Third Culture Kids
Since we submitted the last blog post, I had been eagerly waiting for a topic to come up in class that I could do my next post on. It wasn’t until Tuesday’s class where Dr. Luger mentioned the idea of the ‘Third Culture Kid’ that I knew what I wanted to talk about. A third culture kid is someone who grew up in a different place or within a different culture than their parents; Ondaatje grew up in Canada whereas his parents and the rest of this family grew up in Sri Lanka, making him a third culture individual. Due to this, Ondaatje lost touch with his country of origin and an important idea in his book ‘Running in the Family’ is him trying to reconnect with his past. The reason this topic interests me so much is because I myself, such as many of us here at UBC, am a third culture kid.
I am originally from Pakistan, but having lived a large part of my life in Saudi Arabia and attending an international school, I have been exposed to many different types of people and cultures. I, however, feel very lucky as due to my closeness with my family and my yearly visits back to Pakistan, I have not drifted away from my culture and am still very closely in touch with it.
Being a third culture kid has taught me a lot; I’ve learned to be more open-minded, accepting and understanding than I ever thought I could be. My knowledge about different cultures has grown massively and has helped me to become more aware of the differences in the people around me.
Ondaatje, had he not been a third culture individual, arguably would not have been able to write this beautiful book. His experiences and thirst to find out more about his past and in particular, about his father, is the reason he was able to write this book and had he not moved away from his home country, this would not have been possible.