Shaped by Single Stories
My worldview is the manifestation of many single stories, combining to give me one of my top character traits: perspective. Perspective does not come alone. Rather, I believe curiosity, my first trait, is the determinant of perspective. Without intellectual autonomy, and the drive to question everything one is told, it is easy to become the victim of a single story. I live by a simple philosophy: question, listen, and research. While I treasure the stories of others, I have seen firsthand the damage that misinformation can do. On the other hand, the stories of my mother and father, as well as my own experience abroad, have trained my perspective in a unique way. To understand my worldview one must understand the stories I reflect on most.
My mother, a Venezuelan immigrant to the United States, has lived through a lot. When she was eight, her father died and she spent the next few years moving around Aruba and Venezuela, eventually landing in New York. Once in in the city, she taught herself English and got herself into a top high school. From there she made her way to Amherst. Growing up, this is what she would tell me. No matter my accomplishments, I always felt humbled if not inferior. As I grew older, I began to recognize what James Baldwin would call my privilege. I was quite literally born into a position far more destined for success than most others. As I began to understand this, the stories got more complex.
My mother tells me one story in particular that really affects me. Tirelessly working into the mornings, she stopped for one thing: the singing janitor. Although he was not particularly talented, she listened and smiled. One night, while she was taking a break around one in the morning, a Mexican man walked in. Wandering the office, the man couldn’t find my mother. The janitor noticed and asked who he was looking for. When the man said Janine, he quickly brought him to my mother’s office, sat him down, and went up two floors to a different bank to grab a coffee from their break room. When my mom came back to her office, the man opened her biggest account. The reason I go through the entire story is because every detail carries a message. Someone who most people overlook if not loath, went well out of his way to help my mother, solely because she listened and empathized with his drive to succeed. I believe that no one, no matter any differences, is underneath me, and that everyone deserves dignity and respect. I have learned that empathy and the act of listening is the most powerful gesture.
The second biggest lesson I have learned from my mother is to never give up. Harassed and mocked by dozens of her managers, she has never given in. She always tells me that it was her creativity and adaptability, not her number crunching, that made her so successful. This has pushed me to think outside the box, and has reminded me that little comes easily. What I have taken away that has been most helpful from all these stories, however, is how she dealt with the racism.
My dad, a true sabra, is a typical Israeli: hardworking and easy going. In my seventeen years of life I have never heard him talk about politics, or engage in conflict. I have many identities, particularly three races. I can pass as white, Arab, or Hispanic. In school, I have been teased for the latter two. Abroad, for the first. While I can probably write a book about these engagements, you would grow bored as they all end one of two ways: me ignoring or turning an insult into a joke. One can catch me in a debate about some issues regularly, but I’ll never be angry. Life goes on and as my dad has taught me, I ask myself if this will matter the next day. As Edward Delgado-Romero suggests in No Parece, it is a privilege to pass, and I can attest to that. Delgado-Romero writes about his experience with his college office where his officer said: “You want to get into college on your own merits, not due to some minority scholarship” (121). He proceeds by reflecting on his perspective of the interaction, but does not discuss his response, likely because there was none. This is what it is like when I have a similar interaction: I often like to reflect rather than confront. It has made me a more aware person. Khalil Gibran wrote, “You speak when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.” I have learned to focus on my thoughts.
As an Israeli going to one of the country’s most liberal institutions, I often face prejudice from both peers and students. I am often bombarded with “facts” that aren’t true, gathered from propaganda. On the other hand, looking back, I have used facts based on information I have received from other Israelis, unsure of its accuracy. This has taught me that everybody suffers from single stories and has reminded me to empathize with those that I disagree with. These experiences have also taught me to do my own research, no matter the subject, and has made me weary of radical alterities.
Traveling I have suffered from, recognized, and began to understand the concept of ethnocentrism. From being offered a hefty price for my sister in Jordan, to seeing her catcalled in New York, every where I go I feel myself judging. While it is easy to feel culturally superior in such situations, it is important to remember behind every mask, there is a human. Family, religion, education, etc., all heavily influence how others act, and if we compare “other people’s” action to ours based on our behavioral differences, then we begin to lose sight of each other’s humanity. I see this firsthand as I change my table manners in Israel, then back again in New York. If I ate the way I do in Israel with parents of my American friends, they might see me as uncultured, without even exploring the depths of my intellect. Because of these elementary similarities that humans share, such as the act of judgment, and the cultural differences, it is important to consider cultural relativism, as no culture is truly superior, rather products of different conditions and factors.
When I embarked on my settlement day journey, I came across two children who were playing with their puppies and kitten in the water. While the rest of my group was struck by the “cruelty” that these animals were facing, (being throw into the water), I was rather fascinated by the fact that the kids were playing in the water. I believe that this difference in observation was because my time abroad and experience with the way animals are treated outside of the United States. To say the least, Israelis are always shocked by the amount Americans spend on their pets.
For the most part, I observe most by interaction. I like to immerse myself in the environment of interest. I think this is because of my ability to pass; I seldom feel out of place. As I go through my field notes, almost every bullet stems from a conversation. I found that my group mates, for the most part, were not so eager to engage with the locals. I too felt out of place. Even so, I knew communication was the best way to gain a sense of place. This is when my group struck up a conversation with a grandmother holding her son. Having traveled around the Caribbean, I have a good understanding of locals and their opinion on the ocean. As we struggled to lead the conversation to the ocean, it occurred to me to ask my question in a different way: “Why don’t you cool off in the ocean?” (in response to “It’s so hot”). While most of my group members were taken back by the response, I was more interested in a subtlety. The lady’s son had lost a leg to a shark. Another son lost a leg to a bullet wound and refused to leave the house anymore. For some reason this struck me more than the attack. I thought back to an observation from my literature class, where Janice Lynn, author of Mango Summer, discussed how Bahamian media and writing covered crime and sugarcoated the news. Here, at that moment in the conversation, was my first real look into real, non-gilded, Bahamian society. The trauma being so heavy that this lady’s son chose to never leave the home again.
The fifty-two other students and me came here as outsiders, becoming residents. We came here because we value the environment and challenge. No more than a few miles off campus is a whole other world, filled with people whose lives, challenges, and desires go unnoticed by a great number of us. If it wasn’t for literature, a class that forces us to pay attention to the local issues using local texts, a majority of us would leave here knowing this place as the land of sand and sun. Histories, comparable to Anthropology, is a class that then equips us to observe the content of the writing. In other words, we study the base of the nation, then move on to connecting our literary observations with personal ones.
Because my identity stretches across three continents, languages, and religions, I have been raised with three main single stories. Lectured by my parents and teachers, I have three main philosophies to think of. I credit much of my philosophy to one class: comparative religion. Here we studied Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hindu, Buddhism, and science-based religions. While much of the class was spent comparing the differences, the similarities between all these religions stood out to me, all being products of basic human nature and the desire for interaction. My worldview is remembering that there is no single view.
Tides 