach asked, “Whatcha got there?” My peers soon became interested in what I had kept hidden. Immediately, I wanted to turn into a puddle of water and dissipate into the ground. At the tender age of eight, I was not ready to explain why my lunch had a different appearance than theirs. I couldn’t hide my lunch forever. I also couldn’t hide that it was obviously made by my hardworking Korean immigrant mother, who woke up even before the sun was out and carefully packed my lunch at the sandwich shop she worked at. I never had it in me to hurt my mom’s feelings and ask her for something else. I knew she had her hands full. But how I deeply yearned for those “authentic American” lunches that my friends had brought! How I dreaded those moments when the eyes of my friends at my lunch table would fill with curious wonder! I was different. Even with a “western” lunch, it was no secret that I was still “foreign.” In "Toccata and Fugue for the Foreigner," Julia Kristeva describes “indifference” as the “foreigner’s shield” (7). That is how I felt then. I didn’t want anyone to see that I was affected by my foreignness. I eagerly traded lunches with my peers who were intrigued by my different lunch items. Perhaps, these types of events were emphasized because I was the only Asian girl in my class and only one out of three other students in the entire school. I was the stranger in the lunchroom. As mentioned by James Baldwin in “Stranger in the Village,” I felt like a “living wonder” at times. Many of the students in my class were unfamiliar with girls like me: I was someone who had a different skin color and who brought lunch that did not fit with the rest of the class. Teju Cole explains “to be a stranger is to be looked at.” In retrospect, that may have been why I hid my lunch. I didn’t want to be a stranger in the room.

Scared, Hated, Hopeless

 

                                                                     

I was 12 years old the first time I was targeted by a group of “Mean Girls”. I started 7^th grade in a new school, cross-country from my old school, and was chased home every day for two weeks by the local girl gang. It took me two more weeks to figure out I was being threatened with bodily harm because my skin color was not the right shade. For someone who only judged people by their actions and not their appearance, this was earth-shattering.

As the school year went on, I learned that the town of Yuma, Arizona is what is termed a “border town”. Only five miles from the Mexican/American border, Spanish was spoken more than English and brown hair, eyes, and skin were acceptable while mine was not. In fact, I was one of only seven glow-in-the-dark white students in my junior high school of over 500 students. My strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes labeled me foreign long before I ever opened my mouth to trip over my broken and beginning Spanish. I was persona non grata, and while I didn’t appreciate it then, I am thankful for the experience now.

Gloria Anzaldua, in her article “Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza”, described the United States/Mexico border as “es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before the scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country—a border culture” (3). My time in this “border culture” was every bit as harrowing as she described, yet I was a young white girl. I constantly worried about being “raped, maimed, strangled, gassed, shot” (3) as well as kidnapped. I was stalked by carloads of Mexican men, derided by Mexican women for not having any curves (ha! I have the last laugh there with “hips that don’t lie” now!), and I was assaulted by locals who reached out to caress my “magic” hair and trace my numerous freckles. Though I didn’t realize what it was at the time, I felt how the “tension grips the inhabitants of the borderlands like a virus” (4). It was awful, a constant fight or flight response waiting to happen. I learned then what it felt like to be an unwanted minority and I never forgot it, even after I moved away to other places where my skin color was once again “common” and acceptable.

 

           

It was also about this time that I began to ask about my own heritage, my own ethnicity. Despite the negative aspects of living in the border town, I was fascinated by the bright, vibrant culture I saw all around me. The food, music, clothing, and language were woven into every aspect of Yuma. People were proud of their heritage, of their people. I had never experienced anything like that, and I was jealous of the sense of belonging, the sense of self, their cultural ethnicity provided them. When I asked my mom about my own heritage, she said we are good, old-fashioned Americans…a Heinz 57 mixture of Irish, Scottish, Native American, French, British, and Danish, with a dash of who-knows-what-else. As an adult, I identify most with my Irish roots. I mean, my name Erin is actually derived from the Celtic word ‘Eire’, meaning Ireland. Still, my roots are nothing compared to those Mexican families I saw in Yuma nor my Puerto Rican husband’s sense of identity that comes from his island heritage.

