View from Beyond the Fishbowl

We’re all of us prone to a bit of self-essentialization, most of all when we travel. It’s based on a shared intuition that we are where we live. And in fact we do carry with us the markings of our surroundings, whether we recognize them as such or not. We, as foreigners, seem strange or exotic or sometimes distasteful precisely because others lack the cultural context to understand us, and vice versa. And so we find ourselves compulsively sharing bits and pieces of what it’s like back home: the geography, the food, the fashion, the customs, all of it, in an effort to feel understood.

Digression: Soliloquy of the unique individual
Hola! Me llamo Katy. I am from San Francisco, California in the United States. I speak quickly and energetically. I miss Mexican food and big green salads. I’m an open-minded person and I believe in building a better world. But please keep in mind that place is the thread that binds us together, not the substance of our lives. I am also the sum total and collective meaning of all the memories and persons and thoughts and dreams of my life, which belong only to me. Like you, I am a unique individual, a universe all to myself (though at times I feel very small), a being constantly in motion, occasionally in revolution and (I hope) in evolution.



We all become amateur sociologists when we’re abroad. Nothing feels natural for a long time and we’re apt to fall back on a more intellectual analysis in order to keep our heads above the water. Culture, like language, must be studied and practiced to be learned, and the subject of fluency poses technical and existential questions best saved for another day. The point, in any case, is that there is nothing quite like being a fish out of water to make you aware that you were a fish in the first place.

As the social construct shifts, you become aware, first of all, of your body: your gender, size and shape, the color of your skin, the clothes you wear and how you cut your hair, the way your body language is constantly giving you away. And then you become aware of your manner of speech, the way it belies not just your foreignness but your education and class extraction, and the slowly dying imperialist behemoth, your country, that made it all possible.

And then you take a moment to glance back at your fishbowl or pond or wherever it is that you can from, and you notice that it looks different from dry land. Of course, there’s always nostalgia for the beauty and comfort and security of home. But there’s a more careful assessment as well. You begin to see that your home-place, like every place, has a specific culture derived from a particular history: that the San Francisco Bay Area is a wonderful place to live because people are committed to social justice, equality, diversity, internationalism, education and the arts.

But when you’re far away, it’s easier to take an honest look at the map and see that we’re still part of the United States of America, and in many ways not so different from the rest of the country. We protested the war and Guantanamo, but we’re still bear a part of the collective responsibility for these atrocities. And though our bumper stickers read “He’s not my president”, we’ve all enabled the right-wing revolution with our relative passivity.

Compared to Latin America, we are terribly docile when it comes to facing oppression. As the man at my neighborhood newsstand put it, we are “ignorant literates” (in contrast to illiterates, who are understandably manipulated politically.) And we’re responsible for so much of the avoidable suffering in the world.

But that’s just a part of it. You also begin to notice that, compared to Latin Americans, North Americans are cold and reserved and overly invested in their ambitions and material gain. It’s much harder to make friends in the United States, and people often feel frustrated and alone.

And then you feel glad to be on the periphery of the empire, outside the fishbowl. And you remember that no place is just right – that we were put on this earth to struggle together for something better and in that struggle we find our dignity and courage and strength.