Far From Home and Loving It

Hello All,

This morning I woke up with a wry smile on my face after yesterday's emotional fallout. I realized that, yes this was a foreign country and yes, I was more than likely the first black woman these men and women had ever seen. I realized that while yes, I had been in this uncomfortable position many before, I was thousands of miles from any place I had even tentatively called home. Yes, I was frightened, angry and tired. However I realized something else: This dissonance was giving me an opportunity to harmonize the dissonance in my relation to my environment both internally cognative and externally social. I had never learned to accept the terms of my immersion in a new culture and the significance it would have on each fragment of my identity. In one encounter I had to reconcile that past with the collision of my identity as not only "the only black woman here" but as just being here. To say it simply, I had to stop defining myself in terms of what I was not--but to accept that my identity is and has always been whole. Looking back at this experience I am grateful for it.

It made me recognize that there is a difference between who I am wholly and what is highlighted in any particular context. So while in Delhi I am aware of myself as a woman, a minority, and a student. Rolling over in bed, my smile grew wider as I realized that I was also a tourist. We New Yorkers have a complicated relationship with tourists; though we regard them with disdain we each secretly wish we too could amble down the street on a weekday afternoon slack jawed and spending money eagerly.

If I am a foreigner as a result of being a woman, a minority, and a student then I am a tourist as well!

Today we were lucky enough to have enough time to discover that a wistful smile and headshake do have a universal translation. At the end of the day, one stall the vendor motioned me back over to hand me a free gift-she took my hand in hers and stacked a series of small pink bracelets over my wrist smiling the whole time. They are beautiful--they clink when I shake my wrists and have tiny mirrors that twinkle in the light. I had meant to ask Noopur why she gave the to me, but shrugged it off. After all it didn't really matter why -- I have had a peaceful day and it was a pleasant surprise. Towards the end of the evening, however , my curiosity got the better of me and I asked Noopur what she thought. She looked up and said "She wanted you to know that Indians could be nice."

I think I can

No Man is an Island

"I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all"

-Zora Neale Hurston


Today was a difficult day. I had been warned that as a tall black woman I would stand out on the streets of Delhi. The first time I heard this, I shrugged. I remember tossing back somethingly typically cavalier--along the lines of :

"Oh, please I get stared at Zabar's. I can handle it."

That is still true. Growing up in an affluent section of Long Island I have a long history of stares preceding taunting, threats, and other forms of aggression. Even without stares--I have I have pretended not to notice when every rickshaw or cab driver cranes his neck to peek in our car window as we pass by. But the past few days have been difficult--and the pressure is beginning to build on me. Unfortunately, I am used to being the only one "like me". Let me be more specific, I am used to fighting back against the negative attention that that scenario usually accompanies. I have been overwhelmed by the attention I've received, but what is more troubling is the fact that I don't know what meaning is behind it. To put this in context--this is a country where the repression and even at time the existence of caste-based violence is repressed. Although the global press rarely if ever comments on this, the Dalit are the target of systematic violence throughout the country. The conferences we have attended over the past few days have been small and sponsored by activists, many of them Dalit themselves with several female attendees. Today's conference, however, featured a large and almost exclusively male and presumably non-Dalit audience. When Noopur and I entered the room, our relative height made us stand out, as well as my features, something I was becoming increasingly aware of. It had been this afternoon when a man from a group sitting next to me during lunch turned to me and asked with hushed fascination

"Excuse me, where are you from?"

My own reaction surprised me when I felt my the corners of my mouth curl up before I simply said, "The United States." The issue of my identity, as the child of Nigerian immigrants, often presents a different picture of the "blackness" than that which people have come to expect and usually presents a presumption of my not belonging in a particular space. Yet instead of the weary indignation this comment usually musters, the sheepishness of the question made me smile. In that instance I could be sure that it was a question that was purely innocent. In today's conference I was not as sure.

It was the sort of experience that crystalized my reasons for coming to India. Moving through this envronment has triggered all the defenses I had erected to deal with rascism in the past. So what was disturbing today was not the attention I received, but it was the fact that I had no idea what the intentions were and had no way to react to it. Several reactions followed--fear, anger and mostly sadness--all of which left me confused.

I put the quote above to ask myself the following question:

If being the "other" is a neutral term, what about that type of alienation is so negative? I invite your responses. Thank you