Friday, August 17, 2012

global identity

"I am American mentally with Japanese tendencies/Parisian sensibility..."
Lupe Fiasco, "Gold Watch"

sometimes i still face disappointment at not being able to trace my roots back a certain distance.  my heritage gets lost somewhere in the Middle Passage, and that's hard to come to grips with, especially when you're part of the "most diverse class that Vanderbilt Medical School's ever had" (we've been branded) and everywhere you turn you see someone who has a list of countries of origin ready for recitation.

but i'm realizing more and more each day that i'm actually a bit of a cultural anomaly.  apparently i could pass for Ethiopian, Jamaican, or Trini appearance-wise, depending on who you talk to.  i have a bit of a (potentially superficial) love affair with East Asian culture (especially Japanese food.  nom), and with music in languages i don't understand (Ivy Queen, Buraka Som Sistema, and Utada are probably somewhere among my top played).  and i've been dubbed a "wannabe Caribbean"; the not-so-secret desire to learn Patois, fry plantains, and dance to every riddim under the summer sun probably has something to do with that.

in one sense, all that i am able to claim is a nebulous sense of blackness.

in another sense, i am a multicultural phenomenon without even trying.

(excuse any awkward phrasing and the plethora of parenthetical statements...i was procrastinating last night when i wrote this)

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