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Youth writer Gabrielle Wang’s characters solve cross-cultural conundrums with magic and aplomb

9 Comments Posted by ML Awanohara on July 27, 2011

The spirit of Pocahontas has been haunting The Displaced Nation this month, lending a helping hand to anyone who feels stymied by the strange customs they’ve encountered in other lands.

This precocious Native American girl appears to have been naturally gifted in openness and tolerance — else how could she have become an intermediary between her father’s tribes and the Jamestown settlers at age 10?

The majority of us, however, are not naturals when it comes to cross-cultural relations. We could use some basic training, preferably while still young.

As suggested in one of this month’s posts, one solution might be to absorb the whole of Harry Potter — all those tales of discrimination against Half-bloods and Muggles.

But not every youth can identify with a universe that is governed by the laws of who’s magic and who isn’t. Take Pocahontas, for instance. If she prayed for magic in her dealings with the white invaders, it was most likely for herself, never mind anyone else.

Perhaps, then, I have her to thank for guiding me towards Melbourne-based author Gabrielle Wang, whose books for children and young people feature characters who in many ways resemble the feisty Anne of Green Gables, Pollyanna or Calpurnia Tate — but with a further twist: Wang’s heroines are always non-white, Chinese or some mix. They are culturally marginalized.

Wang’s very first book, The Garden of Empress Cassia (to be published for the first time in the U.S. this fall) involves a heroine, Mimi, who feels ashamed of being Chinese until she discovers a a box of magic pastels that enables her to draw, and then enter, the garden of the Empress Cassia — a transformative experience.

Wang’s latest heroine, Poppy, is even more unusual: she’s a half-Chinese, half-Aborigine girl who lived in the 19th century. Poppy’s Aboriginal mother died when she was a baby, and her Chinese father disappeared before she was born. When her brother, Gus, runs away to look for gold, Poppy decides to follow. Disguising herself as a boy, she stows away on a paddle steamer and keeps in touch with Gus through a secret code and Chinese symbols.

Wang’s books are targeted at the youth market, but adults are very fond of them as well. Here’s what one reviewer had to say of her first book in the Poppy series:

I’m sure young girls living in Australia who are interested in their country’s history will love this book, but as an adult living in America, I really enjoyed it too!

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Gabrielle Wang in person — at a congee restaurant in New York City’s Chinatown. Here’s how our conversation went:

Can you tell me a little about your background?
I’m a fourth-generation Chinese Australian on my mother’s side and first generation on my father’s. I live in Melbourne, where I’ve been a professional writer of children’s and young adult books for nine years. I’ve written ten books published by Penguin Books Australia, and a picture book published by Blackdog Books, now an imprint of Walker.

All my novels involve cross-cultural issues as that is my background. Being brought up in Australia and knowing little about my own heritage, I felt was a tremendous disadvantage. I was ashamed of looking different. I couldn’t speak Chinese and knew little of the beliefs and customs of China. Now, when I look back at that period in my life I know that if I’d been steeped in the culture of China, I would have grown up proud of my heritage. It was only when I left school that I realized that belonging to two cultures was an advantage and began learning Mandarin.

My latest books are being released this year three months apart. There are four in the Our Australian Girl series about a half-Chinese half-Aboriginal girl named Poppy.

Right now I’m working on a ghost short story for a Penguin anthology as well as thinking about my next novel, called The Wish Bird.

This month, our blog has dedicated many of its posts to Pocahontas, who was a member of the original displaced peoples in North America. Are the stories of the Native Americans and Australia’s Aborigines very similar?
Definitely, there are many similarities. But my impression of the Native Americans is of a more warring people — at least that’s how they’re often portrayed in the old cowboy-and-Indian films. I’m probably stereotyping here. The Aborigines were also driven off their hunting grounds. Many were slaughtered by the squatters while others starved to death or died from disease. It was a tragic time in Australian history which carried through even to the 1960s. The scars and the injustices still exist today.

The European settlement of Australia occurred at least a century later than that of North America. Were Australia’s settlers still influenced by the ideal of the Noble Savage, “the good wild man,” in their encounters with the natives?
The squatters of the 1800s looked down upon the Aborigines. They had no idea that the Indigenous Australians had a highly advanced and complex culture and belief system. And by the 1850s and 1860s, when my Poppy stories take place, the ideal of the Noble Savage never crossed anyone’s mind. At that time, large numbers of people from all over the world went to Australia to look for gold, not to discover a new land.

Turning to your Poppy books, I noticed that you employed the nature trope that’s associated with the Aborigines. Poppy uses the Southern Cross to guide her travels, follows water birds, eats wild raspberries and honey-flavoured sap-sucking bugs…
The Aborigines’ belief system is closely linked to the land they inhabit and to the animals in their environment. They have animal totems and there are sacred places all around Australia. Unfortunately, most of these sacred sites are not in the hands of the local Indigenous people and have been lost or desecrated. But if you go and visit the known ones, like I have, you can still feel a tremendous power and energy in the landscape.

When I was on a writing/walking trek through Central Australia near Alice Springs, we camped, with the permission of the local Indigenous tribe, on a sacred site. It was an amazing experience.

I am very interested in the Chinese philosophy of yin and yang, the I Ching and Daoism – which are not that dissimilar to the beliefs of the Indigenous Australians and their relationship with nature. The Aborigines are also like the Chinese in that they have an advanced plant medicine system.

Was it difficult to think through how an Aborigine child might have felt back then?
In my story, Poppy was born on a Christian mission, so she knows very little about her own culture. I am not an expert on Aborigine culture, so I was careful not to step over the line. I had several Aboriginal advisors who I consulted with. John Sandy Atkinson is an elder for the Bangerang tribe and Maxine Briggs is the Koorie Liaison officer at the State Library of Victoria. They were invaluable to me while writing the Poppy series. As a Chinese person, I know how wrong some authors can be when writing about a culture they have little knowledge of. It is easy to misconstrue and misunderstand things so I was careful to avoid this.

Since you’re so interested in the topic of portraying other cultures, you may find it interesting that Maxine Briggs lent me Werner Herzog’s film Where the Green Ants Dream just so I could see how NOT to portray another culture. The film as you may know had to do with a dispute between a mining company and the local Indigenous tribes in the Australian desert.

I noticed in reading some excerpts that the white people Poppy meets behave quite decently. Did you make them like that on purpose?
Race is a highly sensitive subject and sometimes it’s difficult to strike a good balance. In Poppy’s time, the 1860s, racial prejudice towards Aborigines was at an all-time high. But I’m always aware of my audience — children 8-11 years old. When you write for young people you have a responsibility. It is important to be positive; otherwise, the same prejudices can begin all over again.

Up until now, you’ve created Chinese heroines for your book. What inspired you to create a character who was only half-Chinese?
I wanted to write about the period when my maternal great-grandfather came to Victoria to join the Gold Rush. I also wanted to highlight the plight of the Indigenous population during that time when white settlement expanded at such an alarming rate. Before 1834, around 100,000 Aboriginal people lived in the State of Victoria. By 1860, with the influx of white settlers and the discovery of gold, this number had fallen to less than 2000. That figure is shocking.

I think I’d also been influenced by the recent consciousness in Australia about the injustices done to the Aborigines. Beginning in 1869, the Australian government rounded up the Aborigines into missions (as already mentioned, Poppy is from one such mission) and began removing some of the children — the ones who were of mixed race — from their families to work as indentured servants for white families. I’m talking about the so-called stolen generations. If you’ve seen the film Rabbit-Proof Fence, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

It’s a big issue right now in Australia — and is finally being recognized as a national tragedy. The former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, presented a formal apology in 2008 for this misguided policy. It was a long time coming.

To sum up: I could have just written about a Chinese child, but I wanted to stretch myself and imagine a child who was half Chinese, half Aborigine. It is important for young people to walk in the shoes of someone who is different — who might be of a different culture, race and skin color. Only by doing this can we empathize with others.

Were you able to find any examples of half-Chinese, half-Aboriginal children on which you could base the story?
In my research there were no written records in Victoria of mixed race children at that time. But there’s no doubt they would have existed as the Chinese gold diggers were all men. They left their wives and family back in China.

So an Aboriginal character was a first for you. Was it also the first time a non-Aboriginal person had written a story for kids?
No. The highly respected and wonderful Australian children’s author Patricia Wrightson may have been the first. But I’m certainly the first non-white Australian author to write about an Aboriginal character.

