Finding Home: Who am I? Where am I?

I grew up here in Dallas, but I had my daily dose of kimchi, used the Korean language with my parents at home every day, and attended weekly sermons at a Korean church. My ethnicity defined a large part of my cultural identity. When we think about identity, we might start with numerous labels that fall under various categories (nationality, sex, age, education, etc.). Nonetheless, it is undeniable that cultural identity is a huge piece of the pie.

 Still, what is cultural identity? According to Stuart Hall in Cultural Identity and Diaspora, cultural identity can be defined in two ways: common historical experiences and the transformations of the “becoming” process. While shared cultural codes are the more stable forms of identity as it is associated with the past--which is something that already has happened and defines who we are--the latter is much more ambiguous as it is something that does not yet exist. In this way, Hall nicely describes for us that identity can be framed by two vectors that occur at the same time. 

Cultural identity on its own already has so many things going on. However, the world today isn’t so black and white. People are moving to new places, meeting different people, and having more varied experiences within this super-globalized world. In an attempt to address this phenomenon, Susan Stanford Friedman (in Migrations, Diasporas, and Borders) lists a series of questions on multiculturalism in which people living in European countries (ex: Muslim girls who might wear hijabs in France) might experience ambiguities in their identities due to a mesh of different cultures and legal labels that they identify with. In addition to the question of “where are you really from,” I was often asked, “are you more Korean or American?” This brings up some concerns about why we feel the need to decide on a single label for ourselves. Why do we feel the need to categorize ourselves into one box and why are we sometimes forced to choose between (or even among) cultural loyalties?

Maybe ambiguity is okay when we think about cultural identity. Many western scholars tend to follow a binary system that helps to simplify complex concepts, so such ambiguity can be more difficult to analyze. Still, identity cannot be fully categorized and compared through a binary (us vs them, he vs she, black vs white). In actuality, a binary system is so far from reflecting today’s realities of globalization, migration, transnationalism, and multiculturalism. Cultural identity just isn’t so simple anymore.

Our identities do not have to be understood by an “either/or” logic, but even more importantly this over-simplified reasoning can be dangerous. While a bipolar analysis of cultural identity might be useful for deconstruction, a “we vs. them” way of thinking can be an easy slippery slope for hate crimes that involve language and comments like “go back to your home” or “go back to where you came from.” If an Asian woman grew up in Texas and she is threatened to leave, where does she have to go to find “home?” What is home and where is it anyway?

The concept of home can be misleading in and of itself. While a home can be defined by a physical space: a plot of land or a building that you routinely return to, it can also be somewhere with your loved family and friends. But what really is home? Avtar Brah (in Diaspora, Borders, and Transnational Identities) describes the home as a place of no return. Home is also dependent on the experiences of that location.

Brah exemplifies home with a series of experiential senses (sight, smell, sounds, etc.). To me, this is a strangely appropriate way to imagine what home is. When I lived abroad for six years in South Korea, I would visit my family here in Texas every year. As soon as the plane landed at the DFW airport, my heart would skip a beat in the excitement of returning home. I would feel at ease hearing the “drrrrr” of the car passing the airport toll booth and smelling the scent of freshly mowed grass. After spending a few weeks in Dallas and when it was time for me to return to Seoul, I felt sad to leave home (a place with my family and memories of my childhood) but happy to return to one (a location I had begun connecting with). Then the relief of being home would happen again when I arrived in Korea. 

I have realized that home is anywhere and nowhere. I learned that I did not have to select one location as my home. And if I did not have to choose a single place as home, then why do I have to choose a single label to define my cultural identity?