Florida State University Libraries 2016 My Story Counts: An International Childhood Remembered Jerrie Marcella-Batya Del Vecchio Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES MY STORY COUNTS: AN INTERNATIONAL CHILDHOOD REMEMBERED By JERRIE MARCELLA-BATYA DEL VECCHIO A Dissertation submitted to the Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 Jerrie Marcella-Batya Del Vecchio defended this dissertation on April, 26 2016. The members of the supervisory committee were: Kathleen Erndl Professor Directing Dissertation Francois Dupuigrenet-Desroussilles University Representative Jerrilyn McGregory Committee Member David Levenson Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii Dedicated to the quest for knowledge, enlightenment, and personal growth to everyone who has had an international childhood. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my sincere thanks to my major professor and committee chair Dr. Kathleen Erndl. Her ideas and feedback were instrumental in the making of this dissertation, while her constant support and compassion gave me the courage and strength to finish this project. My appreciation extends to my committee members Dr. Jerrilyn McGregory, Dr. Francois Dupuigrenet-Desroussilles, and Dr. David Levenson. Their time and contributions have been valuable to me as these allowed me to become a better researcher and critical thinker. My deepest gratitude is to Dr. Maricarmen Martinez who provided me with the opportunity to be part of the interdisciplinary humanities program at Florida State University. Without her guidance and encouragement, my personal and academic growth would not have come to fruition. She was instrumental in providing me with an opportunity to fulfill my own potential. Of course, this would not have taken place if my good friend, Dr. Defne Bilir, had not introduced me to the studies of interdisciplinary humanities. Her support and friendship will never be forgotten. I would also like to acknowledge my friends and colleagues at Tallahassee Community College for their encouragement and support in my endeavor to finish my dissertation. My special thanks is to Ms. Anna Powers who patiently critiqued my initial draft and provided much needed feedback. I am indebted to Alicia Casey, who carefully read and edited my draft during its final stages, and Dr. Nadia Pawelchak, who managed to reduce my anxiety during the last few months before the defense. I could not have asked for better colleagues and friends. This dissertation would not have materialized if I had not met Faith Eidse who introduced me to the book Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing Up Global during a warm market day in Tallahassee of 2008. Finally, I thank my husband, Julian Perez Delgado, for his emotional, spiritual, and psychological support. Thank you in believing in me and supporting my journey. Your presence in my life has been a gift and a blessing. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................................1 CHAPTER TWO: RUTH E. VAN REKEN ..................................................................................22 CHAPTER THREE: SARA MANSFIELD TABER .....................................................................59 CHAPTER FOUR: HEIDI SAND-HART.....................................................................................95 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION..............................................................................................122 References ....................................................................................................................................131 Biographical Sketch .....................................................................................................................139 v ABSTRACT Dan P. McAdams has noted that “over the past three decades, a growing number of philosophers, social scientists, and empirical psychologists have developed theories and research paradigms around the fundamental proposition that adults living in modern societies typically create meaning and purpose in their lives by constructing self-defining stories (McAdams 1985; Mclean, Pasupathi, & Pals 2007; Ricoeur 1984; qtd. In McAdams 2013). This dissertation addresses the question of why women Adult Third Culture Kids (A/TCKs), also termed Global Nomads, have written about their mobile childhoods and what they hoped to achieve by sharing their stories with others. Researchers have attempted to understand how international mobility has led to specific challenges of A/TCKs such as grief brought on by many losses, as well as feeling torn between their passport and host countries’ cultural and ideological expectations. This qualitative study uses a literary analysis and narrative identity theory in order to understand how these self-identified women A/TCKs made sense of their international childhoods by utilizing their own stories. The study concludes that the greatest challenge faced by these authors was the absence of previous literature that would have provided a voice and a template to conceptualize their own journeys. Through literary analysis, this dissertation also attempts to deconstruct general characteristics and aptitudes that have been attributed to A/TCKs. Instead, this dissertation focuses on the parent-child relationship and examines how parents communicated with their children about challenges that were brought on by frequent relocation. The dissertation surmises that parents and friends were important key figures that either silenced the stories TCKs were allowed to tell or, conversely, encouraged further dialogue thereby validating the child’s experiences and feelings, which, in turn, allowed adults to understand their own identity development. vi CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION “Nothing in Life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.” Madame Currie Children who accompany their parents to overseas assignments are also referred to as Third Culture Kids (TCKs) (Useem, Useem and Donoghue 1963; Pollock and Van Reken 2009), or Global Nomads (GN) (McCaig 1992). They are the children of government diplomats, military personnel, international business people, and missionaries (Gillies 1998). Their parents’ occupations, sponsoring organizations, and high mobility set these children’s identity development and life stories apart from their geographically stable peers. Frequent changes in location, cultural norms and values, education systems, and parents’ sponsoring organization’s ideologies contribute to the intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and social development of impressive young children, who, as adults, attempt to re-evaluate their life stories mainly in order to establish a narrative that is meaningful to them. Although the terminology and concept has gained increasing prominence since the 1970s in academic settings, this study argues that the literature, research, terminology, and the works of self-identified A/TCKs authors are still unrecognized in North-America’s mainstream culture. In addition, many people who were raised as Army Brats, missionary kids (MKs), children of diplomats, and international business people are often not familiar with these ambiguous terms. There is a plethora of dissertations that have been written starting in the 1970s that rely on quantitative date and emerged out of sociology, psychology, and international education departments. Furthermore, the internet has fostered websites engaging in the self-help genre in the form of books and blogs written by, to, and about A/TCKs. However, what is currently lacking in academic scholarship is the literary analysis of memoirs that investigate the childhoods and reflections of self-identified Adult Third Culture Kids (A/TCKs) and Global Nomads. This qualitative study aims to investigate the writings of Ruth Van Reken, Sara Mansfield Taber, and Heidi Sand-Hart, who are self-identified TCKs utilizing a hermeneutic approach to understand how their global childhood experiences were involved in their identity construction. The major goal of this dissertation is to conduct a literary analysis that focuses on the factors, circumstances, and people that helped shape these women’s identities by using a narrative 1 identity framework. Furthermore, this study seeks to identify and understand the challenges these women encountered as children because their childhood stories differ greatly from peers who had the traditional mono-cultural childhood. The first objective of this study is to investigate the motives and reasons why these authors penned their memoirs and what they achieved or at least hoped to achieve. The second objective is to analyze the stories of these ordinary women whose literary works attempt to negate stereotypes of TCKs and enlighten readers about this upbringing. Lastly, the memoirs and journals will be compared and contrasted to the Third Culture Kid theoretical discourse that has been developed over the last forty years by a vast number of researchers in order to identify existing gaps that could benefit from