The concept of “Third Culture Kids” (TCK), according to Wikipedia, was coined in the 1950s “to describe the children of American citizens working and living abroad.” Originally mostly used for business, military and missionary offspring, the term has now been applied to other immigrants all over the world. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * The concept of “Third Culture Kids” (TCK), according to Wikipedia, was coined in the 1950s “to describe the children of American citizens working and living abroad.
” Originally mostly used for business, military and missionary offspring, the term has now been applied to other immigrants all over the world. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? The concept of “Third Culture Kids” (TCK), according to Wikipedia, was coined in the 1950s “to describe the children of American citizens working and living abroad.” Originally mostly used for business, military and missionary offspring, the term has now been applied to other immigrants all over the world.
Some TCKs attain perspectives enhanced by exposure to more than one culture. Others find themselves wishing for rootedness, missing a stable place in a single culture. Many experience both.
Sadiya Ansari is a Pakistani-Canadian journalist based in London. In her memoir , Ansari expresses such positive and negative complications of multicultural upbringing, in tracing her grandmother’s odyssey (and family history in general) from India to Pakistan and eventually to Canada. In Exile Her ideas balance connection to a family past familiar to TCKs, while forging her own way in a world where she sees many cultural norms and practices, even her own, from a kind of outsider’s perspective.
She describes her background as “history where religion wasn’t always at the centre of identity, one that I increasingly longed to understand.” Even “monocultural” readers will likely recognize this roil of individual and exterior influences and objectives. focuses on Ansari’s daadi, or grandmother, Tahira Ansari.
An arranged marriage to her uncle when she was 14 scotched Tahira’s plans for education and the eventual marriage to the man her mother had chosen for her. Instead, she spent the next 20 years as the wife of Ehsan Ansari, mother to seven stepchildren and their own children. After his death, Tahira eventually left the family, now living in Pakistan, to be with another man who had captured her heart.
Sadiya sees this abandonment as her grandmother’s attempt to exert her own identity, and begin again with a blank slate. Ansari tells the story of Tahira’s “exile” and eventual reconciliation with her children, analyzing the effects of the departure from home and tradition on her father and the rest of the family. The Partition of India and Pakistan added geographical and political upheaval to individuals and families like Tahira’s, and conflict between tradition and modernity.
Unfortunately, Tahira’s devastating, heart-wrenching story and courageous search for individual meaning sometimes feel interrupted by the nuts and bolts of Ansari’s own research and by her quest for belonging. Interviews and descriptions of travels with her father researching Tahira’s exile provide snippets of many others’ perspectives and memories. Inconclusive accounts of past events sometimes obscure the “exile” itself, impeding narrative flow.
A late chapter discussing the art of interviewing people about deep and personal issues distracts from the impact such emotionally difficult discoveries deserve. Weekly A weekly look at what’s happening in Winnipeg’s arts and entertainment scene. While refers to the experiences of both Tahira and Sadiya Ansari, attempts to categorize their pasts as emblematic of immigrant, third-culture mindsets reinforce the notion that most people struggle with aspects of their families and their development.
At one point, Sadiya wonders about “creating a shadow life of acceptable behaviour, like so many other brown kids do to cope.” Unmoored or confused cultural connections surely complicate it, but most people probably have some experience with that. Ansari’s book contains plenty of background and notes on sources.
However, the publication should gloss or explain many cultural terms, often references to foods, clothing and other customs. Once, a whole line of poetry is quoted, without English translation. is an interesting book.
Ultimately, it tends to confirm the rule of human experience, that people of all backgrounds are people. Bill Rambo is a retired teacher and TCK, an American citizen, raised in Africa, who has lived in Manitoba half his life. His life and roots in Canada are enhanced by many ties to the U.
S., to Africa and to his family and past. By Sadiya Ansari House of Anansi Press, 232 pages, $24 Advertisement Advertisement.