Is it important that you’re a “non-white”?
I think I was able to imagine the Aboriginal child’s situation quite easily because I know what it feels like to be an outsider, and to suffer racial prejudice. I was the only Asian child in my school in Melbourne and I only saw white faces in the street. I always felt embarrassed when my parents came to school as my mother would sometimes appear in traditional dress, and my father didn’t speak English well, which I found embarrassing. Of course, it’s changed now as more Chinese have migrated to Australia, but back then, Chinese Australians were real outsiders.

You have been an expat for several years, living in Taiwan and then Mainland China. Can you tell us what that felt like?
Strangely enough, before my first visit to China in 1977, I always said that I was going back to China even though I had never been there before. Perhaps this is true of many children of migrants. When I actually went to Taiwan and China to live, I was at a disadvantage because I couldn’t speak Chinese very well and therefore was never fully accepted. Language is so important.

There were a couple of incidents in particular that made me realize how difficult it would be living in China — apart from the difficulty of learning the language, that is.

Once in Taiwan, I was invited to a friend’s house. It was her birthday. I brought a gift of a necklace, but was so surprised when she didn’t open the gift, nor did she acknowledge its receipt with a thank-you. I thought, how rude! I had no idea that in China, it’s rude to open gifts in front of the giver.

The other incident occurred in Mainland China, when I was invited to a banquet by a friend of my mother’s. She sat next to me and kept filling my plate. In Australia, it’s impolite not to finish the food on your plate, so I kept eating what was given to me, only to have it filled again. Finally, when I couldn’t fit in another morsel of food, I put my chopsticks down and sat back. My hostess breathed an audible sigh of relief. In China, of course, people like to show their hospitality by giving their guests more food than they can possibly eat.

Your personal story is inspirational as you never fancied yourself a writer.
When I was younger, I didn’t think I could write at all. I failed Year 12 English and had to repeat the whole year because I wanted to study Graphic Design at University. When I became interested in children’s books, it was to illustrate them not to write the words. But in the year 2000 I took a writing course and discovered I had hidden potential. We all do, I think. And it’s never too late to find out what it is. I explore that theme a lot in my books, especially The Hidden Monastery.

As part of Pocahontas month, we’ve been coming up with proverbs for those who wish to spend their time abroad getting to know other cultures. Can you give us one proverb based on your own experiences?

“If you want to know what it means to be a migrant or a person who is displaced by outside forces, then live in — don’t just visit — another country where you cannot speak the language.”

To that I would add:

“If you can, make it a country where people have skin of a different color to yours. Then, and only then, can you understand what it means to be an outsider.”

Gabrielle Wang’s book The Garden of Empress Cassia will be published in USA by Kane Miller this September. You can also visit her Web site at www.gabriellewang.com.

Images: Gabrielle Wang at Congee Bowery, NYC (by Susumu Awanohara); front cover of Wang’s first Poppy book; and front cover of the about-to-be-released American edition of her very first work, The Garden of the Empress Cassia.

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s installment of our displaced fictional heroine, Libby, who learns more about her bête noire, the realtor Melissa. Were her initial misgivings about Melissa justified?

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue. SPECIAL OFFER: New subscribers receive a FREE copy of “A Royally Displaced Tea.”

Asia, Australia, China, Fiction Writers, It's Fiction!, Pocahontas, Taiwan, Writers we love

How foreign is Fez? A travel yarn in two parts (Part 2)

5 Comments Posted by The Displaced Nation Team on July 26, 2011

We welcome back Joy Richards to The Displaced Nation for the second part of her travel yarn about a trip she made in May to visit a British expat friend in Fez, Morocco. In Part 1, Richards learns about the Moroccan concept of hshuma (forbidden, shameful) and reveals she rather likes “covering up.” In Part 2, she discovers she has an innate bargaining instinct while shopping in the Fez medina, but then an incident occurs on a day trip to the Roman ruins that gets her thinking…

My traveling companions and I are about to go shopping in the Fez medina (walled city), and I wonder to myself: is this how I might feel if I were to attend a football match in England as a lone woman? Actually, women are even less obvious in Fez than they are in British football stadiums.

Morocco prizes its reputation as a “modern” country. It is so modern that the King of Morocco took a computer engineer from Fez, Salma Bennani, as his wife.

However, here in the Medina, where women wear traditional dress and all of the shopkeepers are male, the occupation of the King’s wife seems beside the point.

Shopping until you, or the price, drop

Not as confrontational as football but requiring almost as much as strategy and skill, shopping in Fez is an interactive game. Rarely will any item have a price tag on it, so buying does not happen quickly. Typically, the interchange goes something like:

“How much is this?”

“It is very beautiful.” Seller places the item into your hands. “You like?”

“It depends how much it is.”

“I give you best price. I give you very good price because your friend lives here.”

“What is your best price?”

“She” — gesturing to my friend — “is like family. I give you best price.” Seller begins to wrap the item.

“Don’t wrap it. How much is it?”

“200 dirhams, very good price, best in medina.”

“No, too expensive.”

“No, very good price.”

“100 dirhams.”

“No no. 200 dirhams best price.”

“Ok. No thank you.”

“For you 190 dirhams. Yes.” Begins wrapping again.

“No. Too expensive. 150 dirhams…”

This will continue, and may include either buyer or seller declaring that they are no longer interested and even walking away, until a price is agreed. Probably around 170 if the starting point is 200.

I start bargaining for a scarf, and somewhere through the process, I lose sight of the exchange rate and feel that haggling for ten minutes to get a reduction of 10 dirhams (about 70p) is worth it.

So I take the scarf and put it in my bag with the rest of my loot, the result of a morning’s hard bargaining.

As someone who has haggled over the price of a laptop in PC World (the UK’s largest computing store) — and done so successfully — I have slipped into this mode of shopping rather easily.

Somewhere in my memory is my Mum’s belief that any shopkeeper would “rob you blind if given half a chance.” As a child, shopping was frequently interrupted by Mum asking for a reduction in price on the basis of some imperceptible fault or inadequacy with the proposed purchase. Obtaining the reduction was accompanied by a sense of pride and challenging social injustice.

Ah, Mother, you would have been proud of me.

However as one of my traveling companions points out: “We are not in Kansas any more!”

No, not in Kansas, or in Northampton where my parents lived and I grew up — but I reckon my Mum could have popped on her headscarf, picked up her handbag and got her week’s shopping at a good price.

Mind you, she probably wouldn’t have bought her sausages at the stall with the camel’s head hanging up.

An excursion, and a close encounter

My English friend who lives in Fez suggests that we venture into the countryside to visit nearby towns and the amazing Roman remains of Volublis. We have a great day out. The roads are chaotic, and we feel fortunate to have a friendly and helpful driver, Mustapha, who repeatedly saves us from serious accidents.

But then, as we are driving past the orange farms on our way back to Fez, the police pull us over.

Mustapha has been talking to the police officers for some time and is clearly becoming agitated. He comes back for his wallet and informs us they claim he was speeding.

My friend asks him in Arabic if he has to pay a “back hander.” Yes, he has to pay 200 dirhams (probably 2-3 day’s pay for him).

He goes back over with the money, and the discussion grows even more heated. When he finally comes back, he reports that the policeman said: “You and your f***ing taxi with your f***ing tourists! You should pay 500 dirham. Perhaps we will get you stopped again.”

“These are our police,” he shrugs. “They do what they want and make money for themselves. We cannot trust them, and they are part of our government. It is not right.”

At that very moment, a 1965 country song by Roger Miller, telling of a swinging England with “bobbies on bicycles two by two” pops into my head. The reality it depicts is of course a long way from today’s Britain, where our police are accused of using excessive force in managing demonstrations and of taking payments from journalists for information.

But even if the British law enforcement system isn’t all squeaky clean, I know that when my partner was done for speeding recently, it was not due to the whim of a corrupt police officer. The evidence was fair and reliable, and the fine went to the court — not into the pocket of any policeman.

A plethora of questions, and precious few answers

I’ve been in Fez for a couple of days, and I still have very little idea of the forces that govern people’s behavior: the modern state and its representatives, the traditions of the medina and the controls of hshuma, or both?

Many Westerners are now living in Fez, some of whom are buying up cheap traditional properties. I wonder how they perceive fitting in to the future of this medieval city.

Reviewing the events of the past couple of days, I realize I have many more questions than answers:

Was it simply an accident that one of my female friends, who refused to be hshuma-ed out of smoking on the street, got hit on the hand by a stone?

