Half-Irish, Half-Asian

Half-man, half-amazin'

Introduction to my paper for my mother to read -

I am an American, Milwaukee born, but go at things in a split way. My mother is Japanese and born in Hawaii; my father is Irish and born in Wisconsin. They are American, but the reflexive response to “What are your parents?” is that they are Japanese and Irish. In class, when Prof. Ferguson asked “What are Hawaiians? Irish?” I was anxious, as if I felt implicated in the question, and then felt guilt for assuming that implication with a culture where I’m merely a 4th generation signifier identifiable only by a name and a slight slant in the eyes. But I presume that this is similar in the identity of many Americans, this desire to be identified as American without losing their ethnic heritage. That is what would lead students in class to suggest that ethnic labels such as “German” could be so liquid for Americans, deciding when and how to define themselves as such. If one was not familiar with these easily assumed identities, they could be excused for believing there is a great influx of international tourists during Octoberfest or St. Patrick’s Day when it appears everyone is either German or Irish. But rather than limiting any larger national consciousness from forming, this sort of dual identity is the larger national consciousness. As Walt Whitman wrote in “By Blue Ontario’s Shore”, “Here is not merely a nation but a teeming Nation of nations”. Out of Fanon, Bhabha, and Spivak, it is Fanon’s belief in the formation of a national culture and consciousness through the fight for liberation that is the least viable theory for the creation of a national identity because of the paradoxical element of creating an identity. The national identity, as Bhabha argues, is much more how “the scraps, patches, and rags of daily life must be repeatedly turned into the signs of a coherent national culture” arising from both the “continuist, accumulative temporality of the pedagogical, and the repetitious, recursive strategy of the performative” (145). Being accepted as American, in identity, is not to create oneself in the American identity, but to have the definition of America shift its narrative identity to include what was once considered Other (the immigrant, the slave) through repetitive daily actions.

If you can read that without wincing then feel free to grab the entire thing where your capacity for embarrassing and awkward argumentation will be tested.