parts unknown

Mixed heritage and a nomadic childhood left Annie Kane with identity crisis on a global scale

A mixed heritage left this writer with identity crisis.

Someone asked me the other day where I was from. I said I didn’t know. For most people, it isn’t a hard question – they were born somewhere and probably lived there for their childhood, saw the same faces and the same streets day in, day out, and visited family nearby. But I didn’t. I was born in a city I have no memory of, I spent my childhood in a country where I didn’t speak the language and I have family members spread across nearly every continent in the world.

I was at a bus stop in Sydney on a windy day last October, and as raindrops started to fall, the small, sheltered spot I had taken up suddenly became quite crowded. It was here that a middle-aged man with a charming half-sloping smile started up a conversation with me. After a few brief remarks about the weather, he noted my English accent. “You’re far from home,” he said. “But you aren’t really English,” he added, scrutinising my face. “What are you?”

The question stunned me, especially since nearly half of all Australians were either born overseas or have at least one parent who was. I’d never been asked to define myself so directly before. “What am I?” How do you answer that? I considered giving him a glib reply – “Oh, thanks for asking. I’m a writer, a dreamer, a wife, I’m curious, and passionate, and a cheese addict” – but I thought better of it. I explained my father is half-english and half-scottish, while my mother is half-english and half-chinese. “Oh, so that’s it,” he said, “the Chinese.”

It was as if he’d solved a niggling puzzle. Now that he had pigeonholed me by my looks and racial background he visibly relaxed. Meanwhile, I was rigid with raging emotion: disgust at the ignorance of the man, anger at the rudeness of the question, confusion as to why he would need to categorise me, vulnerability at being scrutinised and a little bit of sadness. Truth be told, I didn’t really know what I was.

Although I’ve inherited my colouring from my mother’s side, I don’t feel any strong connection to my Chinese heritage. Much to the chagrin of my maternal grandmother (or Po Po, as we called her), I don’t speak any Cantonese (apart from “Happy New Year” and “Grandma, give me money”), I’ve only visited her home town of Hong Kong a few times and I don’t follow Chinese customs. As a young child I was even a little frightened of my exotic grandmother, who would seemingly scream at me in Cantonese, pray to Buddha statues, and extol the virtues of Tiger Balm as well as getting married young.

So it was bizarre to have this stranger peer into my face and decide that Chinese was the overriding identity that came through, especially as just a few months before I had gone to a hairdresser in Chinatown and been told my eyes weren’t Asian enough, and my hair was too fine. Even with my assurances that I was a quarter Chinese, the man cutting my hair flat-out refused to believe me. It was frustrating to be thought a liar, and a little upsetting to be rejected. Too dark for a white man to think of me as kin, but too white to be accepted as Chinese. Go figure.

As a child, I’d always thought of myself as British. I was born in England but brought up in Greece from a young age (my parents met in the ’70s while working in Athens and moved back there once they had my brother and me). I had British nationality, spoke English at home, attended a British embassy school and had British friends. I used to find it strange that old ladies in the

street would pinch my cheeks and coo Greek phrases at me, taking my tanned skin and dark hair as a sign of local heritage. I spoke enough of the language to get by, but the majority of the time I spent my life running around the sun-baked streets as a Brit expat. So I’d never really thought about the fact that I wasn’t British until I actually moved to the UK.

Attending secondary school in North Wales was the first time I felt my identity shift. I suddenly felt lost at sea. I realised despite my British heritage, having not been brought up with key cultural touchstones made me a bit of an alien. It didn’t help that the TV shows I’d grown up watching in Greece – re-runs of British and American shows from the ’60s – made me better able to relate to my friends’ parents than my friends.

My lack of knowledge of some British customs also marked me as a foreigner. One weekend at a friend’s house, I was shocked when they ate a full roast dinner – something I’d only ever associated with Christmas – and was told through amused grins that it was common on a Sunday. If I didn’t know these customs, could I really claim to be British? The identity that I had been so sure of as a child was being pulled from under me.

Yes, I had the passport to say so, but after a few months in the motherland I didn’t feel British anymore – I felt like a foreigner. I confided in my paternal grandmother, a tiny but formidable Scottish lady, and she proudly reminded me of my Scottish heritage. She regaled me with stories of her childhood in Scotland, and nearly had me reclaiming my Scottish roots until she whipped out the family tartan and urged me to learn Scottish dancing.

After a brief and poorly executed flirtation with the Highland Fling, I decided I wasn’t truly British or Chinese, and started to think maybe I was Greek. I’d lived in Athens for as long as I could remember, I had developed a strange Amercianised accent from being there, I loved the food, the sun and the sea, and could tan in about five minutes flat. My friends in school found my heritage too confusing to keep track of and I’m sure a lot of them thought I actually was Greek. I didn’t correct them.

For a few years, I lived life as a pseudo-greek, despite not having any Greek blood or even Greek nationality. It drove my brother crazy. “You’re such a Euro brat,” he’d say between pinches. “We’re not Greek, we’re British!” Being three years older, he could remember living in England before my parents moved us. It was only when I met Greek people that I remembered I actually wasn’t Greek. I was a fraud – a wannabe. As I neared adulthood, I begrudgingly admitted I couldn’t legitimately lay the claim.

I felt stateless. I remember, when I was about 17, explaining my background to a friend’s dad, and they joked that I was a mongrel. That stung. A mongrel? Like a dog? Did people think I was a lower class of human because I was of mixed descent? Was I?

But I looked at my friends who were largely of one ethnicity and decided that, even if I was a “mongrel”, I was lucky in having a mixed background. I could pick and choose what I was on any given day. England winning the rugby? Definitely British. Greece winning Euro 2004? Definitely Greek. I had an identity of convenience, and I liked it. It made talking to people from other countries easier – I could blend in with several crowds and be accepted as one of them. Although I was the perpetual outsider, I could feel a connection with many.

It wasn’t until I met my husband’s family for the first time that I truly understood how other people felt about their own cultural identities, and that I’d potentially been missing out. My family is spread out across different continents, I’ve only met a few of my relatives, and even then I’ve seen them fewer than 10 times in my life – largely for weddings and funerals. My husband’s family, on the other hand, nearly all lived within walking distance of one another in Liverpool in the UK. They saw each other frequently and the main cultural difference was whether they supported Liverpool or Everton soccer club. These were people who grew up together, babysat each other’s children, saw the best and worst of each other and supported each other in everything (but soccer). They witnessed the city change from a booming port town, hard economic and political times, and the heyday of Beatlemania. Their home town has shaped who they are, and it is a huge part of their identity. So much so, when my husband is asked where’s he’s from, he doesn’t answer “England”, but “Liverpool”.

I remember being overwhelmed not only by the sheer number of people in his family, but also how close-knit they were – a real community with a true sense of belonging. I was envious – I felt the loss of not having a large family unit and identity to draw on. Despite them welcoming me into their family, looking at them, I felt like a nomad.

Seamus Heaney once said: “If you have a strong first world and a strong set of relationships, then in some part of you, you’re always free; you can walk the world because you know where you belong, you have some place to come back to.”

Although I don’t know where I’m from, I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact I have no ancestral home. I’m free. I’m a citizen of the world and, who knows, if I stay in Australia long enough (and get used to the fact that all the animals are trying to kill me) maybe I’ll end up becoming Australian. I wouldn’t change my background for the world – my mixed nationality is part of my story and has shaped my beliefs, my character and even my accent – but it’s not what or who I am.

“For a few years, I lived life as a pseudo-greek. It was only when I met Greek people that I remembered I actually wasn’t Greek. I was a fraud – a wannabe”