Where Are You From?

To paraphrase Katt Williams, you don't expect to get enduring life lessons from a children's book with flying dragons on the cover.

But when you're young and all stories are fresh and new, sometimes things you read will sink in and re-emerge years later when circumstances are right.

This is a story about how I learned how to come to terms with the question, "Where are you from?".

When I was young, I used to love to read, especially science fiction and fantasy.

One of my favorites was the Harper Hall Trilogy by Anne McCaffrey. It's about a girl named Menolly who lives in a small village and wants to be a musician. The town's Harper befriends her, and teaches her to play the drums, sing, and make musical instruments.

After he dies of old age, she ends up at a school for musicians.

At first she's thrilled to be able to devote all her time to music, but she finds that some of the teachers don't believe girls should be musicians. They undermine her with hostility, sarcasm, or indifference. But she realizes that although some teachers do not like her, they DO know their subjects and she can learn a lot from them.

One day, as she is being grilled by one of the crankier teachers, she realizes that she DOES know her material, that her old teacher taught her well.

Then she does this brilliant switch.

She tunes out the teacher's tone, and replaces it with the voice of her former teacher/mentor. She can focus on the material and not the way it's being said.

In her mind, a different, kinder voice dictated, and the exercise became a game, rather than an examination by a prejudiced judge.

-- Dragonsinger, Anne McCaffrey

At the time I thought, "Neat! I wonder if that works."

Fast forward several years to when I was in graduate school in Carbondale, Illinois.

Although Illinois is a midwestern state, it extends like a thumb far to the south. Carbondale, where I went to school, was near the tip of the thumbnail, and in a lot of ways, it was quite southern. For instance, I kept running into people who acted like they had never seen an Asian before.

Everywhere I went, people asked, "Where are you from?". In the grocery store, at the laundromat, standing in line, at the farmer's market, the post office. Instead of "How are you?" or "Nice day, isn't it?" or a simple "Hello.", it was always cut-to-the-chase: "Where are you from?" "Where are you from?" "Where are you from?"

I started to lose my mind a little. I started to read all kinds of meaning into what at first appeared a simple question. "Where are YOU from?" "WHERE (on earth) are you from?" "What sort of outlandish creature are you?" "What's your racial/cultural origin?" "Obviously you're not from here, where are you from? and what the heck are you doing here?"

Compounding this problem was that at the time, I myself was a little iffy about my identity. I had just been living outside the country, serving in the Peace Corps. For two years when someone asked me where I was from, it was easy to say, "I'm American."

In California and Hawaii Asians are a large enough presence that I never felt I had to clarify my origins or explain my ethnicity.

But in Southern Illinois to be Asian was to be unusual if not outright exotic. Hence the curiosity.

I ended up writing my thesis about the questions of identity, belonging, and origins.

And there I left it, and came west to settle in New Mexico.

Now when people say, "Where are you from?", I say, "I've lived here for over twenty years.", which seems to satisfy them. By now I've been here longer than any other place I've lived. This still surprises me. I feel more at peace with who I am, which makes answering the question easier.

But the other day I had an epiphany. I remembered the substitution Menolly made, and I thought, "When people ask the question, "Where are you from?", substitute the phrase, "What's your story?"

"What's your story?" is an invitation to engage with someone. It's not as loaded. It sounds less accusatory, less challenging. I made up my mind to turn every "Where are you from?" into "What's your story?" in my mind, just like Menolly. And in that way I've come to terms with the question.

Toastmasters has helped me understand another aspect of this problem. If you give speeches and get thoughtful feedback each time, you realize that quite often, something you intended to say is not what your audience heard.  Even with the best intentions, and careful listening, accurate communication is not easy.

Here's another story that illustrates that point.

Author Gretchin Rubin lived in New York City. One day she was walking down a street, and saw her comedy idols, Gilda Radner and Gene Wilder coming toward her. She went up to them, all excited, but was surprised and a little hurt to see they were not wacky like they were on T.V.; they were polite, but subdued. 

It was only later she realized that Gilda Radner had been diagnosed with breast cancer, which would shortly take her life, and that the couple could very well have been coming back from the doctor's office when she happened to meet them. She said she learned the following lesson as a result:

Always cut people slack, always assume that their irritability, or unfriendliness, or absentmindedness, neither reflects their true nature nor has anything to do with me. Don't take things personally.

-- Gretchin Rubin

With practice, I've become more confident about talking to people one-on-one, and remembering something I read when I was a child, I've learned to replace the question, "Where are you from?" with "What's your story?"

I hope you can use this technique. If you have problems with a question that keeps coming up, give a sympathetic spin to the question's motives, and come up with a way to answer it that satisfies both of you. It's really helped me calm the fuck down when it comes to "Where are you from?".