Everyone creates their own personal archive throughout their lives, whether it be through photographs, letters, childhood drawings, or diaries. But why is it that we want to keep things that, after  a considerable amount of time passes, may no longer seem relevant? During the first archives workshop in class this week, we were introduced to several types of archival materials. What I found most interesting was the Chung collection’s bundle of exercise books from the early 1899. They were written by children of the Yip Song Family, and consisted of copied out letters to improve handwriting in English. As I was flicking through the pages of letters, typically addressed to very British names and finishing in the same way, I questioned the purpose of keeping these exercise books in the archives. Aren’t they a waste of space? They don’t tell us anything about the people who wrote the letters out, so why do the archivists keeping them see them as valuable?

At first these kinds of collections may seem irrelevant, but I later realised they were so because they reflected the influence that “whites” had on other incoming (namely the Chinese) groups of people in Canada at the time. It was particularly interesting to see how the writing style was written to perfection, yet on many pages there were Chinese characters in the margins, as though the students did not fully understand the meaning of some words and so noted the translation in Chinese. This made me think about the pressure to assimilate into Canadian culture, which at the time was predominantly of British influence. Perhaps the letters were chosen as a form of education, or re-education, so that children of Chinese background would become more “Canadian”.

This may be the reason for keeping these exercise books, which do not reveal specific information about the students who copied out the letters, but instead about other areas of interest, such as the education system at the time, the possible brain-washing the occurred, and the encouragement to learn English correctly to gain citizenship. Perhaps many archival materials seem futile at first glance, but I have realised that they are all valuable, and today, give us so much information about the past that would not be obtainable without the preservation of such materials.

Anne Marie Nakagawa’s documentary on people of mixed backgrounds and various cultural identities provoked some serious soul-searching on my part. Being half French, half Northern Irish, but born and brought up in Hong Kong, I can absolutely relate to the people whose stories were shared for the film. Now I am studying in Canada, having to explain where I am from constantly, as well as the reason as to why I have an accent (or no distinct one at all?). People like me are, as one person in the film said, “resident aliens living in the hyphen”. We belong to more than one nation or race, and yet we will never truly fit in to where we might call home.

Whilst watching the documentary I noted several patterns from a number of the people who shared their stories. The first was that they longed to be something other than what they were, especially in the teenage years. However, in childhood, many did not notice the difference until a significant moment in there lives when they realised they were not the same as most other children. In my own memory, I don’t remember any moment in my childhood where I felt out of place. However, I do remember being on a crowded train in Hong Kong a months ago and the thought occurred to me that I was the only white person on the train. Perhaps the normality of this in a previously British colony made this fact go unnoticed to me for so many years. And whilst watching the film I realised that I will never really fit in.

From the film I picked up two abstractions that provoked a lot of thought: racial purity inauthenticity. Is someone not “pure” if they identify as being of more than one nationality or ethnicity? Am I not telling the truth if I tell a stranger that I am simply French, whilst omitting the other two very important aspects of my identity? As one speaker mentioned, being questioned actually “revokes ones identity”, which in part I agree with. I do believe however that although the film highlighted many aspects of being of multiple nationalities, it did not touch upon the beauty of being mixed. I found that it victimised the speakers rather than embracing their backgrounds and exciting stories. This may have been the purpose of the film, but in an increasingly multicultural world, I believe that racial “purity” should no longer be regarded as superior, and that those of mixed origins should not feel inferior. It should be seen not as a problem but as a positive result of how our world is changing. I think that although the film focuses on Canada, this phenomenon of mixed races is ever-growing in many parts of the world and should be embraced more, especially by those who are of mixed backgrounds.