Friday, November 30, 2001
Where Are You From?
Accents are funny things. Though I have lived in North America for nearly half my life now, I still get stuck in the following script. I’ll be standing in a checkout line or making bland small talk at a party, when my American interlocutor will suddenly blurt out: “Yeah, yeah, unh hunh… but, where are you FROM?” If I parry with, “Why, I live right here in South Bend,” the reply is inevitably, “No, but where are you from REALLY?” Well, it’s a good question, and I’m not too sure of the answer myself.
In the US, complete strangers will come up and say: “Gee, I love your accent.” A few years ago, one of my students confided that Americans think people with English accents are smart and/or classy. This is a happy circumstance for someone in my line of work - college teaching - but it is rather hard to explain.
I suspect that it’s all to do with some cultural fantasy about England, which circulates in the American mainstream, just as notions about America float around in England. So: all English people can quote Shakespeare, explain cricket, and speak in the cut-glass accents of the BBC World Service. We all take tea with buttered crumpets in the conservatory at 4pm, precisely.
There is something consoling and yet grating in this romantic view of my birthplace. I recall that when Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris, my students were genuinely upset for me. My brother, who works in London, told me his Silicon Valley business contacts e-mailed him condolences. We were both struck by the compassion of the Americans’ response and the complete lack of political analysis. After all, one might expect that democracy-loving Americans would have a mildly critical view of this hereditary monarchy in particular. But mainstream America wants to believe in England as a happy land where Robin Hood, Lady Di and Winnie the Pooh stroll hand in hand over the same green hills, untroubled by distinctions of history, species or class.
Which brings me back to the question: where am I from? Despite having lived in North America so long, England still feels like home. But I know that the England for which I am nostalgic is a construction out of memory, distance and wishful thinking, not a real existent. I was out of the country for the Thatcher years, for the IRA mortar attack on Ten Downing Street, for this year’s race riots in Oldham, my birthplace. Yet, the England I sometimes imagine looks a lot like the American fantasy.
There is great solace in imagining a place of perfect security and confidence, where people live harmonious and productive lives under the smiling skies. However, it is important to hold on to the difficult truths of history, geography and politics. If my England had been the perfect world my nostalgia invents, I would not have left in the first place.
I muse on this when I hear Americans already speaking nostalgically about America before September 11th. A fantasy is under construction about the way America used to be before the catastrophe, the good old America before we had to worry about airport security and anthrax in the mail. As a foreigner, I stumble over that “we.” Who, exactly, lived in that golden haven of peace, confidence and security before the terrorists struck? Not the students passing between metal detectors to enter their high schools, not the homeless on the city streets here, nor the 8 million children growing up in poverty.
I say all this because I don’t want to give up my fantasy about America. For me, Americans are an optimistic people working for a brighter future, driven by the values of equality and freedom, not bogged down by nostalgia for a dubious past. The losses of September the 11th were appalling. But I want to believe that America’s golden age still beckons from the future; it is not lost in an irretrievable past.
9/11 • Customs & Rituals • Permalink • Printer Friendly
A random selection from more than 300 Michiana Chronicles -- refresh the browser to see another set:
Joe Chaney -- More essays by Joe
Louise Collins -- Where Are You From? / More essays by Louise
April Lidinsky -- More essays by April
Jonathan Nashel -- More essays by Jonathan
Jeff Nixa -- More essays by Jeff
Ken Smith -- More essays by Ken
Jeanette Saddler Taylor -- More essays by Jeanette
Chronicles Home | Email:
Leave a note for any of the authors at our WebNote page, or maybe you'd like a copy of our book?
About the series
Michiana Chronicles is a series of radio essays by Jonathan Nashel, Louise Collins, Joe Chaney, Jeanette Saddler Taylor, Jeff Nixa, April Lidinsky, and Ken Smith.
Michiana is the region of north-central Indiana and southern Michigan roughly centered on South Bend, Indiana.
Michiana Chronicles airs on Fridays at 7:35 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on WVPE (88.1 FM), the home of public radio in Elkhart / South Bend, Indiana.
| August 2008 | ||||||
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | |||||
| 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
| 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |
| 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| 31 | ||||||
Recent pieces
Girl Power -- I noticed the other day that my friend has a bumper sticker on her bike that says, “Girls Kick Butt.” (The word isn’t actually “butt” but a more colorful term that rhymes with “grass.” If you know that, you’ll understand better the force of the slogan.) The phrase “Girls Kick [You-Know]” is unexpected, because girls, conventionally speaking, aren’t supposed to want violence. Of course, the phrase also simply means, “girls are great, girls are cool.” But it’s impossible not to hear also the assertion that girls are powerful, they enjoy their power, they take charge, they win. Win what? Against whom? Or does it matter? By Joe Chaney.
Waiting for a Superhero -- I can report that seeing the Catwoman suit that Michelle Pfeiffer wore in the Batman movie is proof, if any was needed, that the U.S. is and will always be the greatest country in the world. How she got into that suit, how she managed to act in that suit, and how Batman was able to concentrate on anything other than that suit....now, these are mysteries for the ages and ones that haters of freedom will never be able to defeat. Take that, Osama! By Jonathan Nashel.
