Almost Free from FROM
This was the first essay I wrote for an online writing course, Write of Passage, that asked us to write about our most commonly asked question.
March 11, 2021
Almost Free from From
“Where are you from?” This is the one question I’ve been asked the most my whole life. The question doesn’t bother me; it’s a natural conversation starter. However, I’ve come to realize that if you’re someone whose response to this question is complicated, it’s usually best to answer with the simplest believable answer that you’re happy with.
Why? Well, for one, not all people are interested in complicated answers, so why burden them? It’s like responding with detailed truth when a stranger asks “How’s it going?”. However, there’s a more troubling reason, which is that some people may not accept your answer; you see, the ‘from’ question is also one of tribe, culture and home. Try as you may, some people will always feel an urge to pigeon-hole you into one of their particular imagined communities.
Don’t fight it. Don’t force the from. You think you have the right to tell people whatever ‘from’ story you want. But you just have to accept that most people will not tolerate a response that contradicts the microsecond judgements they made before you even opened your mouth.
My dad is one of those that likes to force the ‘from’. Tells people he’s from Singapore. Fair enough, he’s retired there and has lived there over 20 years. But he was born and grew up in Salina, Kansas, USA. And while there may be many good reasons not to tell anyone you’re from Salina, Kansas, USA, his piercing blue eyes and nordic complexion do make him look more Salina than Singapore.
Seriously, don’t fight it. Your ‘from’ story might even be legit, as in you actually were born there or did grow up there. With the exception of a very few number of places in the world, like New York City, if your beautiful face or accent doesn’t match what the average interrogator imagines to be the face of that place, good luck convincing.
In this respect, I’m lucky. I was actually born in New York. But I’m an impostor New Yorker, and I don’t mean like the hipsters from Brooklyn that tell you they’re from New York. I mean really an impostor because I was born there, but that’s it, I’ve never lived there. My parents, life-long small-town runaways from Salina and Iquitos, Peru, shipped me out of New York a few weeks after I was born. I then grew up in the following sequence of cities: Mainz, Bogota, Mexico City, Summit NJ, Mexico City, Bogota, Miami and Hong Kong. As an adult I’ve lived in the following sequence: Ann Arbor, Bangkok, Singapore, London, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Hong Kong and Taipei.
I’ve been able to distill two key points of interpersonal friction that are often catalyzed by forced ‘from’ responses. First, are those that simply refuse to accept a ‘from’ response that doesn’t fit their first impressions. Typically these are people that want to categorize you either generally as a foreigner or of a specific tribe (Jew, Arab, Hindu, etc.). Second, and more insidious, are those that quickly leap to a conclusion that based on what you’ve just described, you’re actually a homeless, untethered rootless nobody. I know this because I’ve had the fortune of having a few people politely or impolitely actually tell me this. If you happen to have parents of mixed nationality or heritage, you might make the mistake of telling someone you’re half X and half Y, which is the perfect set-up for them to ask “So is your Peruvian half the one on top or bottom?”
This “where is home” issue is a huge deal for people who believe that a specific geographic location must exist as an essential foundational pillar of identity. If they for whatever reason don’t think you have a home, you’ll often be viewed with a mixture of suspicion, dislike and pity. I remember when I was 17 I spent a summer in a German university town living with family friends that had a son a year older than me. The chemistry between us wasn’t great, for reasons I couldn’t comprehend until a few weeks later when he finally and very emotionally told me he had huge issues with my lack of a fixed home and cultural identity. This ridiculous issue finally convinced me to leave small-town utopia (my foster parents were incredibly understanding) and I had a great time the rest of the summer in Hamburg and Berlin.
The problem with this ‘from’ question is that it forces us to be cultural flag carriers, which is very unfortunate. Think about it: each culture carries its own unique collection of so much objectionable garbage. Fine, so you’re a post nation-state enlightened type. Still, you can’t escape the culture, man. And when you give whatever fake from answer you happen to like, you’re implicitly making a cultural statement and making yourself a flag-bearer of that culture. This sucks, but don’t fight it. And by the way, none of this I’m from planet earth BS and let’s save the world.
The from question is tied to culture, and culture is unfortunately universally placed on a sacred pinnacle. I’d be very happy to see a social revolution that saw us proactively questioning culture, starting from our own: how does our culture treat women, minorities and nature? I can’t think of any culture that would score very highly on these three questions. The most logical place to try solving the world’s problems is at the local level, in that culture you’ve been assigned to that you never had a choice of being born into. I think it’s incredibly damaging that most educational systems explicitly try to indoctrinate young students with a blind love for their culture. The portrayals of other cultures are then by necessity ridiculous caricature, often with patronizing undertones. Schools talk about critical thinking but the reality, especially at the elementary level, is that teachers are petrified of offending parents with the introspective topics of discussion that children would find the most amusing and comprehensible.
The great thing about the internet, is it allows us to reframe, with almost anarchic power, our own version of local; our own from. The local movement is still necessary and powerful, but now it can be catalyzed with a virtual base of locals that just happen to be physically scattered all over the world. This is why I’ve decided to start writing my thoughts; in the hope we can become part of a shared from.
Interestingly, becoming a father has introduced me to what is probably the second-most asked question in my life, and a very appropriate question indeed, though I wish it didn’t come screaming at me at 6 in the morning every weekend.
“Papa, where are we going?!”