As
you all know, I read the poem “Outcast” by Claude McKay for my poetry reading.
Here’s a complete blog post explaining why
I chose to recite that poem:
To
me, the poem “Outcast” represented the idea of wanting to own and belong to a
culture that I directly relate to, yet am displaced from in time and in distance.
This summer, I decided to record an interview with my grandfather who was born
in 1920 Palestine in attempt to save his legacy and story. In my eyes, my
grandfather is the epitome of Palestinian culture as he was born before the
violent establishment of Israel and still stayed on his land and made/sold his own
olive oil while also building homes for Palestinian villagers.
In
hearing his story, I realized that—no matter how much I try—I cannot be the
Palestinian that my grandfather is (or was.)
If you know anything about Palestine, you’ll know that in 1948 it was officially
occupied by the State of Israel and currently exists under an apartheid military
rule of oppression of the native Palestinian people. I’ve longed to bring back
and belong to the Palestinian culture of my grandfather and his ancestors: a
culture pre-Israel. But that culture is not only separated physically from me,
but also in time. I only get a glimpse of that culture from my grandfather who
is my last living grandparent. I am literally witnessing to that “original”
(non-western) Palestinian culture slowly dying.
In
its place: a powerful Palestinian culture that is fighting for freedom and
basic human rights. (Still a beautiful culture and one I am very much proud to come from and embody.)
I’m lucky enough to still know the language and general culture of Palestine,
but of course living in America makes me more detached to Palestine than my
parents. And if I end up staying in America, and from me comes the third and
fourth and fifth generation of Palestinian-Americans, each one will continue to
slowly detach from that culture until it is completely erased from their lives.
<image: me and my grandfather.>
"Something in me is lost, forever lost,
Some vital thing has gone out of my heart,
And I must walk the way of life a ghost,
Among the sons of earth, a thing apart;
For I was born far from my native clime,
Under the white man's menace, out of time."
"Something in me is lost, forever lost,
Some vital thing has gone out of my heart,
And I must walk the way of life a ghost,
Among the sons of earth, a thing apart;
For I was born far from my native clime,
Under the white man's menace, out of time."
I relate to this post all too well. Sometimes I wish I was "more" Nigerian, but unfortunately, that may never happen. I grew up with people speaking Ibgo (the native tongue), but due to hearing issues, I never actually learned it. My own ears scammed me out of a language (and culture). Sometimes I wish I had the time to learn how to speak it, so I could move to Nigeria and learn more about my roots, but I fear that day may never come. As a fellow first generation, I am glad that you shared your post.
ReplyDeleteI loved the discussion you led about this poem, and it's really interesting to hear your story about your grandfather. I share your feeling that if you stay in America, it's inevitable that your children will slowly lose the culture that you came from. And that's hard to deal with, and I think about this a lot. My parents came from Yugoslavia, and even though I speak Serbian and feel relatively connected with the culture, I'll never have the same experience they did. In addition, the Serbia that exists today simply isn't the Yugoslavia they grew up in. The place they're from, and perhaps the culture I embody as their child, no longer exists. And while at least I have a place I feel connected to, Claude McKay did not have that in the same way.
ReplyDeleteI remember my mother telling me that she never celebrated any of the Serbian Orthodox holidays until she came to the US. And when I was born, she sort of had a moment where she wondered who I would be. She reclaimed a lot of Serbian traditions so that later on I would feel like I would have a culture to connect with, and so that I could speak with my family, and feel like I'd always have a group I was a part of. And now I'm so thankful that she did those things, and I realize how difficult it is now after reading "Outcast" to feel disconnected from where you came.
Your discussion relating this post was great. Luckily for me I have a family that is strongly connected to our background. There are often times that I wish I could visit Switzerland or Colombia, but I'm not barred by politics or war.
ReplyDeleteI'm always going to be eternally grateful that my mother taught me Spanish, because knowing how to connect to your roots is incredibly important. I hope that you can carry on some of your grandfathers traditions and teach your children the language and what he was like.
I really enjoyed your in-class discussion of Outcast, and agree with your overall point of the importance of heritage and cultural background. Being a second generation immigrant, I also have come to understand how wonderful it is to be a part of two cultures. However, I have realized that one disadvantage of being second generation, is that you don't truly belong to either. Although I can pass for German when I visit, because I speak the language at home, there are still some inherent differences in my background and that of my parents. Great post!
ReplyDeleteBoth in our discussion during/after class, and reading this blog post, I connect so much to this! I am Ukrainian. I say that with a sort of confidence that is perhaps not entirely backed, because at this point, what is Ukraine? My parents, by birth certificate, are Soviet, and the same technically for my grandparents, who were born during the bloody transition of Ukraine into the USSR. During the Soviet Union, Ukrainian culture was not only overruled, but actively erased. From the famine-genocide and KGB agents that killed all dissenters, to the banning of spoken and written Ukrainian in schools, the only way to survive the Soviet Union was to cast away your “Ukrainian-ness”. So who am I? I have a Ukrainian passport, I travel to the political territory called Ukraine, I speak Ukrainian, but I learned all of those things from people’s ideas and research of what Ukraine was, not from their actual lived experience. Unfortunately, true pre-Soviet Ukrainians are long gone, and although some traditions have persisted, they were incredibly whittled down and diminished during Soviet control. I too feel that something in me is lost, forever lost, and the more time passes, the less chance I have to recover any of it.
ReplyDeleteI can relate to this post only a little but it still devastates me. My mom is from China, so when I was really little she would always speak Chinese to me, and it actually was my first language. But as soon as I started going to preschool and everyone there only spoke English, I stopped speaking Chinese basically altogether, and I've forgotten it since. I've tried to relearn it a couple of times, and I can remember bits and pieces, but my work ethic is abysmal so I always end up giving up. When I was 8 we went back to China to visit family, and I couldn't communicate with them very well because I couldn't speak Chinese, and their English wasn't very good. My family eats a lot of Chinese food, and we celebrate some Chinese holidays, but other than that we really don't engage in the culture, and just knowing that I'm missing out on a huge part of myself and my heritage makes me really sad.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, this post is amazing and the class discussion we had around this poem was equally so. When I think about my own heritage, it's interesting because my ancestors, black slaves and sephardic jews, experienced the same kinds of violent separation that your post and Solomia's comment talks about. I am far, far removed from that trauma-- my Spanish jewish ancestors escaped the Inquistion in the early 1600s, fleeing to Jamaica. My black family was forcibly brought to the Texas in the 1850s, smuggled in after the outlawing of atlantic slave trade. I have no way of knowing any of those ancestors, yet their traumas live on in my family-- in my black family myths of southeast asian heritage by way of Madagascar, and in my own name-- Isabella Solis, after Isabel de Solis, my ancestor by family lore, who resisted her own kidnapping (note, wikipedia says she was a christian, but that may have easily been a lie, de Solis is a traditionally jewish name). Clearly that family trauma lives on in my life, all the way from the 1600s. This shows just how potent remembered traumas can be, and how they continue to affect people long, long after they happen.
ReplyDelete