Why does the babysitter my friend employs for her daughter, Francesca, have to stay the night rather than walk home through the medina?

Will the young boys who, according to some expat observers, sniff glue — and who now have access to satellite TV — uphold the traditional values? How many of Morocco’s young men respond to the call to prayer?

Moving on to the country’s young women: how do they make sense of the various and contradictory influences on their lives — and decide what to wear? What do they want, and are they allowed to want it?

The friend whom I visited, who is English and a single mother, told me that as a Western woman, she is a “third sex” in the Fez medina, neither male nor female in terms of what she is allowed and expected to do. She sees opportunities in this strange and wonderful place that would not be there for her in England. She also acknowledges that there will be a point when this way of living is too claustrophobic for her and Francesca.

Overall, Fez is a “find” for a tourist like me — I was delighted to find somewhere so exotic and so accessible from Britain. And, if I step back into my memories of traditional working class culture of the 50s and 60s, I think that we Brits were not always so different to the people of Fez medina. Our world has changed, and theirs is apparently changing now as well.

Or is it? I am left with a feeling that modernity poses a considerable threat to those living and working in this walled city, many of whom would find it easier to maintain the status quo of a traditional Muslim culture.

Would I go back to visit? Yes. Would I live there? No. When I said good-bye to my friend, I was sad to leave her. Our visit had been memorable as well as highly stimulating. I hope she can continue to live safely in her chosen city, and I also hope, and pray, that if the cracks in this fragile society become too wide, she will notice them and remember as Dorothy said, “There’s no place like home.”

Images (top to bottom): The markets of the Fez medina; camel meat for sale; the ruins of the Roman town of Volubilis (Oualili); and the Royal Palace at Meknes, about 60km north of Fez.

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s interview with Australian author Gabrielle Wang, whose books for children and young adults encourage them to broaden their cultural horizons.

Pot Luck Africa, Morocco, Pocahontas, Pot Luck, Strange sightings, Travel yarn, UK, What a Displaced World

Marriage, cross-cultural style: Two veterans tell all (Part 2)

Leave a comment Posted by ML Awanohara on July 25, 2011

A week is a long time in blogging, and since Part 1 of this post went up last Monday, horrifying events in Norway have delivered a chilling reminder of the venom that can be unleashed when cultures mix and values clash.

Thus I am full of renewed admiration for our two married couples — Gabriela & Daniel Smith, Jeffrey & Naoko Huffman — who have tested themselves more than most on cultural tolerance and openness.

Last week, we heard from Gabriela and Jeffrey, the nomadic halves of each partnership. Let’s introduce them again — along with their better halves, who this week have kindly agreed to “come in” and answer a few of my questions.

GABRIELA & DANIEL SMITH have been married for eight years. Gabriela was born in Venezuela to Spanish parents, but ended up in the UK, where she met Daniel and they currently live.

JEFFREY & NAOKO HUFFMAN have been married for 19 years. They met in Nagoya, Japan, where Jeffrey, an American, had journeyed for his work. They now live in Seattle.

Naoko and Daniel, I’d like ask you both a question I posed to your respective spouses last week: did you ever think you would marry someone from another culture?

NAOKO: My parents expected that I would agree to an arranged marriage, and when growing up, I thought I would do as they told me. But then I attended an English as a Second Language (ESL) program in San Francisco. After meeting lots of people from different countries, I became more open to the idea of an international marriage. But I don’t think I chose Jeff as my husband because he is a foreigner. I just wanted to be with him and spend the rest of our lives together.

DANIEL: I was drawn by Gabriela’s Latin charm, but what attracted me to her primarily was her personality and way of looking at life. I never experienced any inhibitions about asking her to marry me. I assume that whatever the background of your partner, if you make the decision you love someone and want to be with that person forever, there will always be a considerable amount of risk — as in not knowing how each person will change and how their values and perceptions will evolve. In reality could the “girl next door” be a higher risk? For example, I now know what it feels like to be an expat from having worked for six years in France, but I had no way of predicting my life would take that path.

How did you find your new in-laws?

NAOKO: Jeff’s parents were nice to me from the beginning, even though my English wasn’t good enough to communicate with them on a deep level. But while they treated me with respect, I think they were also wondering how Jeff’s two grandmothers would feel about me.

DANIEL: On our first visit to my new parents-in-law, the only true reservation I had was based on what type of food I would be offered and if there was a different etiquette I would be expected to follow. Navigating the new culture proved relatively straightforward, although I did discover that calamares — whether fried, baked or stewed — isn’t fit for human consumption.

Let’s bring in all the partners now and talk a little more about family life. As mentioned in Part 1, each of you has two kids, a girl and a boy. What’s been the biggest challenge in bringing up kids from two different cultural backgrounds? Have they adopted one of your cultures more than the other?

JEFFREY: At 9, I think our son is too young to have much “cultural consciousness.” He has Asian American, African American, and Muslim American classmates. He’s aware of the general differences, but none of it seems to matter at this point — although he was rooting for Japan, not the U.S., to win the women’s World Cup.

Our daughter, on the other hand, is quite proud of her Japanese heritage — while not being particularly well versed in the culture. She has at least four other haffu classmates and lots of Korean American and Chinese American classmates. Of her best friends, one is African American, and another is a half-Phillipina girl whose adoptive mother is a lesbian. Her cohort gives me hope for America’s future as an open and tolerant society.

Neither Naoko nor I is religious, so that’s never been much of an issue — less so, however, with my mother, who is Christian and probably believes we’re all going to hell.

NAOKO: I had a concern about how our kids would feel about being Japanese when they learned about WWII. But they just accepted as a fact and were okay with it. I was impressed. I do wish we’d started them on Japanese language training earlier, though. Our daughter was only 18 months old when we moved back to the U.S. After that, I stopped using Japanese at home and soon returned to work full time. They are just now beginning formal Japanese-language instruction.

GABRIELA: I was born in Venezuela to Spanish parents and have never been able to choose between my two — Spanish and Venezuelan — heritages. Perhaps our children will just take the best from each of these cultures, and from English culture. No doubt their choices will be influenced by where they live, the type of people they meet, and how they position themselves in the world. I don’t know if they will feel more one or the other, especially if we live in a neutral third country, which as I mentioned last week is our goal. Right now, for example, my daughter says she is French because she was born in France. I’m happy with that.

DANIEL: I don’t find it challenging at all to bring up children who are a mix of cultures. Of course I’m always noticing their Spanish looks and ways, inherited from Gabriela.

How about for meals? Do you try to blend your cultures in the foods you prepare for the family? Who cooks?

JEFFREY: We eat as much if not more Asian/Japanese food as we do Western. Our son would eat soba and shumai seven days a week. We both cook.

GABRIELA: I cook for our children and my husband cook for the two of us. Since I’m not much of a cook, my kids have to eat my invented meals (bless them!), and as for my husband, well, I let him decide what he wants to make. I just enjoy it and do the washing up afterwards! He occasionally makes Venezuelan and Spanish meals, perhaps as often as he does English ones.

Jeff and Naoko, do you think you’ll ever move back to Japan? Last time, Jeff hinted that you might like to one day.

JEFFREY: The longer we’ve been back in the U.S., the harder it’s become for us to return to Japan. That being said, even in today’s economy, Naoko would have little difficulty finding work in Japan — she’s in finance. Whereas I’m pretty much unsuited to anything in Japan that would pay all that well. The kids, particularly our daughter who is just entering high school, would probably mutiny as well if we uprooted them at this point. Maybe after retirement?

NAOKO: Jeff keeps telling me to get posted to London, so perhaps we could give that a try?

Gabriela, how often do you get back to Venezuela to see family and friends?

GABRIELA: The last time I visited was three years ago. After that, I decided not to go back due to the political situation and have been relying on telephone calls and the Internet to keep in touch. But, to be honest, I don’t communicate with my family all that often. I have been away 14 years, so am used to the distance.

How about your kids? Actually, that’s a question for Naoko, too, since both of you are living away from the countries where you grew up.

GABRIELA: Only some of my family come to the UK and visit, usually just once a year for a few days. Those are the only times my children see them.

NAOKO: We haven’t been able to go back to Japan as often as we would wish since it’s so expensive for a family of four to fly there. Over the last five years, we’ve gone back every other year. But from now we’ll be making more of an effort to visit my parents since my father is not doing so well. My family always talks about coming to see us in Seattle, but they haven’t done it yet. Only my mother has been here — for my wedding, 19 years ago.