Another Summer of Love? -- Anyone who's been in – or even near – a marriage knows they are far less about romance than the practical work of partnering – dividing chores, sharing burdens and finances and joys, dealing intimately with illness and dying, and practicing daily empathy, even when you don't feel like it. In other words, marriage is a practice of good citizenship. Just-released research has shown that same-sex partnerships tend to be far better at achieving equitable citizenship in the home – better at fairly dividing the chores – grocery shopping, vacuuming, taking kids to the dentist -- that drive maddening wedges between many heterosexual couples. By April Lidinsky.
Google’s Tips for Getting Ahead -- Just the other day, I had a fleeting desire for self-improvement. Before the mood passed, I turned to Google for some advice. Now Google doesn’t burden a fellow by demanding complete sentences, the way some people do, so I typed in “how to get ahead.” I wanted to complete the phrase: how to get ahead by doing what? Reviewing the massive search results, I found that this is a land of dreamers; we are a people of contradictory impulses and destructive longings. Even Google is having trouble sorting this country out. By Ken Smith.
Making Up on the South Shore -- As we’re approaching the Beverly Shores station I glance over and see the woman looking into a pocket mirror. Yes, you’re pretty, sister. Don’t worry about that. Then she reaches into her bag and pulls out a big pink tackle box, sets it on her lap and opens it up, revealing a whole assortment of little tubes and jars. She selects one tube, squirts some stuff onto her fingertips and starts rubbing it onto…her face. Whoa! What are you doing? By Jeff Nixa.
Time Travel in Paris -- I had studied maps of Paris and read French literature and the Parisian works of American expatriates like Stein, Hemingway, Baldwin, and Miller. I had fallen in love, of course, with my French teachers in high school and college. My prior romance with the language, art, stories, and landmarks animated the city. I remember a morning when the sun emerged and lit up the domes and towers across from where my friend and I stood on a right bank quay, and the world itself seemed like a pure gift, a fresh beginning. By Joe Chaney.
Celebrating Magna Charta Day -- Runnymede, the site of the signing of the Magna Charta, loomed right up there in my imagination with Stonehenge: a couple of historical sites that had captured my interest early on. I can still see surly, pimply-faced, bad King John in some old movie being strongly urged, that is coerced, into signing this document where he promised to behave: “The Lion in Winter,” I think. By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.
Life on the Default Setting -- That foam cup will still reside in the county landfill when our great grandchildren are driving their offspring in a nuclear-powered mini-van to gymnastics classes on the moon. "Will you look at those kids jump!" By then the landfill will be the tallest manmade feature in north-central Indiana, visible from earth orbit. Astronauts will steer their sleek ships by the neon glow of all our waste. By Ken Smith.
It’s a Long, Long, Road from May to December -- Over the years Kurt Weill’s music has inspired a legion of devotees who want to be a part of his creepy luster. Some fifty years after Weill’s death Lou Reed took a stab at getting in on this kind of cool. Now, Lou is just about as cool as there is too. In the 1960s he co-founded the rock band, The Velvet Underground, and as the story goes, only a couple of thousand copies of their first album were sold, but everyone who listened to it formed their own band. The man gives new meaning to having no vocal range, and yet conveys everything that needed to be said. By Jonathan Nashel.
Pomp and Happenstance -- Truly, the moments in our lives that really deserve a brass band and velvet robes and a basso profundo voice saying “Something BIG has happened here!” are most often happenstance, unexpected. Maybe you’ve had the experience of reading a novel or seeing a film that shifts you, profoundly, to another axis – that peoples your interior with ideas or characters that become guides – or cautionary figures – for the rest of your life. Or maybe you’ve had a conversation with someone that suddenly made your world slide sideways as you questioned your faith – or gained a new sense of it. Those are moments that warrant pomp and circumstance, but they often pass quietly, despite their transformative legacy. By April Lidinsky.
A Kid and a Rock -- But every night I come home, the kid is hammering on the rock. He’s like a little John Henry. Small stones dislodged and fell to the dirt but then larger ones emerged, and eventually the worst one of all: a granite field stone the size of a pumpkin embedded in there till the end of the world. “This is hard,” he said. “Yeah, it is,” I said, watching the woman glare at me from hell. I left town for vacation. Two weeks. I was carrying an armload of sleeping bags back around the house when I stopped. The concrete monster was gone. Just a circle of rock dust in its place, littered with stones and in the center, the big granite pumpkin. I smiled. He did it. Dang. I’m going to go hug that kid. Buy them both a pizza or something. By Jeff Nixa.
True to Type -- We talk about what we are reading, what we have read, what we’ve read about reading (God bless the Sunday New York Times Book Review section!) and what we are planning to read next. Standing in front of the bookcase, my daughter-in-law, Nancy, and I were having one of those discussions. I think that she was holding Bobbie Ann Mason’s Clear Springs; she flipped to the back and saw the page that tells which font was used in printing the book and a bit of history about that font. Nancy said, “I can’t believe that they waste a page putting that in there. Nobody cares about that!” Danger! A big, evil-mother-in-law-trap just waiting to ensnare me there! Recognizing it in time, I pulled the shreds of my seldom-worn garment of tact around myself and did not blurt out, “Are you nuts! That’s a great thing! I love it when they put that in! It’s like frosting on a cookie; it makes it ever so much better!” By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.
Categories
Archives and syndication
- By author
- By category
- By date
- RSS 2.0 syndication
- Technorati Profile