(Or: Don't ask me where I'm "from")
I’m adopted. That’s not usually the first thing I tell people about myself, but it’s not an entirely private fact either. I’ve always been comfortable talking about it because it’s always been a part of me. People often ask, “When did you find out?” I used to reply with confusion. Find out? There’s never been a time in my life I haven’t known that my parents were not my birth parents. When I was two-years-old we went to a big party at Homes of St. Mark, the agency from where my parents adopted me, for adopted children and their new parents. Shortly after, I paid a visit to another adoption agency, Catholic Charities, where my new baby brother was ready for us to take him home.
My adoption usually comes up pretty quickly in conversations with strangers because about 75 percent of the time, often before someone learns my name, I’m asked, “Where are you from?” To me, the answer to the question goes something like this: “I was born in Houston, grew up in Northeast Oklahoma, moved to Chicago, and now I live in Brooklyn.” If I’m feeling less patient, however, I answer – “America.” This answer never satisfies the other party. Me, with my brown skin and curly hair and thick eyebrows and big eyes, I do not seem “American” to the person posing the question. I know when people ask me, “Where are you from?” they want me to tell them my ethnicity, which is Arab American. I find the clarification irrelevant. I was born in the United States, and my ancestry shouldn’t change someone’s view of me. This is not always a sentiment that the other party shares.
“What country are you from?”
“America.”
“No, I mean, what country are your parents from?”
“Well, they’re from America, too.”
“You know what I mean. Where is your family from?”
“My family is also American. I’m adopted, and my birth parents are Arabic.”
“Well what country are they from?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never met them.”
“Do you speak Arabic?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“My adopted parents are white. I grew up in Oklahoma.”
At this point the asker usually accepts what I’ve told them or they completely write me off as an unauthentic poseur. I wish I always had the time to explain how ethnicity and culture are often two different entities, and while I didn’t grow up in Arabic culture, I do consider myself an Arab American while simultaneously considering myself “American.”
Interestingly, these conversations rarely took place when I lived in Oklahoma and Texas, among a prominently white, Christian population. It was assumed that if you had brown skin, it was probably because of Native American or Hispanic blood. Once I moved to Chicago and New York, cities with large Arab, Indian and Pakistani populations, I was bombarded with these questions about race and identity on a daily basis, mostly by other brown-skinned people, hoping I am “from” where they are “from.”
This is an excerpt from a personal statement I had to write for NYU. I went on to talk about choreography and Chicago and choices and failures, but this first page-and-a-half is really what means the most to me, as I continue to think about how race relates to cultural identity and what the effects are when one is removed from the other. I've not come close to any conclusions, but the seed has been planted. Hopefully you'll see the results of my investigations on a stage in the near future ...
To be continued.
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