Finally, we are honoring Pocahontas this month at The Displaced Nation for her expertise in cross-cultural relations. I’m wondering if each of you could offer some advice to other couples in cross-cultural relationships — preferably in the form of a Native American proverb.

GABRIELA & DANIEL:

Cultural barriers are in the eye of the beholder.

JEFFREY & NAOKO:

For cross-cultural marriage to work, there can be no shortcuts. Each partner must accept the other’s culture.

Warm thanks to both of our couples for allowing their marriages to be put under The Displaced Nation’s microscope for two weeks running. Readers, do you have any more questions or comments?

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s post, Part 2 of the travel yarn “How foreign is Fez?” — by guest blogger Joy Richards.

Pot Luck Crosscultural marriage, Europe, Japan, Pocahontas, Pot Luck, South America, UK, USA, Venezuela, What a Displaced World

How foreign is Fez? A travel yarn in two parts (Part 1)

22 Comments Posted by The Displaced Nation Team on July 22, 2011

We welcome Joy Richards to The Displaced Nation as a guest blogger. Though she lives and works in the town of Harrogate in North Yorkshire, UK, Richards seizes the opportunity to travel whenever she can. In May, she journeyed to Fez, Morocco, to visit an English friend who lives in that city. It was her first foray into North Africa and her first time in an Arab country. Richards found herself thinking deeply about one of the topics raised in our blog this month: the challenge of bridging two cultures that have developed separately over thousands of years and therefore do not share the same basic beliefs and values.

My trip to Morocco was full of uncertainties. I was traveling with two friends I had worked with in the past but had very little contact with in the last three years. God bless Facebook for bringing us together again — but I was unsure how holidaying together would work.

We were staying with another ex-work colleague who lives as a single parent with her little girl in the ancient medina (walled city) of Fez. She has lived here for about three years earning an income by arranging tours for visitors to experience the food of Fez. I knew nothing about her home and again had not had any regular contact in three years.

But most worrying of all, we were traveling not long after the major events of the Arab Spring and only a few weeks after the suicide bomb in the main square of the Moroccan city of Marrakesh. Would our short time together be safe and enjoyable?

As the plane landed in Morocco, I immediately noticed the sun was unlike the British sun. It had “photo-shopped” the scenery around me to the maximum color intensity, contrast and brightness.

The black glove treatment

Screwing up my eyes in the late afternoon light, I walked into the small and crowded airport and began queuing for immigration. Ability to queue is clearly a skill shared by Brits and Moroccans.

By the time I got to the baggage area, I could see that that the Moroccan women from our flight were all more covered than when they had left England. (My female friend and I had taken advice from our host in Fez and had traveled in trousers and loose tops with sleeves.)

One lady was totally covered — including her hands, which were in black gloves. As she chatted to her small son in Arabic and he replied in English, with a slight northern accent, it was not the veil or the long black gown that looked strange to me, but the gloves.

Black gloves on a hot May afternoon in an airport in Morocco — and yet I’m old enough to remember summer gloves. Lacy or nylon with a frill, they were worn for church and weddings, even for parties. Polite British gloves worn by polite, fashion-conscious British women in the 1950s and 1960s.

But soon my travel companions and I would be slipping back in time much further than the 50s or 60s, as our taxi dropped us at the entrance to the world’s most intact Islamic medieval city, the Fez medina.

The winding mysteries of the medina

Our friend and her little girl, Francesca, met our little threesome at the gate. We plunged head on into narrow, crowded alleyways full of donkeys, skinny cats, open fronted shops, chickens, vegetables… There were children playing, men selling — and so many smells.

Fez’s medina is said to be the world’s largest contiguous car-free area, and no wonder. Cars couldn’t have squeezed through even if allowed.

I was excited, confused, aware of being female and English and of not knowing this place.

I had read my guidebook, which warned of unwanted and persistent attention from shopkeepers and “faux guides,” and walked on purposefully, not making eye contact with any of the locals. I determinedly ignored every greeting whether in Arabic, French or (occasionally) in English.

My friend and her daughter had clearly not read the same guidebook as they stopped and chatted to several men on the way to their house.

As we turned up a narrow, dusty alley which was to take us to my friend’s house, there was another greeting shouted by a man on the street: “Welcome to Fez.” And then: “Welcome to Fez, family of Francesca.”

I turned, smiled and said hello. Suddenly it had dawned on me that intense, close living in this way required constant greeting. Relationships must be established and confirmed for everyone to feel safe and comfortable.

My friend’s home, at the end of a dark alley, was deceptively unappealing. Inside, it turned out to be a beautiful traditional house decorated with carved wood and traditional Moroccan tiles. That evening, we talked and ate and drank wine as friends do.

Our hostess had bought the wine in one of the large modern supermarkets in the Ville Nouvelle — the modern and rapidly developing part of Fez that has spread out around the Medina.

Alcohol is not illegal in the Medina but is disapproved of. Or, to put it in the Moroccan Arabic dialect (Dirja), alcohol is hshuma (pronounced h’shoo-mah). A very useful phrase, it’s equivalent to a very loud British “Tch, tut, tut” (or the American tsk-tsk) — but, unlike our expressions, hshuma carries the further connotation of being shamed by one’s peers. It’s used when someone has been drinking, smoking, hanging out at a café (women, mainly in small towns), wearing shorts (men or women), dancing with the opposite sex, or engaging in other forbidden acts.

My friend had been heard “clinking” as she tried to get a taxi back to the medina and was evicted from the cab as she had alcohol with her — hshuma.

I work as a psychotherapist and much of my work includes challenging personal shame and its destructive effects, but here in this intense and exotic environment the social control of hshuma in some ways made sense, as a way of navigating the social structure.

Thank goodness for my mum and her directives

The following day my friends and I set out into the Medina, shoulders and legs covered so as not to offend and not to attract unwanted attention.

As foreigners we would not be expected to wear the djellaba (traditional long, hooded outer robe) and headscarf of the local women. Nevertheless, we were expected to be discreet. Skimpy clothes would be hshuma.

My mother brought me up with a good understanding of what was “common” as well as a clear directive that I was not to be “common.” The list of “common” characteristics and behaviours could fill several pages but included: dyed hair, bright lipstick, exposed cleavage, short skirts, a “lot of thigh,” swearing, smoking in public, bare shoulders (unless at the seaside or a dinner dance).

Any woman being common is this way was “no better than she ought to be” and would probably “get into trouble” (some sort of sexual misadventure).

So, stepping out into the medina, I was able to apply my mother’s rule about not looking “common” so as not to be socially ostracized.

A throwback or a step forward?

I wrestled with trying to decide if I minded applying these guidelines to myself in this traditional, Muslim city. Was I being respected or controlled?

I have been, in my youth, a dedicated follower of fashion and have worn mini-skirts, hot pants and many other items of clothing that exposed my body to the casual view of all.

Even now, as a woman of a certain age, I know that I can attract male attention with a bit of cleavage. That is, of course, my choice — but what is the message the Western media delivers to women of all ages? We must be young, slim and, above all, sexy. Boobs, booty and thighs…get them displayed.

So what was the message in the Fez medina? Women’s bodies are private, respected, not to be displayed.

I don’t like being told what to wear, but I realized that I — and I can only speak for myself — felt more comfortable and relaxed with less of my flesh exposed.

As a Western woman, I am glad that I am free to be divorced (as I am) and to have a career (as I do). But does that mean I want my granddaughters to be free to put their bodies on display when they are pubescent, as so many British girls do?

As I hear the call to prayer echoing over the medina, I am being prompted to challenge my assumptions about, my expectations of, this society.

I am an outsider, and as a non-Muslim I can only peer through the entrances into any of the mosques in the city, catching glimpses of beauty and faith, unquestioning perhaps — Inshallah (as God wills it).

My will, society’s will, God’s will — that requires a lot of untangling.

Images (clockwise from top left): The gateway into the Fez medina; a chick-pea salesman inside the medina; Richards’s mother, Thelma Browett, in headscarf while on holiday in Scotland (taken by Ron Browett); and the inner courtyard of the home where Richards stayed in Fez.

STAY TUNED for next week’s installment of Joy Richards’s travel yarn, and on Monday, for Part 2 of “Marriage, cross-cultural style: Two veterans tell all.”

