Xuen Tey Week 3: America and Identity
Discussing this in class was a weird experience, especially because I’m not actually a U.S. citizen like the rest of my peers. On official records, I’m an immigrant. I have a green card I had to renew in February, I have an alien registration number, I have hospital records showing I was born in Singapore. Legally and by blood, I’m Singaporean through and through. My mom and dad were born in Singapore and grew up in Singapore and only came here around a year after I was born.
But what does that mean when you know nothing about being Singaporean?
My mom sometimes talks to me about Singapore. She talks about the public transportation—how people complain if they have to wait more than ten minutes for the right train or bus—and she talks about the convenience. She talks about the place like this kind of paradise, about how she misses being able to walk downstairs and purchase cheap, good quality food, how she misses the food (again, I know, she really likes the food). But everytime she talks about the place, I always just feel awkward. While I spent many summers in Singapore—since we went back to Singapore every couple years to visit family and to collect snacks not found in the U.S.—I never quite fit in with my aunts and uncles and cousins because I grew up in America, which is almost Singapore’s polar opposite.
My family also likes to call me American.
Everytime I insisted I was Singaporean because I was a Singaporean citizen by birth, she would ask things like “What’s Singapore’s national anthem?” or “Can you recite the Singaporean pledge of allegiance?” and then I could never answer them. How was I supposed to know? I didn’t grow up in Singapore. Everytime this happened I would feel a little bitter, I won’t lie. Did she expect me to say I’m American, knowing full well that my family, including me and my sister, were all immigrants and not citizens?
To me, Americans were people with citizenship. They were the people who had a say in the country—the people who could vote on state laws and national bills and presidents—the people who knew they belonged and that they had power. I didn’t have that—I never have—and so I felt I wasn’t an American. I felt that I was Singaporean because my entire family was Singaporean and that was where I came from.
Xuen, the first thing I noticed was the amount of question marks in your blog. I love that! and I try to add rhetorical questions in my writing as well.
ReplyDeleteI also notice you added thoughts from an in class discussion, which prompted me to reflect/think about what my group had to say, and how we defined American Identity. I'm not sure if we're allowed to use names lol, so I'll just say the definition that resonated with me the most was that American Identity is shaped so much on the fact that there is no "one kind of American" as America is so diverse, so it would not be correct to categorize any one kind of person as "American."
I think it is so cool you are an immigrant, because generally (and maybe personally), when I hear the word immigrant, I think of my parents' generation and all of their friends who have immigrated here, as most of my friends have been born here. I feel like it's cool that you'd be able to give a fresh perspective on what being an immigrant is like, or rather, how it differentiates from my parents' experiences.
Finally, I heavily relate to your experiences with the national anthem/ pledge of allegiance. I feel like I too feel somewhat bitter about the fact that I cannot recite India's national anthem, despite hearing it SO many times. I know I am not an Indian citizen, but I don't feel obligated to know their national anthems and such like how I do with America. This seems to be a very unexplored idea (maybe I'll write about it in the next blog lol).
Finally, I lowkey have varying opinions on the last part of your blog, in which I feel I am American, although my parents are Indian and from India. But I guess that might just be because I was born here (Washington Hospital yessir).
Overall, I think I learned a lot of new details about you, and I hope to continue learning.
Xuen, I really appreciate you sharing a perspective on this topic that I cannot see from myself. It really sparks some interesting conversations about the importance of upbringing versus ethnicity on a person’s identity but also an interesting conversation about the way citizenship in this country works. I can completely relate to having relatives seeing me as completely uncultured purely because of where I grew up; despite being able to speak Tamil fluently , most of my relatives speak to me only in English because they think that is the only language I can communicate in. This blog post has really opened my views on citizenship and “American Identity” so I am really grateful that you were willing to share this.
ReplyDeleteThere’s so many things I think we could all talk about in relation to America and our identities (super excited for the next quarter prompt), but your take brought up things I hadn’t really considered! Your definition of Americans being “people with citizenship” honestly sounds like a line from a novel. And you clocked me saying your tablemates said that “American identity is freedom and anyone who lives in America.” My personal definition leans towards the latter--even after we've read about the discourse about American identity, I have the memory of me as a kid asking why I was American if my parents were both Filipino. They told me it was because I was born here, and that was about it. But your family (seemingly) interrogating you about what you choose to call yourself is so relatable. My grandmother tried to teach me the Tagalog numbers when I was younger, and I always felt I belonged more to “Filipino” than “American” because of my family, even when I long for a place and culture I’ve never physically interacted with. We differ in that way, as I have never been to the Philippines, but I’m glad you came to the conclusion that you felt more Singaporean, thank you so much for sharing your experiences.
ReplyDeleteThe issue of American identity is astonishingly complex—after spending a week analyzing it and studying it and writing about it, I still don’t think we’ve really gotten a grasp of everything it encompasses. In last week’s survey, I wrote that the American identity consists of the values held by the nation: freedom, liberty, justice, democracy, et cetera. Yet, as your post displays, being American is so much more intricate.
ReplyDeleteRecently, in my AP Biology class, I’ve been hearing a lot about how humans like to place labels on things that don’t really happen within the confines of definition, and I think American identity is one of those things. We can try to place boundaries over who can and cannot be American, but at the end of the day, nationalism and patriotism are incredibly vague and loosely defined ideologies. The concept of “belonging” to a certain “country” made up of imaginary lines is completely intangible, yet it’s something that affects us every single day. Maybe one day humanity will outgrow these metaphysical notions, and we won’t have to worry about who is and isn’t American, since we’ll understand that every nation bleeds red.