6B Wednesday, February 12, 2014 // The Statement
The third culture kid: Between homelands
by Rachel Premack

The streets of Ann Arbor are covered in
gray, squelching slush. The same picture
goes for my hometown, less than an hour
away.
However, LSA sophomore Ayo Akinokun
- who has Nigerian parents, spent time
in Norway and France and attended high
school in Dubai - recalls the warm traffic-
congested streets in his home of Nigeria.
The cars often move so slowly you can buy
cookies on the highway.
LSA junior Thibaut Dupuy flies back to-
Istanbul every break since his French par-
ents moved there from Washington, D.C.
There, what he sees is a liberal city in a con-
servative country, where mosques, syna-
gogues and churches can all be on the same
street. Fully veiled women tromp down
sidewalks next to others in miniskirts.
And in Shanghai, where LSA sophomore
Gabriel Meredith calls his home, the envi-
ronment is increasingly wealthy and glitzy.
When he was younger, he visited a hec-
tic market with vendors hawking bootleg
DVDs. Now, there's a flagship Prada store,
where that hardscrabble collection of shops
once stood.
"I like the Shanghai where you wake
up early on a Saturday and go to the park
and see old people playing badminton and
doing tai chi," Meredith said. "I guess the
Shanghai that's a lot more quiet, relaxed,
leafy streets. And a lot of it's still there. It's
always gonna be there. it's just harder for
us to see."
Change and instability is a defining
theme in the lives of many "third culture"
kids, a small but increasingly more visible
subset of the University's student body.
The term "third culture kid" is new and
somewhat unknown. Coined in the 1950s
in the book, "Third Culture Kids: Growing
Up Among Worlds" by American sociolo-
gist David C. Pollack, it's defined as a child
who experienced a "significant part of his
or her developmental years outside the par-
ents' culture" and as a result does not iden-
tify completely with any one culture. It's
similar in many ways to the term "global
nomad," though this usually refers to a per-
son who typically has loosened their ties to
their home country and work abroad.
I talked to seven students who identify
as third culture kids. Collectively, these
students have at some point called Zambia,
France, the United Arab Emirates, China,
Norway, Turkey, Nigeria Switzerland and
vw- the U.S. their home.
It's a bit gimmicky too. When Iasked LSA
juniors Thibaut Dupuy and Leslie Sommer
if they had heard of the term, they burst out
laughing. LSA sophomore Brendan Wu said
the term has been used by Buzzfeed and
other Internet hotspots for someone who
simply associates with international cul-
ture.
But the idea of a childhood spent in a cul-

ture different from one's parents is not new them. For Li, it could be seen as a hindrance.
by any stretch. My grandfather was raised "I feel like she (my mom) never really put
by two Russian-Jews who spoke almost in a lot of effort in understanding the dif-
exclusively Yiddish in their lilly-white ference between the educations, and then I
South Dakotan town. just never put it in the effort of telling her,"
"Now there's more than just immigrants Li said.
- like hyphenated Ameri- She spent ages six to nine in China.
cans - but now there's e During this period, she did not see
like this blurring her father and saw her mother
where like an twice. She was raised by her
immigrant can grandmother's sisters, who she
associate with called "the best-family I could
the country of ever ask for."
their birth or the Akinokun, who was sepa-
country of their rated from his parents in high
parents origin but school, said the opposite.
like third culture "For someone like me, I guess
kids don't really asso- moving around a lot would make
ciate with any me miss them more. When
nationality," you're moving around a
Wu said. lot, friends are changing,
That people are changing,
lack of your entire environ-
total ment is changing. The
asso- only thing that stays
ciation constant is your fami-
mani- ly. You grow more reli-
fests ant on them. They're
itself the most constant part
subtly of your life."
- mostly Many of the students
by the said their relationships
moments with their parents flour-
third cul- ished when they came to
ture kids college. At the University,
mentioned there's a dearth of ways
when Ithat international students
asked them - no matter their back-
about what ground - can bond.
differs them "It's really invisible," Mer-
from their edith said. "It's really hard to
American ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE MILLER find."