Pot Luck Africa, Morocco, Pocahontas, Pot Luck, Strange sightings, Travel yarn, UK, What a Displaced World

In fiction and in life, this expat pursues paradise

12 Comments Posted by ML Awanohara on July 20, 2011

As regular readers of The Displaced Nation will know, Pocahontas is the heroine of our blog this month. Sprightly, playful, well-featured and solicitous — unencumbered by the corrupting influences of civilization, in tune with Nature — she, and other women of her ilk, conformed to the vision Europeans held of the New World.

They were also the subject of many a European man’s romantic fantasy.

After meeting a Pocahontas, a European could brag to his friends back home that he’d found Paradise on Earth.

Flash forward almost four hundred years, and we find something similar going on with certain groups of international travelers. I speak of those who are restlessly searching for places that have yet to be touched by Western materialism and other corrupting ideas — where people lead simpler lives and are more decent.

And for male travelers, that vision usually encompasses finding their own Pocahontas: a native woman with long, dark hair, who unlike her Western sisters, still knows how to care for a man…

Against this background, we welcome author Mark Damaroyd to The Displaced Nation. As an expat in Thailand, Damaroyd lives — and has written about — the utopian life to which no small number of men who’ve ventured into foreign countries aspire.

His first work of fiction, published in 2010, is called Pursuit to Paradise. Described by one reviewer as a “tale of romantic intrigue that keeps the pages turning,” the novel takes place in Thailand and the UK, and centers around an Englishman’s relationship with an exotic Thai woman.

Mark Damaroyd has kindly agreed to answer some of my questions about his life and book, and about the challenges of cross-cultural relationships more generally. After that, the floor is open — be sure to chime in!

Can you tell us something about yourself?
Firstly, ML, thank you so much for your invitation to be interviewed by The Displaced Nation.

I’m English, born in Cambridge, but not lucky enough to go to university there. I spent many years in Devon, a beautiful county in Southwest England. I still sometimes miss the thatched country pubs, pasties and cider.

Bitten by the travel bug in 1968 — yes, I really am that old! — I traveled overland from England to India in a camper van. You may have heard about the “Hippie Era,” the “Make love not war” days. I was a short-haired, beardless hippie.

In those days, we got our thrills journeying as a group through countries like the former Yugoslavia, Iran and Afghanistan — so many treasured memories.

Since those days, I’ve lived and worked in Australia, Spain, Portugal and Thailand, taking periods out to sail round the world in a couple of the old passenger ships, now out of service.

Back home in 2005, I found myself jobless at an age where finding new employment was just about impossible. In the wake of failed marriages that produced three offspring, adult and doing their own thing now, I packed my bags, gave up everything in the UK and headed for Thailand, where sales jobs in the holiday industry happened to be available.

I met my Thai bride-to-be in 2007, married the next year, inherited two stepsons, now aged ten and five, and live happily in Isaan, Northeast Thailand, not far from the Laos border.

Having retired a couple of years ago, after a lifetime in sales and marketing, I decided to write Pursuit to Paradise my first published novel, released in 2010.

If I ever get the next book off the drawing board, it’ll be about an English family uprooting to make a new life in Thailand. I envision it as a comedy drama, suitable for family reading.

What made you decide to write a novel rather than a travel book about Thailand?
I’ve always enjoyed writing fiction; a couple of earlier manuscripts still sit on the shelf gathering dust. In addition, there are numerous travel books about the country. I doubt I’d find a loophole in that area.

And why did you decide on the genre of romance?
I sort of fell into that genre by accident. I started out intending to write a mildly erotic action adventure. As the characters developed, the plot veered more towards romance and relationships.

Did you have a real island in mind when creating the “paradise island” of Koh Pimaan?
The Gulf of Thailand has several islands, mostly with similar features. But, having lived on Koh Samui, I think the settings for the book resemble that island more than the rest.

Koh Samui? That’s the kind of place where supermodels go because they like the snorkeling.
It even gets Angelina Jolie popping over for tattoos!

Tell us a little more about your protagonist, Ben. To what extent is he based on your own experiences? Is there anything of you in him?
Ben is hotheaded – I created him that way. He’s also fearful of failure in business and relationships. When he finds himself in a bit of a predicament, his snap reaction hurtles him into an adventure beggaring belief. I must admit there’s a bit of myself in him.

Do you think that most Western men who go to Thailand in search of love and adventure will relate to Ben?
Some Western men who come to Thailand will relate to him. It’s a fact this country attracts men of all ages. Older men come seeking new partners, often ending up with women many years younger. The media understandably focuses on this aspect in order to achieve a bit of sensationalism. But there are also younger guys in their 20’s to 40’s who find the lifestyle, business opportunities and the local girls suit them.

And now let’s talk about the women in the book. Again, did you have any real-life models in mind for Ben’s English ex-girlfriend, Gail, and his Thai love interest, Nataya?
No, there were absolutely no real-life models for these women. I portrayed Gail as something of a nuisance purely to add drama to the story. She’s linked with another character causing headaches for Ben. Nataya can be contrasted with her best friend, Kanita: they have completely different personalities and backgrounds – essential to the story. Western men who are keen to meet Thai girls think they all have beautiful faces, long, shiny black hair, flashing white teeth and slender bodies. The girls in my book fit this description. Obviously, the nation’s females aren’t all like this!

Would it have been possible to write the same kind of novel without exploring the “steamy” side of life in Thailand including erotic moviemaking?
The story could work without mentioning the steamy side of life. To be honest, it was a late decision to introduce erotic moviemaking. I guess it occurred on a day when I felt bored with the plot! However, by adding this element, several new characters emerged that seemed to fit in nicely.

Is the sex industry integral to life in Thailand, especially as seen from the foreign perspective?
Although the glitzy nightlife is famous, Thailand has an abundance of fascinating places to visit far off the beaten track. Many tourists come purely for the history and culture.

Whom did you see as the primary audience for your book?
Originally, I aimed the book at a male readership made up of expats and those with connections or interest in Thailand. That was before I secured a publishing contract with an American company specializing in romantic fiction for women. Their marketing focused on American female readers, so we ended up with a mishmash promotion. Now the book has a new publisher in Bangkok, whose target is much the same as my initial plan.

Will the book ever be translated into Thai?
No.

How does your book compare to other Westerners’ novels about Thailand?
Over the years, many Western men have written novels concentrating almost exclusively on relationships with Thai girls. Generally, they break down into subject matter best described as Sexy Encounters, Finding My Thai Dream Girl, or Humorous/Amorous Adventures. Some authors have moved away from these well-worn genres, producing quality thrillers and mysteries, often set in Bangkok.

A number of female writers have created brilliant stories based on their own experience of life in Thailand. A fine example is Mai Pen Rai Means Never Mind, written by American Carol Hollinger back in 1965 but still relevant, with a reprint in 2000. Her honest and lively anecdotes of this exotic country and its people, and the difficulties and delights foreigners have in adjusting to life in a completely new environment, is refreshingly different.

In my book, I’ve attempted to incorporate a little sensuality, humor, action, mystery and romance. Some scenes are set in England, providing a sharply contrasting backdrop to the sunny paradise locations concealing shady goings on. A strong subplot should keep the reader guessing to the end.

This month, The Displaced Nation has been exploring Pocahontas as a symbol for cross-cultural communications and marriages. In your experience, what are the biggest sources of miscommunication between Westerners and Thais — and can you give some examples?
A huge problem arises from language barriers. Some Westerners make no effort to learn Thai, yet expect their partners to learn English – or whatever the chap’s native language happens to be. Amazingly, Thais manage to grasp passable English extremely quickly, eager to improve communication. Another source of miscommunication is lack of respect or understanding of cultural differences. In Thailand, the Buddhist religion teaches respect, love and compassion. Top of the list is respect for parents and elders. Love and compassion encompasses providing financial support should it be required at any stage in life, as well as physically taking care of parents in old age. Foreigners often misinterpret this obligation, depicting Thai women as money-grabbers. Countless numbers of girls working bars in tourist areas do so because they have no other way to earn money. Yes, it’s fair to say some do attempt to exploit Westerners. On the other hand, many Westerners take advantage, so why accuse the girls?

Finally, from your own experience, what would you say is the top challenge of an interracial, intercultural marriage, and can you recommend any coping strategies?
In the majority of Western-Thai relationships, one partner will be living in a foreign land. The ability to accept that many things are going to be a million miles removed from your own preferences, habits and requirements is essential. Your partner will need to accept that you, too, have some cultural differences. You may not want to eat rice for breakfast, and your partner may consider sausage, bacon, eggs, beans and hash browns a trifle unhealthy. If you see rising early to houseclean or pray to Buddha as unnecessary, then bury your head in the pillow and enjoy an extra hour in bed, knowing the chores are in capable hands.

