Dr. Ruth Hill Useem was the first person to coin the phrase “third culture kid.” Before the concept was the subject of amusing BuzzFeed articles and a trendy label for the offspring of an increasingly globalised world, the term was used to distinguish children who had spent a significant portion of their lives outside of their parents’ culture. According to Ruth Van Reken, “The third culture kid builds relationships to all the cultures, while not having full ownership in any.”
As I have been fortunate enough to experience a portion of the world by living in different cities on various continents, I have also allowed the luxury to facilitate shoving identity “under the rug,” so to speak. However, these feelings all resurfaced as I was sitting in Morse Auditorium on Thursday, listening to Jhumpa Lahiri.
As an acclaimed author and BU alumna, Lahiri talked about what it is like growing up on the outside. She talked about how once you get comfortable, and you feel as if you are on the mysterious “inside” that you craved, the realization of belonging is much more terrifying than the nomadic nature of your identity you had become comfortable with.
When I obtained British citizenship, I imagined I would feel an instant reconciliation with where I patriotically identified as my home. I was a Londoner by upbringing, and now the little burgundy passport that made it official was in my sights. And yet, the symbiosis I anticipated never came. I traveled to India, and despite having deep familial ties in the country, it felt like I was watching my days behind a thin glass wall.
After living in America for the first time, I was even more baffled as to where my home was. I was still the muddle of cultural identities I had always been, unable to muster any deep-rooted sense of permanency. For some, they say the world is getting smaller. In that instance, it had never felt so vast as I was slowly losing sight of where I fit in. Nevertheless, the plurality in allegiance that I, and so many others like me have faced, has always taught me that embracing this fluidity can be beneficial. As the filmmaker Aga Alegria’s short movie on the TCK phenomenon says, “I come from here. I come from there. In truth I come from everywhere.”
With this idea in mind, pivotal moments in history should concern everyone, not just those who are filled with patriotism for the land that they cherish. Acts of human atrocity, or even human compassion, do not know these borders, or ethnic or religious groups. After the Holocaust, the destruction was not only felt in the camps. When genocides took place in Cambodia, Rwanda and even Darfur, the suffering and cries for help were not only felt by their domestic population — and these are only a few instances that have been made public by media and political attention. There are countless examples that did not make headlines because of censorship, inability to dispatch help in the region or the result of a tragic apathy.
For anyone who has seen the news in the past couple of weeks, it is no surprise that headlines have been dominated by both Latin America and Europe seeing significant signs of political unrest. Images of devastation trickled into the public eye from Ukraine and Venezuela slowly, before major news outlets began to give these crises attention. Just yesterday, news broke that anti-government protests in Thailand were targeted, and three people have been killed amongst many more wounded. Perhaps the most tragic aspect of watching these stories unfold is that they remind us of images we have seen before. Countries struggling to transition to a world where they are classified as post-colonialist, striving to seek stability in their independence — such as The Arab Spring that began in December 2010.
When championing a cause, you are not fighting just for one country, one person or one place. You are fighting for a break from the course of history, a moment in which other countries with political strife can derive some semblance of hope. Perhaps there is merit to this “Third Culture Kid” mentality, in which you hold the ideology that patriotism and pride is not confined to one identity. These movements are not about an individual hijacking the narrative and taking the story from the people. Hundreds of people taking to the streets are bigger than you and bigger than me. It’s about being a medium, and allowing those people to tell their own story. So when you go out to raise awareness, know that you are not solely doing it for your own country, but for others as well. There may be some of us who do not have one country we consider home, so for us, the effort to save the homes of others becomes even more pressing.
Sofiya Mahdi is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences and a former managing editor at The Daily Free Press. She can be reached atsofiya218@gmail.com
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