single year. There's always a constant flow
of everyone coming in and leaving," he
said. "You get kind of used to the system of
constant change and meeting new people
and being forced to understand different
people's experiences but at the same time
joining together to build an experience
together."
Wu, however, said he does not necessar-
ily prefer the company of third culture kids.
He said he's often pressured to hang out
with Chinese Americans and Asian Ameri-
cans, but doesn't deem it as necessary.
"After that we're still very different
sometimes," Wu said. "Like Gabriel (Mere-
dith) and I are friends partly because we've
had similar experiences and things we've
both experienced, like living in China, but
there's a lot more than that."
It connects to his idea of nationality.
"I always say things like ethnicity or
where you're from and stuff is just a state
of mind," Wu said. "Even if you've grown
up in America all your life but you really
associate with another part of the world
or something, there's nothing wrong with
saying part of you is a manifestation of
that."
Finding one country to identify with is
often a challenge, and several of the stu-
dents said even that could be fluid.
Sommer said she rejected her Swiss
background while attending a high school
in Switzerland, noting the stereotypes of
a Swiss person with a smile: being anal,
reserved and on-time. She was quicker
to name herself Czech, her mother's
nationality. But in the U.S., she said, she's
embraced that she is a Swiss person.
"Now I feel like I'm becoming my own
person," Sommer said. "I feel like every
experience I have I learn and I develop
and I would say being Swiss is a part of
me. I realized that I am a Swiss citizen
and I will always be Swiss. However,
that's not how I would define myself. I
wouldn't limit myself as just being Swiss."
Sommer, who spent her childhood sum-
mers in South Carolina, sees the fleeting
nature of a national identity as something
that goes beyond third culture kids.
"I feel like we're part of a new generation
that's gonna fully get rid of this national-
ism that we used to have. We're going to be
able to move from country to country and
culture to culture and live together with-
out identifying first as a nationality."
Dupuy echoed Sommer, adding the shift
could help define a generation;
"I think that identifying with more than
one culture makes identifying in today's
world special," Dupuy said. "In the world
that we live in today, we're going to work
with more people that don't look like us,
don't speak the same languages as us and
didn't grow up like us. I dont know if you
could necessarily say that in the past."

the fashion voyeur
BY ADRIENNE ROBERTS

For those of
10 LO\'FMPAC you who blocked
this slightly
( CAW- (! Coo' terrifying day out
N of your head -
H I - coi please, allow me
to remind you.
62 04* BCOtS Feb. 2 marked
the fateful day
where the groundhog did in
fact see his shadow. Prepare
yourselves for six more
weeks of winter, people.
What's perhaps the most
exasperating part of the aptly
(if not hilariously) named
#PolarVortex? The need to
do laundry every four days,
after using every pair of
leggings/long underwear/
fuzzy socks you own.
Enter the anatomy of
dressing for the oh-so-
ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE MILLER common -30 degree day:
Step One: Underwear

PHOTO BY RUBY WALLAU

"There are those people that decide to go, and then they go; and then
there are those people that decide to go, and then they stay ... if you've
decided to go somewhere and you've decided that for a reason, you should
just go. You shouldn't be afraid to just go. If you think you're gonna like
something, you might as well try it."
- JOSH MCCREADY, Engineering sophomore

is crucial here. Think long
johns. Or, thermals. Or, for
the cheaper people in the
world (a.k.a., me) tights.
Step Two: This part is
slightly less critical, as no one
is really going to see the black
jeans/yoga pants/leggings
and oversized sweater you're
wearing when you sit in class
still bundled in the scarf
you've now worn everyday
since Dec. 1 and the giant
sleeping bag we all agree to
call a "winter coat."
Step Three: Top this lovely
ensemble with a hat, a hood,
another hat, overused boots
and your mittens from middle
school. Exhausted yet? And
to think, we've only made it
about halfway through the
season...
Now, who's ready for
fashion week?
The Biathalete
won his record
12th medal on
Saturday by
taking home the
gold for Norway
won in the men's
10-kilometer
sprint. It was
his eighth gold
medal!

trending

peers.
"Cultures are very complex and there's
a lot of things you can't quite understand
unless you've grown up in that culture,"
Akinokun said. "Like in a coffee shop here
in the U.S., there might be something about
whether you should say hi to someone
before sitting down or wait until everyone
is seated before saying hi. Things like that
differ. It's just weird having to map out in
my mind where I am andwhat I'm sup-
posed to be doing."
The culture shock stretches beyond sub-
tle social norms, too.
LSA sophomore Jenny Li, who spent
most of her childhood in Zambia, is Chi-
nese but said her family assumed she would
get good grades and go to an American col-
lege. In her school in Zambia though, her
teachers and classmates, who hailed from
places like the U.S., Britain and South Afri-
ca, accepted B's and C's.
These cultural differences, among the
students I interviewed, helped develop
their familial relationships or hindered

Dupuy --the French student
who grew up in Washington, D.C. - said
this was especially shocking considering
the diverse nature of the student body. It
has the eighth largest international student
population out of all U.S. universities and
represents 130 countries.
Meredith said he bonds most quickly
with third culture kids, even those who are
neither Chinese nor American. Half-white
and half-Chinese, hedoesn't fit in with
international Chinese students, who see
him as white. But he's not American either.
"It's the experience of living in a ridicu-
lously diverse situation with a school with
people from actually all over the world," he
said. "(There's) the idea that diversity is in
a way our life, in a way we kind of crave it."
Meredith paused, considering his home
in Shanghai, his father's birthplace on a
Michigan farm and the American boarding
school where he came of age.
"One of the biggest similarities is the
idea that all international schools just
like Shanghai are subject to change every

Things went a little awry duringthe opening
ceremonies of the 2014 Olympicsmin Sochi, Russia
when the fifth ringon the Olympic symbol failed
to lightup. Hopefully, everythinggoes smoothly
from here on out.
-*0""

L

LATIMES.COM


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