Being willing to give and take, and having a genuine desire to understand a different culture, will be rewarded by firm bonding and appreciation. Never state that your own way of life is — or was — the best. We can all glean much from each other if we care to do so.

Can you sum it all up in a Native American-style proverb?
“Blending the familiar with the unfamiliar can lead to a more purposeful existence.”

img: Book cover and photo of Mark Damaroyd in Isaan.

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s installment of our displaced fictional heroine, Libby, who has escaped from her prison of cardboard boxes and is busy exploring her new habitat of small town New England.

Asia, Crosscultural marriage, Expat interviews, Expat novelists, Fiction Writers, It's Fiction!, Pocahontas, Thailand, UK

DISPLACED Q: Is the “noble savage” trope still relevant to today’s expats?

15 Comments Posted by awindram on July 19, 2011

As the July theme for The Displaced Nation is Pocahontas, it seems a fitting moment to ask whether tourists and expats still cling to some kind of notion of the “noble savage” in the countries where they visit and live.

The answer of course should be a resounding “no” — because today’s global nomads (or anyone for that matter) have no business treating the people they meet in other countries in a condescending, racist manner.

To quote from Merriam-Webster to give a brief introduction to the underlying idea, the noble savage is a “mythic conception of people belonging to non-European cultures as having innate natural simplicity and virtue uncorrupted by European civilization.” It’s an idea that was wonderfully useful for racist scientists in the 19th century. It romanticizes primitivism.

Most expats these days seem to be fairly well-educated, well-positioned people who either for reasons of career, lifestyle or marriage have moved to another country. Although there may be constant befuddlement and discombobulation at living in another country, you probably have some existing frame of reference for wherever you are going and for what sights you will see. You are inescapably a product of the late 20th and early 21st centuries — and I would argue that the noble savage trope absolutely has no relevance to you.

EDITOR’S NOTE: But is awindram right — or do some of you romanticize the natives in the countries where you’re staying?

img: Cropped version of Benjamin West’s “The Death of General Wolfe,” showing the Native American — a portrayal that has often been cited as an example of the “noble savage,” courtesy Wikimedia.

Pot Luck Crosscultural marriage, Displaced Q's, Pocahontas, Pot Luck, What a Displaced World

Marriage, cross-cultural style: Two veterans tell all (Part 1)

13 Comments Posted by ML Awanohara on July 18, 2011

In the life of the global traveler, one of the most thrilling escapades you can have is a romantic encounter with someone you meet in a far-flung land.

But should your story involve going the further step and hitching your wagon to a person from a completely different culture — well, that’s another level of adventure altogether.

For marriage, you will need the ability to stand by the courage of your convictions.

Or, as one of our Random Nomads, Helena Halme put it in her comment on last week’s post covering this topic, cross-cultural marriage tends to be “for the mad bad and young — or foolish.”

Today and next Monday, one half of each of two cross-cultural couples have agreed to take the floor and answer my questions about what made them take the plunge:

GABRIELA SMITH has been married to Daniel for eight years. She was born in Venezuela to Spanish parents, but ended up in the UK, where she met Daniel and they currently live.

JEFFREY HUFFMAN has been married to Naoko for 19 years. They met in Nagoya, Japan, where Jeffrey, an American, had journeyed for his work. They now live in Seattle.

How did you meet your spouse-to-be?

GABRIELA: We were working for the same company in the UK; we met on my first day at work.

JEFFREY: We’re something of a cliché couple. She was a student in the summer Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) prep course I was teaching in Nagoya. She had just graduated from college and wanted to pursue a second degree at a university in the U.S. and needed to pass the TOEFL to do so.

What made you think that this is the person for me? Did culture have anything to do with it?

JEFFREY: Definitely, Naoko represented a tie to the Japanese culture that I wanted to have. Seattle has a pretty large Asian community, I had taken Japanese at university with dozens of nikkei-jin, and I had been to Japan on visits twice before. But it wasn’t until I went to live there that it all fell in place.

GABRIELA: I arrived in the UK at 23 — marriage was not even in my mind. Additionally, I had no wish to stay in the UK so wasn’t looking for an Englishman to marry. I was going to travel more. I actually had a one way ticket to Italy when I fell in love with my husband.

Did you have any reservations before deciding to tie the knot, having to do with the other person being a different nationality?

JEFFREY: No reservations on my side, probably because Naoko had lived in the States for a year as an undergrad by the time I met her, and because her English was so good.

GABRIELA: Not at all. I thought — and I still think — that culture has very little effect on the “amount of risk” in a relationship. Values are important, of course, and I considered my husband’s values as an individual — not by placing him within a category ruled by his nationality.

How long were you together before you decided to get married?

JEFFREY: A point of no small contention with my wife. We’d been together for four years, two in Japan and two in the States, before I finally got around to asking her formally. Naoko was just about to graduate from Seattle University, and I’d been accepted at Columbia for grad school when I finally woke up and realized the time had come…

GABRIELA: Exactly 12 months after the day we met for the first time. Daniel asked me.

Where were your weddings held? Did you have cross-cultural ceremonies?

GABRIELA: The civil wedding was held in England; from my side there was just me. The religious ceremony was held in Venezuela a week after; from my husband’s side there was just him. The ceremony was in Spanish, a language that he does not speak! We held the reception party three weeks later when we were back in England — again, just me from my side. I even looked for a wedding dress on my own, and was on my own at the hairdressers on my wedding day. People may have thought it was strange, but I never minded. I thought it was all very exciting.

JEFFREY: We were married in my parent’s living room by a family friend who was a county judge. He wrote the ceremony for us, and it was very nice – just family and a few friends. We did a recommitment ceremony a few years later in Hawaii. Naoko didn’t want any kind of ceremony in Japan. She comes from Aichi-ken, where weddings tend to be an extravaganza. (Of course the real reason is that she was embarrassed to be marrying me — just kidding.)

Which makes me think of another question… What was it like meeting your in-laws for the first time? Did you have any awkward moments?

GABRIELA: Of course we’ve had some communication barriers, but mainly been due to my accent. I just have to repeat several times a word, or get my husband to “translate” for me. Ah, and the fact that I never drink tea or eat Christmas pudding seems to surprise his family each time!

JEFFREY: I think her parents and older brother initially took a dim view of our relationship, because I didn’t speak Japanese very well. To this day, my wife is my conduit with her parents (their Aichi-ben still leaves me lost a lot of the time). Overall, though, I think they are comfortable with me as I’m pretty comfortable with the culture.

How much of your married life has been spent in each other’s countries? And have you also lived in countries that are foreign to both of you?

GABRIELA: I don’t exactly have a country as my parents are originally from Spain but I grew up in Venezuela. Daniel and I have yet to live in a Spanish-speaking culture. We did, however, spend six years of our married life in a country foreign to us both: France. Otherwise, we’ve been in the UK.

JEFFREY: We’ve never lived anywhere else besides our home countries, and we’ve lived much longer in the U.S. than in Japan. Our time in Japan as a married couple consisted of three years in the Greater Tokyo area in the mid-1990s.

Are you settled down where you are now, or do you think you will change countries again?

JEFFREY:
Seattle is home for the time being. That said, I know Naoko misses her family. We’ve had some very emotional send-offs by family and friends in Japan. If fortuitous circumstances presented themselves (i.e. we were both offered obscene amounts of money and guaranteed vacation time), we’d be fools to not go. Barring that Disney scenario, we fully expect to spend at least part of the year in Japan in retirement, which isn’t that far off. It’s just eight years until our youngest is in college.

GABRIELA: What attracted me the most to my husband is that he also wanted to travel and live in other countries. I think things would have been very different if he said he wanted to stay in England “forever.” Now that we’ve spent six years in France I’ve realized that the weather really influences the social life and, to some extent, how people behave. It would be easier for my career if I stayed in the UK, but I have always placed my lifestyle before my career. Thankfully, my husband is quite happy with the idea of having late dinners on a terrace, under the sun, with wine and cheese on the table! Being Spanish, I would love for us to live in Spain one day.

What language do you speak with your respective spouses?

JEFFREY: Painful as it is to admit, about 99% English.

GABRIELA: Always English.