I have no idea if my ancestors were forced into exile or chose to leave their homelands. In this instance, I agree with Eva Hoffman’s take on exile. In her article, “The New Nomads”, she says, “On one level, exile is a universal experience. But, of course, exile also refers to a specific social and political condition—although even in that sense, it was never a unitary category, and we tend to compress too many situations under its heading” (43). In other words, while what happened to my ancestors eventually led to where I stand today, it does not define me. Only I can do that, though I do love me some potato…in any form. Irish roots showing, perhaps? 😊

Thirty years have passed since I was last chased home by a group of brown-skinned girls. I have not forgotten how they made me feel: scared, hated, hopeless. Yet every time I think about them, I send a silent “thank you” into the universe. Thank you for sharing your frustration towards what I know see and recognize as my white privilege. Thank you for teaching me empathy and sympathy towards others who don’t fit the “norm” of any given situation. Thank you for showing me that skin color should not matter; not mine, not yours. May I use my experiences to help others, forever and always.  

~~Erin

We're Going to Disney World

 I’d like us all to take an imaginary trip to Disney World.

If you go to their website right now (https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/), there is a

banner of smiling people and a tagline that reads 

“Holiday Magic Is Here. And It’s Waiting For you.” 

I went to Disney World as a child and still 

remember how amazing it is and how magical it 

can feel. So let’s go. We’re going to Disney World. Grab your kids, grab your wife (lol),

grandparents, husband, besties, and everyone else important to you because 

you’ll want to share this magical experience with everyone you love.

You’ve seen pictures of the giant, 

magnificent castle, the fascinating 

characters, the enchanted areas 

created at the Epcot Center- this 

place is nothing like you’ve ever 

seen or experienced before and you 

are ready to go. Now take out your 

imaginary $5000 that you saved up 

over the years for this trip alone, and 

buy the transportation tickets (planes, trains, and automobiles), buy the park tickets, grab 

a Disney hat (because you must) and now enter the park. We’re having fun. I know this

 is your imagination, but trust me, we’re having fun. You look around at your loved ones 

and see their smiling faces, knowing they’ve never experienced such joy and freedom 

before. You all eat every meal at the park (another $1000...ok maybe you don’t eat as 

much as I do, so $500). You’re even staying at the Disney resort because, why not? 

You planned this trip for a length of one week, but on Thursday, in the middle of the night, 

your hotel doors are kicked in, there are assault rifles in your family’s face (including the 

3 year old), and you are surrounded by armed police.

Suddenly, they grab you and the 

other adults. You’re all put in handcuffs, 

dragged out of the hotel, and thrown 

in a van. When the doors open, you 

are back at your home and told you 

may never leave the house- oh, and 

your kids are staying in Disney World 

without you. Ok, that took a strange 

turn, but this is what I imagine when 

I hear about Mexican immigrant families being torn apart. 

 

I’m not saying people shouldn’t try to obtain legal status, and go through proper channels- 

yadda yadda yadda- but outside of law, on a human level, anyone can feel the wrong in 

these actions. Not everyone can relate to the experience of being a foreigner or immigrant, 

but all Americans have seen an ad for Disney World, and can imagine how awful it would 

be to have that experience interrupted by assault rifles and being torn away from your 

children and/or loved ones. My hope is to bring the immigrant experience to your doorstep 

“by recognizing him (foreigner) within [y]ourselves,” in the hopes of “spar[ing] detesting 

him in himself” (Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves). This is a different kind of exile. 

When I think of exile, I think of events of Biblical proportions, not my neighbors in 

McKinney who were there for years, then gone one day after a visit from ICE.

I suppose the disconnection is 

because exile is typically from a 

person’s native land. I am not from 

Texas, but I’ve lived all over this state 

for the last 25 years. If someone 

came to my house and suddenly told 

me I had to leave Texas- leave my 

friends, family, work, etc.- and never 

return, well, that would feel like 

the “unhealable rift”of exile (Edward Said, Reflections on Exile) I hope I didn’t just make 

a faulty comparison to the likes of Ellen Degenerates’ “Quarantine is like Prison”...

