It had been sitting in it's little netflix envelope for the past month, and although I really wanted to watch it I kept putting it off. I was scared.
It gave me alot to process and I walked away from it with a new sense of what culture will mean to my daughter. One of my goals? dreams? in raising Nora is that she will someday be able to fluidly be both Ethiopian and American. I know this is virtually impossible, as Ryan said "When she is 15 and stepping off the plane in Addis, everyone will know she is American." I understand this but I hope to give her the tools to someday be able to navigate Ethiopia. To be comfortable in Ethiopia.
Watching that movie, I felt so bad for the daughter as she struggled to understand the customs of her birth country. I felt so bad that other than being born there, she really had no connection to Vietnam. None at all. She seemed so lost and confused.
I just hope that we can do a good job at raising Nora to be comfortable. Comfortable as an American and comfortable as an Ethiopian.
3 comments:
It's on my list of movies to watch, but I'm not quite ready yet...Thanks for sharing!
I'll have to watch this one. I'm ashamed to say that I never heard of it, (I'm late, I know).
My fear is this will give me all of the reason I need to move to Ethiopia ;)
This movie left such an enormous impression on me. And while I truly believe that perspectives regarding adoption and cultural preservation have dramatically changes in the past half-century, one of my biggest fears is that I & E will grow up feeling not quite a part of any culture.
Our kids will face unique challenges in that they are American, they are also Ethiopian, and Ethiopian American, and will likely be viewed simply as Black. That's a lot of identities to understand.
I look at some of the Ethiopian-American children of Immigrants that we've met, and am amazed by how "Americanized" they are. If and when they step off a plane in Addis, people will know that they are American too, but I imagine that their Ethiopian heritage will be acknowledged as well.
The difference is that they have parents who speak amharic at home, who cook wat and make injera and follow other cultural traditions. As much as we try to approximate those things, the experiences we're able to give our kids will never be completely authentic because we haven't lived them ourselves.
So what can we do to foster that fluidity between identities? I think there's a lot we can and are doing. Obviously educating ourselves and immersing ourselves in all things Ethiopian is a start. I think that showing our children that *we* have an interest in Ethiopia independent of them may help them take ownership and feel pride in their heritage.
I've rambled enough. Thanks for making me think!
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