Tell me more about your kids.

GABRIELA: We have two wonderful children — a girl, 6, and a boy, 2. They were born in France, I was five months pregnant when we moved. Communicating with the midwives during childbirth was … interesting.

JEFFREY: We also have a girl and a boy, but they are a little older. Our girl is 14, and our boy, 9. Our daughter was born in Kawasaki, and our son in Seattle.

What language do you and your partner speak with the kids?

JEFFREY: The children are just now taking formal Japanese lessons.

GABRIELA: Spanish and English with my children. Occasionally I tease them — and my husband — in French. I must say that no matter what language I speak they all reply to me in English.

We look forward to hearing more from Jeffrey and Gabriela — and their spouses — next week. Let them know any comments or questions in the meantime!

Pot Luck Crosscultural marriage, Europe, Japan, Pocahontas, Pot Luck, South America, UK, USA, Venezuela, What a Displaced World

4 lessons Harry Potter can teach us about tolerance – cross-cultural and otherwise

8 Comments Posted by Kate Allison on July 15, 2011

Yesterday, our Random Nomad, Jo Gan said:

“If something one of us does bothers the other person, we compromise… If you really want to make a relationship to work, any relationship, it takes respect, consideration, and a willingness to compromise.”

Wise words, Jo, and sentiments which another Jo – Jo Rowling, better known as JK Rowling – would agree with.

Love them?

Since 1997 and the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, we have been engulfed in the world of Hogwarts, wizards, witches, and muggles. With today’s movie release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 2), however, this week marks the end of the Harry Potter era.

Perhaps I was just at the right stage of family life to love Harry Potter. My children were toddlers when Philosopher’s Stone was published; this month, as Harry, Ron, and Hermione reach school-leaving age, so do they. Together, over the last fourteen years, we have read the books, seen the movies, and queued at midnight in bookstores.

Or hate them?

It’s apparent, though, that not everyone shares this affection. While I understand we all have different tastes and Harry Potter cannot possibly be everyone’s cup of butterbeer, in too many cases this aversion has gone far past simple dislike into the realms of…well, ‘hatred’ isn’t too strong a word for it.

Pretty ironic, really, when one of the main Harry Potter themes is Tolerance.

Could it be that the very people who claim to detest Harry Potter are, perhaps, those who most need to read the books?

1. Tolerance of things we fear

Harry’s aunt and uncle, the Dursleys, fear all things magic. They won’t even permit Harry to use the M word – “Magic” – in their presence, and they confiscate his Hogwarts textbooks over summer vacations.

These actions are not unlike those of some fundamentalist churches, who periodically burn Harry Potter books. One Baptist pastor claims:

“The Potter series is worse than pornography. The books are even more dangerous than the Satanic Bible. At least with the Satanic Bible, young people know that the book was written by Satan. The Devil just changed his name to J.K. Rowling this time.”

Satan needn’t have bothered. It won’t help him get a share of the royalties.

2. Tolerance of infirmities

Professor Lupin, a teacher at Hogwarts, is humiliated and discriminated against because, through no fault of his own, he has a chronic disease – lycanthropy. In other words, once a month, he will turn into a wolf, bay at the moon, and run around biting people. The disease is now fully controlled by potions, but Professor Snape still regards it as his duty to inform Hogwarts pupils of Professor Lupin’s condition.

Sadly, many AIDS sufferers can probably empathize with Professor Lupin’s plight.

However, we learn that in his teenage years, when no potion was available for his disease, Professor Lupin had three friends who developed their own ability to change into animal form, so they could keep Lupin company during full moon.

A true friend, like a life partner, will be tolerant of you in both sickness and in health.

3. Tolerance of other races

Voldemort followers in the Potter series want to rid the world of muggle magicians – wizards and witches who are not born into aristocratic magical families, but born in the real world and who display magical talent. Hermione is one of these, as was Harry Potter’s mother – both brilliant witches, but their talents apparently not good enough for Voldemort’s approval.

The parallels between Voldemort and Hitler, between the uprising of Voldemort followers and the Nazi party, between the desires for a master race and for pure-blood magicians, are only too evident.

4. Tolerance of things we envy

Lastly, a lesson not in the text of the books, but from reactions to the books.

There is wide criticism from both writers and ‘readers’ (I use quotes because generally these people haven’t read the books at all, but are prepared to offer criticism nevertheless) that the books have a clunky writing style, use too many adverbs – in short, name a writing sin, and JKR has committed it, it seems, and therefore does not deserve all the acclaim she has received.

No matter that this woman had an idea, worked on it determinedly for many years under far from ideal conditions, and finally achieved her goal of turning this idea into seven books. How dare someone rise from single motherhood on welfare to happily married, multimillionaire author?

In other words: How dare JK Rowling not be me?

As Jo Gan also said yesterday:

We have learned to accept each other’s differences.

If only everyone could say the same.

‘

STAY TUNED for the first part in our series of interviews with cross-cultural couples.

RANDOM NOMAD: Jo Gan, Director of Foreign Teachers, Author and Blogger

Cross-cultural marriage? 4 good reasons not to rush into it…

The Displaced Reads: 7 Books with a twist of Alice

Pot Luck Pocahontas, Pot Luck, What a Displaced World, Writers we love

RANDOM NOMAD: Jo Gan, Director of Foreign Teachers, Author & Blogger

14 Comments Posted by ML Awanohara on July 13, 2011

Born in: Columbia, Missouri USA
Passport: USA
Country lived in: China (Yuyao City, Zhejiang Province): 2009-11
Cyberspace coordinates: Life Behind the Wall | Thoughts and Experiences of a Black American Woman in China (blog)

What made you leave your homeland in the first place?
I left America due to the economy. I worked in the mortgage field and when the housing market crashed, I needed to find something else to do…or be on unemployment. So I chose to take a job teaching English in China. Two years ago, I got married to a Chinese man whom I met in Yuyao. No, he wasn’t one of my students, as most people assume. I met him in a bar. He came over and asked if he could buy me a beer. We exchanged telephone numbers, and he started calling me every day, three times a day… Six months later, we were married. Yes, it was fast by most people’s standards but I’m not one to waste time — nor is he. It’s been an interesting couple of years.

Is anyone else in your immediate family displaced?
No one else in my family — except a great uncle who lived in Germany most of his life — has ever lived abroad for a long period. Some have been in the military and traveled around, but they always lived on base.

Describe the moment when you felt most displaced.
When I arrived at the airport in Shanghai — it was my very first time coming to China. My luggage had been lost, and I couldn’t communicate with anyone to tell them or report it. I felt frustrated and angry. Then once I got all the paperwork finished, I needed to take a bus to the next city. I couldn’t find the bus station, and no one could understand what I was saying. At that point, I wanted to just get back on the plane and go home.

Describe the moment when you felt least displaced.
When I went home to visit for the first time. Everything looked familiar but felt unfamiliar. I had spent a lot of time missing home, but when I finally got there, it didn’t feel right. In Yuyao, as I walk through the streets or sit in a restaurant and people recognize me, it makes me feel part of the community.

You may bring one curiosity you’ve collected from your adopted country into the Displaced Nation. What’s in your suitcase?
Wow! I guess I’d like to take a Chinese person — if you’d let me in with a companion rather than a suitcase. Yeah…the way they think and perceive things is so different from us Americans. Their ideas of “face,” status, and beauty are so alien to me that I am sometimes at a loss for words to explain it. I can’t get used to the fact that face — losing face, giving face and having face — is of the utmost importance to them. Also, their standard of beauty is so different: very white and very thin. The only way for you to get an accurate view of Chinese culture would be for me to bring a Chinese person along to explain it all to you.

You’re invited to prepare one meal based on your travels for other Displaced Nation members. What’s on the menu?
Since I live in Southeast China, the menu would have to consist of:

Steamed seafood. (I apologize in advance for its high salt content.)
Chicken feet that have been boiled and then fried.
Four kinds of eggs: tea eggs, thousand-year-old eggs, fried eggs with tomato, and boiled salted eggs that have been fertilized (there’s a chicken embryo inside).
And of course green vegetables… (By the way, the Chinese call all green leafy veggies “green vegetables.”)

For dessert we would have yangmei (yumberry fruit), the local favorite.