 

As a Black American, I’ve heard, “Go back to where you came from” plenty of times. The 

threat is made, but nothing ever happens except to internally ask, “Go back to where?” 

or “If I go, you have to go back too” (Because the irony is that the ones who most hate 

immigration are usually descendants of the ones who started immigration to America). 

Sure, I’ve heard it, but to see it actually happen is a far different experience. And, 

honestly, I ask the same question when it comes to immigrants who are deported 

after 20+ years of living in the United States- “Go back to where?” After decades of

living in the U.S., a whole life and existence has been curated here- jobs, careers, 

friends, family- and the children and family members have received degrees here 

(a stipulation of the Dream Act). Exile from the non-native land back to their native land, 

must be...more disorienting than traditional exile because you are not the same person 

who left the native land- you’ve seen too much, learned too much, and experienced too 

much. That home is no longer home, and once back in the native land, it is the “present 

that is foreign, and. . .the  past is home, albeit a lost home” 

(Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands). 

Dear Texas, from yours Bitterly

 Dear Texas,

First off, I just want to say that you are extremely narcissistic. Like tone it down man you have nothing to be proud about. You literally failed as your own country and the Alamo you lost. Why do you have to remember it? Also let’s not forget you were a part of the Confederacy, there is no pride in that. Just had to get that off my chest real quick. 

There is something about your hospitality that doesn’t sit right with me Texas. In Foreigner Question Coming from Abroad from the Foreigner by Derrida, the philosopher brings up this circular logic: “the one who puts the first question. As though the foreigner were being-in-question, the very question of being-in-question, the question-being or being-in -question of the question. But also the one who, putting the first question, puts me in question.” Though the logic is hard to follow, it reminds me of your southern “hospitality”. I will admit sometimes you can be nice Texas, but most of the time you are nosy and condescending. The line of questioning we northerners, or yankees (though I’m not from New York but whatever) get from you borders on rude, but the way you say it doesn’t sound rude in the beginning. The tone, the little “bless your heart”. You question us (foreigners from the north) as to why we are here? Why Texas? Even asking some of my family members “what are you?” in a way that in the beginning we think you are interested in our heritage. Later we realize that you are wondering what race we are, so that you can be racist behind our backs, or even to us if you felt brave enough that day, but we are white so I see the little disappointment in your eyes.. But this line of questioning brings me back to Derrida, because you ask the same question in different ways circling back around and around again checking for a lie in our logic. You do this Texas because you don’t trust foreigners, which is ridiculous because the land you own may not be foreign but the pale colonizers who conquered it are.

    But it’s not just foreigners from other states you treat badly, there are foreigners from other countries you treat worse. You look at those who cross your southern border as less than, less than human. You treat them as such and then get angry that they are “stealing your jobs” yet I don’t see you cleaning bathrooms in rich peoples houses or constructing houses in new suburbs Texas. Many of the young children who cross your southern border feel the need to change and evolve and leave their culture, because of how they are treated. In We Refugees by Hannah Arendt, the author explains that “the less we are free to decide who we are or to live as we like, the more we try to put up a front, to hide the facts, and to play a role”. Those who cross your border at an early age Texas grow up with two different lives, the life they have with the parents that mimics the culture they were born into, the life they have outside of that, the role of “good citizen” they have to play in order to keep themselves safe from violence and ridicule. There is very little freedom for them to decide who they are, it is already done for them by the stereotypes given to them. Though across the state there are little pockets, pockets of where their culture is proudly displayed and towns and cities are made up of others just like them, who have been here when the land exchanged hands so many times or who have just crossed your border. These cultures are important to sustain, because they are pushed out of the larger southern Texas culture.   

Texas I know that you were not born with these issues but were made from them. I know that your land has been conquered many times and that your borders were argued over for decades (but in all due respect you are too big, you need to be split up). I do know that you were made by those who settled from the north, who reached across land that still wasn’t their own and claimed it.  There is a great literary device used in Notebook of a Return to the Native Land by Aime Cesaire, the author writes “Death gallops in the prison like a white horse” and “death expires in a white pool of silence.” This personification of death and the use of the color white is significant. The first quote is used almost as if death is the hero of the story coming in on his white horse, this reminds me of how we came across the Native Land of Texas on our own horses thinking that we were going to be heroes to civilize the people there but weren’t heroes. In this metaphor we are death and foreshadow the death of Native People everywhere we go. As for the second part, the years went on and we conquered the land and people. We stay silent to atrocities that still happen to people of color in this land and it is our white silence that brings death. 

