Spiral
Experienced User
Joined: 03 Jan 2008
{Posts: 127 }
Location: TnT
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 Posted: Sun 06 Jul 2008 13:12 Post subject: My Identity My Self : A small Aritcle from a Chinese Trini |
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Hello,
I hope that this small article gives you an insight about how other Ethnicities view themselves in a Caribbean Society. 
| Quote: | mY iDENTITY mY sELF
Anne Cazeau
Saturday, July 5th 2008
Demetria recently sent me one of those joke emails called "Things my Trini mother taught me." As I was chuckling along as I read each line, it struck me that while they were funny, the witticisms really did not apply to me because I do not have a Trini mother or a Trini father. As a child born of Chinese immigrant parents, my childhood was perhaps not typically Trinidadian.
Things that were essentially Trinidadian were almost unbeknownst to me, until I was a teenager. For example, I grew up with basically Chinese cooking as my staple diet so my first taste of dishes such as pelau, pastelles, oil down and roti were definitely from outside of the household through friends. While these were tastes that I grew to love, I still like my rice, wantons, noodles, vegetables, dim sum and roasted chicken basted in Chinese herbs and sauces. (Dee-lish-us!!!)
Some time ago, I was chided by Adrian, my dreadlocked friend because I did not know what paimie was. Okay, it is not like if paimie is a normal pastry that is sold in the neighbourhood bakery, so please forgive me. As I told him, I was brought up by people of peasant stock from the Guangdong province in China, so the knowledge of paimie in my household was practically non-existent.
My existence as a child straddled two worlds - the Chinese household and the Trinidadian society. While we were not actively encouraged to participate in Carnival, Eid or Divali, we were never deterred from it either.
My parents made an effort, however, to assimilate us into this country in which they now lived. Even though my parents were not Catholic, they baptised us into the religion. We got Christian first names, in addition to our Chinese middle names and we went through all of the rites of being a Catholic child. We also spoke English at home and not one word of Cantonese.
As a first generation Chinese-Trinidadian,I often wondered whether I was a Chinese person born in Trinidad, or a Trinidadian who was of Chinese descent. It seems to be the same thing but actually it's not. Is it my ethnicity or nationality which better defines my identity?
I was aware of my innate differences with my schoolmates but I guess it was only when you live abroad, the differences disappear and the similarities with your fellow countrymen become more evident.
When I attended business school in Texas, there were many Asian students, many of whom were from China. They introduced themselves to me in rapid Mandarin and when I gave them a blank expression, they realised that while I looked like them, I was not one of them. My name was strange and my accent was different. A couple of American students expressed the view that I was not what they expected a Caribbean native to be. When I told them I came from the islands, they thought I meant Hawaii.
I felt I had little in common with my Asian classmates. Sure, they looked like me but I felt no kinship with them. And, perhaps it is most telling that my roommate, Leah, was a Barbadian and one of my closest friends was Helen, a Canadian of Jamaican parentage. There was no one else with ties to the Caribbean in our class, except us. I naturally gravitated to folks with a Caribbean background rather than the people who had the same skin colour, hair and eyes like me.I clung to what was most familiar to me.
I suppose it is more about shared experiences and common culture that bind people together rather than just your particular ethnicity. I read an article once in one of the Toronto newspapers about some Indo-Caribbean migrants to Canada, who somehow felt more tied to other Caribbean immigrants (regardless of race or ethnicity), rather than the Indian migrants from India. I suppose it was the same dynamic at work here with my experiences.
Identity can be more than just your nationality, ethnicity or occupation, as I have found out. My stint at business school had a profound impact on "my identity." Two years ago, I received an email notice from the Dean that some unknown perpetrator had hacked into the business school's data banks and more than 100,000 records belonging to faculty, staff and students were downloaded, and mine was among those that were stolen.
My personal data and my social security number had been accessed by the intruder. We were advised to take immediate steps to protect our credit history and prevent the perpetration of fraud. Though we created a hullabaloo about the situation, we had no choice but to take their advice.
The greatest fear is that there is some stranger out there who can now open lines of credit in my name, since they now have access to my data. I used to watch all of those news reports on cable television, featuring the unfortunate victims of identity theft and how their lives became nightmares because of it. Never ever did I think that I could be one of them. Though I have taken the steps to protect my identity, it still freaks me out now and then when I think about it.
So, really what is my identity? Is it my nationality or ethnicity? Is it my job? Or is it pieces of paper that have numbers on them like my passport, ID card or social security card?
Then, I thought about it this way. If a foreign person asked me to describe myself, what would be the first words that would come out of my mouth? I realised what it would be. I am a Trini, I would say. That says it all for me.
I know what I am. I am a Trinidadian who just happens to be of Chinese descent. |
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