Master of Creative Writing 760-553 Minor Thesis I lost the world where I belonged. Now I don't belong anywhere: Writing Third Culture Experiences Eunice Liew The University of Melbourne Student Number: 139046 Year: 2007 Statement of Originality This dissertation contains no material accepted for any other degree or diploma. To the best of my knowledge the thesis contains no material previously written or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgement is made in the bibliography and notes. Signed: Eunice Liew Date: 7 December 2007 2 Contents Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………… 4 Dissertation ……………………………………………………………………………. 5 Creative Work Title Page …………………………………………………………….. 36 The Path of Dreams ………………………………………………………... 37 Imaginary Friend …………………………………………………………….. 49 Appendix ………………………………………………………………………………... 59 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………. 62 3 Abstract In 1990 the Hubble Telescope was launched into outer space, and for the first time, human beings were able to see the universe more clearly. It was also the year that I started to understand myself in relation to the rest of the world. I have always felt like an outsider because I left my country of origin when I was an infant. However, 1990 was the year that my family began moving from country to country more frequently. I eventually lost my ability to identify with my first culture. I was thirteen and I became a Third Culture Kid. I am now a Third Culture Adult (or Adult Third Culture Kid). This thesis explores the writing of Third Culture experiences. I have chosen to discuss Isabel Allende’s work because, as a diplomat’s daughter, she has lived in Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East during her childhood (Allende 2003: 106-109). Specifically, I will discuss her memoir of her first culture, My Invented Country (2003) and her novel, The House of the Spirits (1985). I will discuss Allende’s writing in relation to what Julia Kristeva calls “the stranger within”, by which she means the uncanny within the self that Sigmund Freud also calls the unheimlich or “unhomely” (Kristeva 1991: 191). Allende’s writing, particularly The House of the Spirits, which is full of magical images, is an example of the uncanny stranger within as it might be expressed through storytelling. I will discuss Allende’s writing in relation to Jerome Bruner’s storied self because Allende’s stories are undoubtedly affected by her Third Culture self. Lastly, I will discuss my own writing in relation to the Third Culture experience. I will also relate all of these things to David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken’s discussion of the experience, its challenges and benefits, and its defining link to the life of the Global Nomad. 4 Introduction What is a Third Culture? In the 1950s, children who did not identify with their culture of origin, because their parents travelled internationally for work, were named Third Culture Kids1. This term is still used to apply to people who grow up in more than one culture, yet are estranged from all of them, including their culture of origin. Third Culture Kids (referred to from now on as TCKs) was a term first used by sociologists Drs. John and Ruth Hill Useem2. More recently, David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken discussed the TCK experience in their book Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds (2001). In it, the authors quote the Useems saying that TCKs identify with the lifestyle of the expatriate community3 as an “interstitial culture or ‘culture between cultures’” (Pollock and Reken 2001: 20-21). The authors go on to say, “instead of simply watching, studying, or analysing other cultures, TCKs actually live in different cultural worlds as they travel back and forth between their home and host cultures” (Pollock and Reken 2001: 22, 27). The Useems did their original research on Western expatriates who were living in designated spaces usually isolated from the local culture, including spaces “such as military bases, missionary compounds, and business enclaves” (Pollock and Reken 2001: 20-21). However, since the 1950s the world has changed and the meaning of the expression TCK has come under review4. Indeed “some argue that the terms third culture or third culture kid are 1 “Sociologists Drs. John and Ruth Hill Useem first coined the term third culture in the 1950s when they went to India for a year to study Americans who lived and worked there. […] The Useems also met expatriates from other countries and soon discovered that [the expatriates] had formed a lifestyle that was different from either their home or host culture, but it was one they shared in that setting” (Pollock and Reken, 2001: 20). 2 <http://www.tckworld.com/useem/home.html> 3 See Appendix 1. 