Though you have these issues, you still are home to the people I love and I will stay within your borders. Not because I feel at home in them, but because the people I love make me feel at home. And you know hopefully this November you will be blue and we can work on changing some things together. 

Yours bitterly,
Kim Tansey

Paint and Okonomiyaki

I love--daresay crave--traveling overseas. I also love meeting new people. All of my experiences traveling abroad center around the same steps: enduring a churning stomach filled with anxiety and excitement for the adventures ahead, hastily packing and rearranging clothes in my suitcase so it won’t pop open mid-flight, and walking around and breathing in the new place as a tourist and foreigner. Tangibility and vulnerability were/are omnipresent through all of those steps and my times overseas. I always end up carrying more baggage with me than I thought. My mind becomes submerged with all the new histories and cultures I find--as well as the partial stories I was taught that go with them--but what troubles me then and now was this: What does it mean to be a foreigner?

In “Stranger in the Village”, James Baldwin writes “Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it”. I believe this is true, for good and bad. We all have our fair share of beautiful and tragic stories of adventure and struggle--especially moments that invite us to reflect. Vulnerability, whether in word or action, is key--I think--to figuring out how we personally fit into the body and identity of “the foreigner”. If I can do nothing else but describe my vulnerability abroad, then maybe that will pave a path towards recognizing the foreigner in me--and possibly others, as well.

There are two distinct places where I had what Teju Cole calls a "body-double moment" in his reflections on James Baldwin's "Stranger in the Village". He describes those moments as when “..the ancestor had briefly taken possession of the descendant"; an instance in which our actions and presence reflects the past and has an impact on the present. In my case, both of these “body double moments” were connected in some way to my being a foreigner abroad.

August 2012: Ghana

Visiting with friends after teaching a class in Kotokata. 

Ghana is located at the cusp of Western Africa and is surrounded by Côte d'Ivoire, Togo, and the Gulf of Guinea; I was situated in Kotokata Village, a four-hour, bumpy bus ride from Accra, the capital of Ghana. Kotokata contains several different ethnic groups, with Ewe being the most prominent in the village. My job was to teach English to a group of 30 or so kindergarteners, who ranged in age from 4 to 7 years old.

On the second morning of my stay in the village, I had my first “body-double” moment. As I trekked up the hill to the school building with my bag of books and lesson plans, several of my students began to reach for my hands, arms, and/or legs, crowing with laughter as I fumbled from their weight. One of my kindergarten students was rubbing her hand vigorously on my right arm. I turned towards her--halting the entourage of laughs and limbs beside me--and asked what was wrong.

Frown lines outlined her eyes and forehead. She said, “It’s not coming off”.

“What’s not coming off?”

She quickly mumbled some words to her friend, then looked back at me with wide eyes. “The paint.” she said. “It’s not coming off. Why’s it not coming off?”

***

In “Stranger in the Village”, Baldwin explains that “...there is a great difference between being the first white man to be seen by Africans and being the first black man to be seen by whites”. The “Body-double moment” hit me with full force. In that moment, I was a young white woman attempting to help these kids learn English and listen to their stories when decades before 2012 other white men and women trekked to Africa to colonize, to "help" through other, more sinister means. I realized with fear and vulnerability that I wished I was not so ignorant of the lives these children led before I arrived--in that moment, when the paint didn't wear off I felt reminiscent of Cole's words, "I was an interloper; this was not my heritage". I did not want to be placed in contexts of war, of strive, of conquest. But I was unaware, unexperienced, and ignorant. And I could not shy away from history and reality.

My legs buckled a bit and hit the burnt orange dirt.

Why was I there?

