The Mind, the Memory and the Foreign

Despite having been born in America and having parents who are both successful in their occupations and largely fluent in English, my family remains, at heart, Chinese and perpetually at a distance from the true American experience. My mother in particular has a strong attraction to foreign films, usually ones that raise questions about being American, being a foreigner, coming into one's own and discovering one's true identity. Non-Caucasian immigrants to America appear to struggle much more with coming to terms with their newfound identity as "_____-American" than Europeans, probably since they do not fit into the common assumption of Americans as whites. Because I'm more Americanized than most of my Asian friends (I'm not required or obligated to speak Mandarin Chinese at home--not being fluent in it--and I have little Chinese music in my media library) and was born here in America, for me there is less of a struggle to really come to terms with my American and Chinese identity, especially since I've never known a purely Chinese identity to begin with. Because of this, I am not able to completely identify with what Salman Rushdie is saying about capturing the reality--his reality--that was his past in his mother country. However, having come from an immigrant family, there still remains for me the challenge to be at peace with myself, knowing that I'm not white and that therefore I will never be part of the group many people consider "American."

However, I do agree with many of his points, especially those about art as a way to counter others (like politicians, as Rushdie suggests) who would rather have silence and writing as one's way to interact with, confront and understand the past while pushing towards a vision of reality. I believe that writing is one of the few and most effective ways that one can revisit the past and hopefully understand it, and also one of the best ways to manipulate reality if one wishes.