4 “Because there are frequently no well-marked expatriate enclaves anymore, some argue that the terms third culture or third culture kid are now misnomers. How can there be a culture if people don’t live together? […] Dr. Useem […] said, “Because I am a sociologist/anthropologist I think no concept is ever locked up permanently. […] Concepts change because what happens in the world is changing” (Pollock and Reken 2001: 21). 5 now misnomers” (Pollock and Reken 2001: 20-21). In the twenty-first century, globalisation means that more families live abroad, and most expatriate families do not live in communities completely isolated from the culture of their host countries. “The Japanese families who live in Kokomo, Indiana, and work for Delco-Remy don’t live in a Delco-Remy compound” (Pollock and Reken 2001: 21). Since TCKs are no longer restricted to the culture of isolated communities as it was in the 1950s, the culture of a TCK has become one that is informed by the cultures of many countries. Perhaps a more accurate definition of a TCK would be a chronically uprooted child, uprooted not only from his/her first culture, but also from many second cultures. TCKs in countless countries still share remarkably important life experiences through the very process of living and growing up in and among different cultures. The experiences they share arguably affect their sense of self – “the deeper parts of their being” (Pollock and Reken 2001:20-21). For some TCKs, home is defined by whichever country their parents happen to be working and living, and this means that their point of origin changes frequently. “Often [TCKs] whose parents move every two years rarely consider geography as the determining factor in what they consider home” (Pollock and Reken 2001: 123). Moving to different countries throughout childhood is not the same as the experience of diversity within a particular culture. Nor is it the same as experiencing diversity in other countries as an adult, because “when people first go to another culture as adults, they experience culture shock and need a period of adjustment, but their value system, sense of identity, and the establishment of core relationships with family and friends have already developed in the home culture” (Pollock and Reken 2001:39). It takes more than “a two-week or even a two-month vacation” in a foreign country in order to develop classic TCK characteristics (Pollock and Reken 2001: 22, 27). “Families that are posted to different countries experience their “entire world, value system and points of reference changing overnight” (Pollock and Reken 2001:39). Also, the Third Culture identity is formed during the “the developmental years – from birth to eighteen years of age.” Therefore, it is important 6 that the “cross-cultural experience occurs during the years when [the] child’s sense of identity, relationships with others, and view of the world are being formed in the most basic ways” (Pollock and Reken 2001: 22, 27). Most children form their identities in childhood, the period when many TCKs are moving from country to country. As a result, the TCK’s worldview and cultural references are a mélange of different cultural experiences, without a fixed frame of reference or home culture with which to compare those experiences. Because TCKs are constantly entering new cultures, they do not have any choice but to identify as the “other.” The shared identity of the TCK and of the Adult Third Culture Kid (ATCK5) is one that is defined by “otherness”. Being “foreign” within all cultures is their shared experience and also their continuity. It is this experience therefore that forms the basis of their stories. Pollock and Reken say “sometimes TCKs and ATCKs appear arrogant because they have chosen a permanent identity as being ‘different’ from others. [However] what is labelled as arrogance in TCKs is simply an attempt to share their normal life experiences. […] Non-TCK friends don’t realise TCKs have no other stories to tell” (Pollock and Reken 2001: 104-105). Before I continue, I think it is necessary to clarify two things. When referring to both TCKs and ATCKs, I will use the term Global Nomad. I might also define such an experience as interstitial, which means something between things. The Global Nomad is a person that is (either metaphorically or culturally) between one culture and another. That TCKs or Global Nomads6 have no “other stories to tell”, indicates how deeply ingrained their nomadic experience is in their core identities. The TCKs and Global Nomads are interstitial by nurture7, part of a modern, undefined expatriate community, but in fact committed to nowhere in particular. 5 Adult Third Culture Kids (ATCKs) are people who have grown up with the TCK experience (Pollock and Reken 2001: 6). 6 On October 21st 1994, in the Virginian-Pilot, Gary Edwards describes a “global nomad” as someone who has spent a large part of their youth living outside their passport country because of their parent’s occupation.