Living With Biculturalism

If you have ever met someone for the first time and been asked, "What are you?", I think we could be friends.

It's a perfectly logical question, really. What I hear: "You look different than what I expect and I need to have a category to place you in, so I want to know: what are you?"

I usually explain that my father is (was) American, my mother is Chilean, and yes I look like my American father but with the coloring of my Chilean mother, no I don't speak Spanish as my first language, yes I can speak some Spanish but it is Chilean Spanish, yes I prefer wearing dresses not pants, no I don't go anywhere without lipstick on, yes I dress a little formally, no I'm not Catholic, yes I have been to Chile and can make manjar and pebre and empanadas, no I am not expected to date or marry a Chilean.

These are some of the common questions I am asked and I'm not offended by them.(Okay, it is a little embarrassing when I meet someone and they begin speaking to me in Spanish first and I can only go so far with it-- this used to happen in San Antonio all the time.) But I do find myself gravitating to other people who have also grown up biculturally in the U.S.: there is some sense of understanding that things aren't always clear cut, that our families were maybe different from the neighbors, that we are judged for doing things that are second nature to us but might seem weird to others.

V. once came to guest-teach my culture class in China and talked a little about this topic. As I listened to him, I realized this was one of the things I liked about our friendship, that we both understand what it's like to grow up with parents who don't do what the neighbors do, who raise you under a different set of cultural mores. (My mother set the tone for our family; Chileans are much more laid back about dinner times and schooling and curfews than traditional American culture, for example.) V. and I didn't share the same cultural background, but we both knew what it was like to try to integrate two cultures into one livable paradigm. T. lived in Chile for a while as a university exchange student, and its one of the things that makes me feel comfortable with him as a person, that I can talk about things he understands from living there. (But he puts me to shame, he speaks Spanish fluently!)

Some people in America have very strong, negative opinions about biculturalism. It has been a little difficult to have been in China and tell my student how great it is that biculturalism is a part of American culture for so many kids, and then come back to America and hear negative attitudes towards it. I love that we can say these things freely without fear or stifling, but I definitely glorified this aspect of American culture while I was overseas.