These past few weeks in my ASTU 100 class here at UBC we have been discussing Michale Ondaatje’s memoir “Running in the Family”. The book is written in quite an interesting way. It incorporates poems, quotes, stories told by others, and Ondaatje’s own imagined tellings. While it is a difficult read at times, it’s fascinating and touching like all memoirs. Ondaatje explores many different topics like history, identity, travel, memory and how they all play a part in the kind of person someone can become.
In particular, the subject of identity is one that I can relate to. In class we briefly discussed the idea of a “Third Culture Kid (TCK)” which is an idea that I can identify with, and so can Ondaatje. My story has always been that I was born in Peru, then moved to Costa Rica when I was three, and finally, at the age of eight, we moved to Canada. I moved when I was young and so, I don’t remember much of Peru, but it is still very important to me. I have a family in Peru and history that I don’t know of or understand, like Ondaatje “I am the foreigner” (p.61). I feel privileged to live in a first world country where so many opportunities have been made accessible to me, but I can’t help but feel that the person I am and will be is not the person I want to be, not unless my understanding of my history becomes a little less blurred. In such instances I can understand what Ondaatje is feeling, and what prompted him to write a complicated memoir; history is complicated, identity is even more so.
The part the Karapothas in the chapter Don’t Talk to Me About Matisse is a crucial part of the memoir. The Karapothas (which means the foreigner) starts off with journal entries from past European colonizers, whose views are a reflection of their orientalist attitudes. Ondaatje’s own ancestor, William Charles Ondaatje describes Ceylon and it’s exoticness (p.64), he was the foreigner. This is where Ondaatje’s own internal conflict started, his Dutch heritage mixed with his pride for Ceylon has caused him to be confused about his identity. Ceylon is a place where he is from, but will never belong to. The Karapothas is quite saddening to read. Ondaatje remembers meticulously writing in Sinhalese, feeling it was the most beautiful language and having a connection with it, just for it all to be destroyed. I believe that Ondaatje is trying to grow with his current family in Canada, but he can’t because his past is catching up with him, and he can’t keep running away.
Ondaatje can continue to live in Canada, and forget about Sri Lanka but his history will be incomplete. Our histories and their roles shaping our futures teach us how to grow. Ondaatje comes from a Dutch family, who had the upper hand in Ceylon, without them having the upper hand Ondaatje would have had a very different life. It’s important for him to understand that without these colonizers and their advantages he would have had no privileges. He has to understand this before he chooses to move on. Family and history play a crucial role in the person one can become, moving away from it and ignoring it would make someone incomplete.
With that, I leave you with this quote which I think embodies the process of finding our identity,
“I seem to have run in a great circle, and met myself again on the starting line.”
― Jeannette Winterstone