Week 32 - 'and you come from where, precisely?'

New York has changed remarkably in the 10 years or so since I first visited the city. The edginess of old Gotham has gone, for one thing. Tourists no longer feel confined to the ridiculously self-absorbed island of Manhattan, for another (I actually stayed in Brooklyn – far cheaper and, in my opinion, more human). And there seemed to be children everywhere. Children in Greenwich Village, riding their little scooters in the autumn sunshine. Mothers and toddlers wandering casually through galleries. Dads and sons playing ‘soccer’ and sleeping on the grass in Central Park.

The good Dr M, mother to be of the first born, thinks that I exaggerate. She thinks it’s me, not New York, that has changed. She may have a point, though. The last time I was in NYC, I was single, with money in my pocket, looking for a good time. This time around, I was tucked up in bed by 10, reading a good book and listening to the news.

(Note: This is the correct thing to say if you know that your nearest and dearest reads your blog)   

One thing hasn’t changed though; the monotonous regularity with which the natives ask, ‘so where do y’all come from, then?’

I’m being a little unfair. It’s a perfectly reasonable question to ask, I think. It’s more the difficulty I face in answering that makes me a little uncomfortable, I suspect.

Let me explain. When a New Yorker (or a Clevelander, come to think of it, but more on that later) asks you where you come from, it’s not just acknowledgement that you are ‘not of these parts’ (fairly obvious when you have an accent like mine); the question probes a little further, asking about your antecedents – what part of the world do you identify with?

Ronnie Reagan, patron saint of capitalist causes and 40^th POTUS, once, churlishly, referred to the citizens of his country as ‘hyphenated Americans’ His views on immigration and integration are neither here nor there. The concept of America as a country of immigrants however, of people who proudly wear the Stars and Stripes on their lapels yet relate comfortably to their historical origins in India, Japan, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Korea, Jamaica, Iroquois or wherever, is an intriguing one. I’ve always fancied that this duality of identity is what lies behind the question I always get when I visit the States.

It’s not a question I am entirely comfortable with, largely because I do not have a straightforward answer to it. I usually say that I am Nigerian if asked. This is so, even though I went through years of merciless teasing when I lived in Nigeria because of my accent, my inability to speak (properly) any indigenous language, even because I was regularly informed that I could not be a real Nigerian for god-knows what reasons. I usually say that I am Nigerian even though I am reasonably certain that I do not intend to live in Nigeria any more.

I could say that I am English. I was born in England, carry a British passport, and have made my home here for the last decade. However, that would ignore the stark dissimilarities in culture, tradition and outlook between myself and the ‘natives’, many of who would (reasonably or unreasonably) ask, ‘but where do your parents come from?’ if I tell them that I am English. Or British. Which is another source of confusion and multiple interpretation, but that’s another story altogether.

I suppose that if you put a gun to my head, I would describe myself as ‘Anglo-Nigerian’. I don’t know if this is a made up category or a pre-existing one, but I cannot think of any other phrase that succinctly sums up the duality of my identity, encompassing the best (and the worst) of the two worlds that I grew up in and identify with.

Then again, I suppose that this question in part relates to how one defines identity: is it to do with categorisation, of identifying oneself as part of a wider collective, a group who share any number of similar cultural, social and (sometimes) ethnic characteristics? Even if this ignores the obvious plurality that would, of necessity, exist within any such unit, community, tribe or nation? Or does one consider identity to be a personal, private concept; one developed by the summation of individual experiences and influences?

I veer to the latter, as you might guess. But it is a bit of a mouthful to say when someone asks an otherwise straightforward question. Which is why I get a wee bit agitated when the Yanks ask me where I come from.

I’ve been thinking about identity a lot in relation to LJM. When he is born, he will have two parents with four passports between them (in alphabetical order: British, German, Israeli and Nigerian); he will have immediate family living in two countries on two continents; wherever he grows up, he will always have at least one parent speaking, regularly, a language other than their native tongue; his parents would have had different (not necessarily vastly so, but different nonetheless) experiences of childhood and growing up, and thus, different ideas (again, this time hopefully, not vastly so, but…) of bringing up children. How does one develop a homogeneous sense of identity in these circumstances?

I think M is, to some extent, like me in that she presumes her identity to be a more complex construct than simply a combination of nationality, religion and parents. And that gives me hope because, even if we agree on little else as we bring our son up, at least we can try to encourage him not to feel imprisoned within the traditionally narrow definition of identity.

The thing is (to my mind, at least), traditional interpretations of identity, those that served us all well when we were kids, are far too restrictive to reflect the reality of contemporary life. When I was little, stuff like this was straightforward: You were born in a country, you left it occasionally to go on holiday, but that was essentially the sum total of your direct experience of other cultures until, at the earliest, your late teens. That country is the direct and immediate predicator of identity: your nationality tells you who you are. (Reading through this, I acknowledge that it wasn’t always that simple: minority ethnic groups within countries certainly didn’t always enjoy this sense of certainty. The Jews in Europe before World War II weren’t allowed to embrace this possibility. But I do think, on a ‘rule of thumb’ basis, that my description was the single most likely means of developing one’s identity.)

Life ain’t like that anymore. Globalisation, economic migration, anthropological curiosity, cross-cultural relationships: these all remove the certainties we subscribed to a generation ago or so. It will be interesting to see what LJM makes of it all.

Back to my trip to the US of A

Cleveland was nice, in a provincial kind of way. People stared if they saw you walking rather than driving. One tipped for everything. Food portions were obscenely huge (I quite liked that, actually). The locals were, on the whole, nice and friendly.

The wedding was beautiful. I don’t think I fudged my speech, even though I had downed god-knows how many Gin and Tonics beforehand for courage and inspiration. The Bride was radiant. The Groom made sure we all had ill-fitting tuxes, thus making him look like a model straight out of the pages of GQ. And it was wonderful to hook up with some of my oldest, closest friends together after so many years. Guys, we surely can’t wait another 11 years before we make it happen again, can we?

Coming back to London, the good Dr M and LJM was nicer than everything else put together though.

We had our first antenatal class on Wednesday. I’ll say a bit more about it in my next post, but I must say that I was bitterly disappointed that we didn’t have to take off our shoes and do breathing exercises in large bright rooms painted in soft pastel hues.

I had worn clean socks and everything, too. Never mind

See you all later J

Comments

[O]

"Note: This is the correct thing to say if you know that your nearest and dearest reads your blog" if I didn't know you I would have thought you are trying to appear "wild"... :)

Identity is a big question, and it won’t get easier in a few months time. I hope you will be able to continue looking at it as a philosophical question. M might want to kill me for saying so, but I think it’s good to have a realistic view of what you are trying to do and the identity issue is more complex or problematic in some places than in others. In second thought that might not be the point... just me having a very restricted experience of identity since “my nationality tells me who I am".

[Calabargal]

U were looking forward to breathing exercises hmmn? Dont worry there's still a lot of time to show off ur socks. (smile)
Congratulations to u both.