And for drinks, a choice of:

Dragon Well green tea (hot, of course)
Nonalcoholic — eg, orange soda, Coke, Sprite, or milk
And for anyone feeling dangerous: Harbin beer or rice wine

You may add one word or expression from the country you’re living in to The Displaced Nation argot. What will you loan us?
I will choose Ni chifan le ma? (Have you eaten yet?). Everywhere you go in China, people greet you with Ni chifan le ma? Food is just so important to this culture. Weddings, birthdays, funerals — all of these events involve banquets lasting several hours. Everything tends to be associated with food, and there are many food idioms.

It’s Pocahontas month at The Displaced Nation, and we’re focusing on cross-cultural communications (or the lack). What would you say is the top challenge of an interracial, intercultural marriage — and can you recommend any coping techniques?
First I will say that the most challenging part of being in an intercultural marriage is the people around you. Usually, other people are more concerned about your marriage situation than you are, especially if you live in China. They tend to spend a lot of time telling you what is wrong, or can go wrong, with your marriage. They question the reasons you got married. For example, Chinese people will ask my husband if he married me to get a green card. He tells them: “We live in China, not America. How would a green card help me here?”

As for our personal relationship, we have learned to accept each other’s differences. If something one of us does bothers the other person, we compromise. For example, Chinese men have the tendency to put pork bones, chicken bones, sunflower seed shells, and fish bones directly on the dinner table when they are eating; I find this disgusting. So now we put a bowl beside my husband’s plate for him to discard these things. If you really want to make a relationship to work, any relationship, it takes respect, consideration, and a willingness to compromise.

QUESTION: Readers — yay or nay for letting Jo Gan into The Displaced Nation? Tell us your reasons. (Note: It’s fine to vote “nay” as long as you couch your reasoning in terms we all — including Jo — find amusing.)

img: Jo Gan hamming it up in the classroom by trying on her student’s sunglasses, taken by the student on her iPhone.

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s installment from our displaced fictional heroine, Libby, when the Patrick family is held to ransom by an army of packing crates from their new home.

Pot Luck China, Crosscultural marriage, Expat interviews, Movable feasts, Pocahontas, Pot Luck, Random Nomads, USA

Cross-cultural marriage? 4 good reasons not to rush into it…

17 Comments Posted by ML Awanohara on July 12, 2011

As announced last week, The Displaced Nation is honoring Pocahontas this month for the role she played in advancing communications between two very different cultures.

This week, we take a closer look at Pocahontas’s decision to marry the Jamestown settler John Rolfe.

Did the Rolfes have an easy time of it in their married life? History doesn’t tell us, but as the veteran of two cross-cultural marriages myself (first to a Brit, now to a Japanese), I tend to think not.

Sure, the union had its advantages for both parties. We know for a fact that two years after marrying Rolfe, Pocahontas was invited to voyage to England with her husband, where she met many prominent people, including King James I.

We know also that Pocahontas’s father, King Powhatan, gave the newlyweds property just across the James River from Jamestown, spanning thousands of acres.

But being in the mood to play devil’s advocate, today I will make the case for why Pocahontas and Rolfe should have hesitated before tying the knot.

Here are my top four reasons for cautioning against cross-cultural marriages like theirs:

1. Marriage across cultures is rarely seen as one of equals.

Rolfe felt he had to defend his decision to marry Pocahontas to his fellow colonists. Here’s what he wrote in a letter addressed to Sir Thomas Dale:

Nor was I ignorant of the heavie displeasure which almightie God conceived against the sonnes of Levie and Israel for marrying strange wives, nor of the inconveniences which may thereby arise,…which made me looke about warily and with good circumspection, into the grounds…which thus should provoke me to be in love with one whose education hath bin rude, her manners barbarous, her generation accursed, and so discrepant in all nurtriture frome my self.

After much soul searching, Rolfe decided he could marry Pocahontas despite her crude education, barbarous manners and different colored skin — as long as she converted to Christianity.

In the above portrait of the couple, by J.W. Glass, Rolfe is instructing Pocahontas in Christian doctrines.

And now let’s turn to Pocahontas. Did she see Rolfe as her equal, given that he was a mere tobacco farmer, and a foreign invader, and she was the daughter of the most powerful chief in the region?

According to historical records, the news of the liaison was well received by the Powhatan tribes, helping to create a climate of peace toward the Jamestown colonists for several years.

I find it instructive to compare Pocahontas with Cleopatra on this point. Faced with the rising tide of Roman expansionism, Cleopatra seduced Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony to protect her country from being swallowed up. Likewise, Pocahontas may have seen it as her duty to marry John Rolfe, as it meant she could continue working on behalf of her people. (In that sense, Disney may have been right about Pocahontas’s preference for Captain John Smith — but only because he had more power than Rolfe.)

2. The fantasy quotient in such marriages can lead to huge disappointments.

In Glass’s portrait of the couple, John Rolfe gazes down lovingly into the eyes of a young woman with long, straight, dark hair. He seems to be thinking of Pocahontas as his trophy Indian princess — how exotic she is compared to his English wife (who died on the boat coming over).

But what if, at that very moment, Pocahontas is calculating the advantages that could accrue to her and her tribe from their liaison — including representing her father’s tribes to the powers-that-be in London and arguing against their displacement.

Would it crush Rolfe to learn the practical agenda she had in mind for their marriage?

At the same time, though, the painting shows Pocahontas gazing upwards at her husband-to-be. A young girl, she must have harbored a few fantasies as well. Maybe she found Rolfe much more refined than the Indian men she had known — she’d already had an Algonquian husband by then.

In that case, how disappointed she must have felt when, after the wedding, she discovered his habit of chewing and spitting tobacco, overheard him swearing like the sailor he once was, and noticed his tendency to stomp around the place. Why can’t he be more like an Algonquian man and walk as quietly as a leopard?

3. Sons tend to turn into their fathers, and daughters into their mothers — but how can you possibly anticipate this if you can’t read the culture?

Having been married to a Brit myself, I find it amusing to pretend that Pocahontas met Rolfe’s parents before deciding whether to marry him. In my imagination, she, like me, fails to pick up on all the important cues — things like the necessity of being able to produce a Sunday dinner of roasted meat, potatoes, and two veggies, while her husband rests up from his weekly labors. (Rolfe, by the way, is credited with the first successful cultivation of tobacco from the colony of Virginia.)

Likewise, had Rolfe been able to meet Pocahontas’s mother, I imagine he would have thought of her as a kindly Indian squaw — having no idea of her ability to control, coerce and manipulate others to her will.

4. In times of strife, the last thing you want is a cross-cultural misunderstanding.

We marry for better or for worse, but during the worst of times, most of us could do without a partner who is culturally clueless.

For example, if Pocahontas received word that one of her close relations had died — how would she feel if Rolfe resorted to trying to cheer her up with sarcastic British humor: “Well, at least that’s one less Injun for us to worry about!”

By the same token, if Rolfe’s tobacco crop failed due to drought, he may not have felt like dancing with Pocahontas, despite her insistence it would bring on the rains.

* * *

Most of the above, of course, is pure conjecture, but it is also based very closely on my own observations. I’ve witnessed quite a few romances in the Rolfe-Pocahontas mould — particularly while living in Japan. And I’ve seen quite a few of them turn sour.

I’ve also experienced firsthand how devastating it can be if one’s spouse can’t communicate properly when the going gets rough and you don’t have the energy to make allowances for the fact that they come from a different culture.

In my experience, the most important quality one needs to have for a successful cross-cultural marriage is that of being a glutton for punishment — a quality I just so happen to have in spades.

Not wanting an easy life — that’s what it all boils down to. And, unless you have a calling for handling complication piled on complication, then I would suggest choosing a mate who lived in the same neighborhood as you growing up — preferably next door.

Question: Do you agree that cross-cultural marriages are unusually challenging?

img: Detail of “John Rolfe and Pocahontas,” by James William Glass (early 1850s), courtesy Wikipedia (public domain)

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s RANDOM NOMAD interview, in which our special guest will answer a Pocahontas-related question.

Just for Laughs Crosscultural marriage, Japan, Pocahontas, UK, USA, What a Displaced World

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RANDOM NOMAD: Jo Gan, Director of Foreign Teachers, Author & Blogger

Cross-cultural marriage? 4 good reasons not to rush into it…

1. Marriage across cultures is rarely seen as one of equals.

2. The fantasy quotient in such marriages can lead to huge disappointments.

3. Sons tend to turn into their fathers, and daughters into their mothers — but how can you possibly anticipate this if you can’t read the culture?

4. In times of strife, the last thing you want is a cross-cultural misunderstanding.

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