Yes, I wanted to help the kids and be a guide for them. Yes, I wanted to travel and see the world outside of my southeast Texas hometown. But, a part of me lingered on this: I was sent there with the intent to change--transform--someone's skills to benefit them. That was "good", right?

One month after my trip to Ghana I gave a talk about my experiences teaching overseas. I told tales of our "exploring time" through the cocoa trees behind the house we stayed in. I shared the stories of the activities we used to learn common English words. English words that described--and hopefully, illuminated--their world. Most of my students were polyglots. They were younger, yet so much wiser, than me. I might have taught them a few English words, but they taught me to be patient. They helped me become a better teacher. A wiser person--a whole person.

The questions I received from the audience shook me to the core:

"Yes, but did they learn English?"

"What was it like in their home?"

"Did it feel weird? Foreign?"

The audience's disregard for the positivity and impact the students had on me, and the other people I traveled with, should have been foreign. But it wasn't.

* * *

Eventually, she and her classmates pulled me up the rest of the way to the school building, clunkily pushed me onto the grass, and began to share their stories--using a vibrant blend of Ewe and English--to pull me out of my "body double" moment and settle into the present. I guess the young girl and her friends knew I was upset. She did not let go of my arm for the rest of the day.

July 2016: Japan

Aerial view of the outskirts of Hiroshima near Yasuda University.

Hiroshima is in southwestern Japan on Honshu island. It's a city rich with overlapping histories of its citizens and foreigners alike, and the backdrop for my second "body double" moment. Through chance and a whole lot of support, I found myself reading The Tale of the Heikke and Black Rain and seeing The Great Torii as part of my MA work. The study abroad trip centered around a Japanese Literature in Context course, and our agenda was to spend three weeks exploring Hiroshima, Kyoto, Osaka, and Tokyo while reading theory and learning about the history, mythology, and culture of Japan.

My second "body double" moment started with okonomiyaki.

A delicious serving of okonomiyaki from a mom-and-pop restaurant in downtown

Hiroshima

Okonomiyaki (お好み焼き) is a Japanese savory pancake that can have different fillings depending on what you like, but this one had cabbage, green onion, noodles, other ingredients, and secret spices with spicy mayo. And man, it tasted divine.

After I shared this dinner with some newfound friends in Hiroshima, my host sister, Aki, went home and told her parents that we needed to make okonomiyaki at home before I left for Kyoto. Two days later, I found myself sitting cross-legged at the dinner table in my too-warm pajamas concentrating on flipping the pancake so it wouldn't burn on one side.

Aki and I had prepped the ingredients and she helped me place them on the hot plate so the conglomeration of veggies, noodles, sauce, and spices would eventually turn into the dish I came to love. We laughed and worked, and the "body double" moment rose steadily--it seemed like the cooking experiences of my ancestors seeped into my bones and hands. So much so that I hastily flipped my wrist and the spatula and the okonomiyaki flipped off the hot place and directly in my host father's lap.

* * *

In Strangers to Ourselves, Julia Kristeva makes the following observation: "Strangely, the foreigner lives within us: he is the hidden face of our identity, the space that wrecks our abode, the time in which understanding and affinity founder." I'm grateful my host family make the choice to have an American student stay with them, and even more humbled that my host sister and her parents were exceedingly patient and kind to me. Especially when it came to cooking.

But in that moment, my foreignness--vulnerability, excitement, fatigue, embarrassment--became tangible and unhidden and I wanted to huddle in a ball and hide from the world. I failed to recognize in that moment all of our shared foreignness with cooking; everyone has to start somewhere. Although they didn't expect me to flip the pancake off of the hot plate, I'd like to believe my host parents and Aki appreciated my efforts to try and keep trying to learn about Japanese food culture, their customs, and livelihood. My vulnerability and foreignness was, in that moment, welcoming.

The okonomiyaki nightmare, in reality, lasted only a few minutes even though it felt like hours. He let out a huge guffaw, grabbed his translator, and quickly began to type something. A few seconds later, a female, automated English voice said, "Nice try, better luck next time."

Even though there was searing cabbage, noodles, and spices on my host father's pants and shirt, he was grinning ear-to-ear and laughing for the rest of the night.