Tag: acculturation

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Planting a Seed

Ruolee holds the seed, like how Ah-ma held her hands. “I know it will grow now. It certainly will.”

Creator:
Maya Wu 吳妤蕎 (she/her)

Leaving a home to set up a new home elsewhere is as much a source of excitement as it is a source of sorrow. We often end up in a double-bind of experiencing sadness for leaving behind people we love and cherish, and also struggling with the loneliness of social isolation and cultural adjustment in a new environment. This is especially difficult for children who, while culturally and linguistically adjusting, also end up shouldering the domestic load of being the liaison between their families and the outside world. And sometimes, all it takes is that one serendipitous encounter with that one individual who helps change perspectives, provides assurances, and gives confidence to the immigrant child to know how to find a niche for themselves in this new cultural environment. If you had been in a similar situation, who was that one person for you – or perhaps it was a group of people? And what changes occurred as a result of that encounter? Read through Maya’s beautifully illustrated story of just such an encounter and I dare you to not feel like smiling at the end.

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Trapped in Space

I look toward the moonlight but I become increasingly frustrated over being in situations beyond my control that poses barriers in my assimilation to mainstream culture.

Creator:
Jiro Luat (he/him)

Moving to a new country isn’t as simple as merely moving bodies across physical spaces. Children who move during their formative years have to navigate the difficult psychological space of reconciling different emerging identities, and families have to manage a difficult relational space because it often splits up parents, creating astronaut families. All of this will strain relationships between parents, and between children and their parents. For Jiro, these issues deeply affected him and his development, and he masterfully showcases this process and his thoughts with a beautiful dance performance. Watch the video below and the accompanying statement to get a good glimpse of what this experience was/is like for him. If you had to move to a completely different cultural environment, and had to adjust while also navigating fraying relationships with other family members, what would that feel like?

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“Where are you from?”

“Are you a ninja?”

Creator:
Anonymous

If there is one thing that racialized people have to do a lot as they move through society, it is having to explain their own identity, culture, and (presumed) history of migration. “Where are you from? No, where are you really from?” While the person asking the question might not have meant it maliciously, the fact that racialized people disproportionately have to answer this question suggests a fundamentally and systemically different perception that many in society have about racialized people. In particular, this perception involves the insidious assumption that racialized people don’t belong here, or that they can’t possibly be from here. Instead, they really belong there, and must be from there. Take a look at this video and wonder for yourself…when someone experiences these perceptions so often, how does this affect their identity formation? How does this affect the ways in which one might see themselves?

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Where is “Home?”

But what if home no longer accepts you?

Artist:
Meriwether Morris (they/them)

The idea of belongingness and home can often be an elusive one for diasporic folks. There is the oft-repeated and clichéd trope of existing in a liminal space, frustrated by being simultaneously both and neither. It being a cliché, though, does not stop it from being true. Compounding this struggle is the additional frustration of not knowing how to react when disaster strikes in one’s “heritage home” – does being away from that “home” automatically make one less? Does being away from the crisis take away one’s ability to claim to be? All of this comes down to the diaspora wondering about their obligations and belongingness. All of this is to say, for many in the Asian diaspora, one of the primary questions is, “Where is home?”

Click on the following to reveal the comic and subsequent artist’s statement (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view via mobile PDF viewers)

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You should work twice as hard as everyone around you

“…oh you are Persian, so you should get good grades…”

Host:
Sahar Sajjadi سحر سجادي (she/her)

Guest:
Kawa Ada (Afghan heritage; Actor, Writer, Producer; he/him)

The migration experience can often be a very difficult one, and this difficulty can be compounded when one simultaneously experiences multiple axes of oppression: what happens when someone is at the intersection of being a war refugee, from West Asia, and being part of the LGBTQ+ community? Between external and internal racism, homophobia, war trauma, and acculturative stress, there is so much that someone in that position would have to deal with. From the midst of this intersection emerged an individual with endless understanding and insight. Join Sahar and her guest, Kawa, as they explore various cultural issues that West Asian diaspora face in Canada. There is perhaps no better way to set up this entry’s question with Sahar’s own: What does it mean to be a human, and what does it mean to live your truth?

Download here

Click on the following to reveal the podcast’s transcript (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view via mobile PDF viewers)

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Forming identity as a Filipino Canadian

We need people who won’t give up on our country

Artist:
Anonymous

Identity formation is a difficult process for members of the diasporic community, including the Filipino diasporic community. As the anonymous artist discusses, there are a lot of dynamics to consider – Am I abandoning people from the Philippines? To what extent do I embody a Canadian versus Filipino identity? How do people think about my English – is it too Filipino-accented for me to sound Canadian, or is it too Canadian-accented for me to sound Filipino? Ultimately, the big question is “Who am I?” While it’s a cliché to talk about this question, it’s a cliché precisely because of how commonplace it is. The anonymous artist decided to use a novel medium to explore all these ideas, and to ask a very important question – in the Filipino context, how might the interplay of colonial and nativist influences affect the experience of acculturation among Filipinos migrating to another context with an interplay between a different colonial influence, progressivism, and cultural protectionism?

Click on the screenshot to access the Instagram account

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Con người có tổ có tông – Humans have origins

Như cây có cội như sông có nguồn – Like trees have roots, like rivers have headwater

Hosts:
YoungJi Kim 김영지
Tommy Nguyễn 阮武風

Guest:
Tiêu Kiến Vinh (Vietnamese heritage)

Surprise! Not all Asians are the same! (As if that even needed highlighting). As Kim and Nguyen discuss with their guest, it becomes abundantly clear that there is direso much heterogeneity among Asian commnities. North vs. South Korea, North vs. South Vietnam, heritage individuals vs. diasporic individuals, first generation settlers vs. multigenerational settlers, those who settled directly from the homeland to Canada vs. those who settled elsewhere first. All of these distinctions undoubtedly have an impact one’s identity formation and experiences of cultural adaptation. Take a listen as to how the different identities and experiences of the podcast’s discussants are brought to bear in this frank and interesting discussion. More importantly, the discussants challenged each other on disagreements, yielding an hour of conversation that covers so much ground. This certainly leads to a much broader question – with all this complexity inherent in cultural identities, how should we talk about and represent identities in a way that is inclusive, but not tokenizing?

Download here

Click on the following to reveal the artist’s statement (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view via mobile PDF viewers)

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