- Who invented the cheese sandwich?
That's all I'm saying.
Why does that exist?
- Thank you to Surfshark for sponsoring this video.
Alrighty, kids.
When people ask where I'm from,
or people ask, what are you?
I guess a simple answer is, I'm brown.
There's so much pressure to identify yourself
and like make these nice, neat parameters of your identity.
But sometimes it's not that simple.
I have a pretty multicultural background
and all my life it's kind of confused me
or been confusing.
I mean, I guess I look South Asian.
But I don't really like...
I was born in Canada,
but my parents were born other places
and moved to Canada when they were very young.
My mom was born in Trinidad, but she--
(explanations overlap)
There's a lot of cultures melting in this pot here.
I also just wanted to acknowledge that I'm very privileged
to be able to trace my roots back so far.
'Cause not everyone can.
Anyways, yeah, growing up,
I guess I felt really disconnected to my cultures.
And I guess what I've been trying to figure out
is why do I want to feel so connected?
Why do I feel like I need to?
Why do I want to connect to all these different cultures?
And I can't imagine this is a unique,
or a, what's the word I'm looking for?
What I'm trying to say here is, you know,
people move around a lot.
That creates a lot of new identities and different cultures,
mashups of cultures, that kind of leaves us kids,
am I a kid?
Us people, feeling a little confused, I guess.
At the ripe age of 22,
I'm going to do something about it
and see if there's a reason why I feel like this.
I wanna go see if I can find some answers.
(funky upbeat music)
So I'm in the middle of research
and I need to access these journal articles
in some interesting ways.
Now, no longer being a university student
and having access to thousands of free journal articles
kind of sucks.
But it got me thinking about my online security
and you know, how to avoid getting a virus on my computer.
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protect your online identity,
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So you're good.
Anyways, back to reading.
(upbeat music)
All right, so I did some reading
and I think figured out why I feel so disconnected
from my culture.
Here it goes.
So it all starts with the American sociologist,
Dr. Ruth Hill Useem.
In the 1950s, she lived in India,
conducting studies of other Americans abroad
who were working in representational roles
like missionaries and educators.
During this study,
she coined the term third culture kid,
referencing the children of these workers
who were spending a significant portion
of their developmental years in a foreign nation.
The third culture in question was a generic term
made to capture this in between lifestyle
where you need to balance the culture of your parents
and the one of the world around you.
All right, this sounds like my life, kind of.
Except my parents didn't exactly get sent abroad
as representatives from Trinidad, Guyana, Goa,
or Tanzania for that matter.
And my only passport has ever been Canadian.
So third culture kid is close to my experience,
but it's not quite there yet.
And luckily, the research evolved.
In 1999, David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken
released the book "Third Culture Kids:
the Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds,"
where they define a new term: cross culture kid.
A cross culture kid is a person who has lived in
or meaningfully interacted with two or more
cultural environments for a significant period of time
during their developmental years.
It's an umbrella term.
So all third culture kids are cross culture kids,
but there are more options, like multiracial homes,
immigrants, international adoptees, refugees, and more.
And the studies conducted on this group found that they,
or we, all share certain traits.
There are benefits like being socially adaptable,
having multicultural awareness, and being more open minded.
But for all those benefits, there is this problem.
When you're exposed to multiple cultures
and different belief systems and priorities
during your formative years, it's confusing.
Pollock and Van Reken describe it
as building relationships with all of your cultures
while not having full ownership of any.
It's a rootlessness that can make you feel
like you don't belong or you're not enough
of one culture or another.
And this means that when you're trying to figure out
who you are, it's weird, because you're using pieces
that aren't traditionally meant to fit together.
It's like being dealt a hand from a deck
made of playing cards and UNO cards.
And so the reason that I feel so disconnected
from my culture is because I don't even know
what my culture is.
You know?
I mean, cool, we have this word to describe
how we're feeling,
but I figured the best way to explore this
is to talk to another cross-culture kid.
Let's call Taha.
(phone ringing)
You're here.
- All I know is I am Brown.
What is your, what is your vibe?
- Funny enough, I was working last week
and this one girl, she was like yelling over the speakers
and I didn't really understand what she was saying.
And I thought that she asked, where are you from?
And then I was like, well, you know,
like I'm Trini, Guyanese and Goan,
and like, I just say those countries.
It turns out she didn't ask that question.
She was asking where the bathroom was.
- Ah!
- If I don't feel like going into that whole story,
I'll just be like, I was born in Canada.
And then they'll do the whole, where are you from?
- What are you really from?
Wait, well, no, no, no, no.
But where you really,
we all know what they're actually asking,
which is like,
- Yeah.
- What type of brown are you?
Yeah. - Yeah.
Taha, what type of Brown are you?
- I am British Pakistani.
My parents are from Pakistan.
And then when we were very young, we immigrated to the UK.
I feel like within myself,
I don't feel Pakistani and I don't feel British.
I feel British Pakistani.
Like as one thing, that's the type of brown I am.
- I don't know how to put mine in a nutshell.
- I mean, you have a, you have a way more complicated,
'cause that's the other thing it's like,
they just want to know like, I'm brown
because I'm Pakistani,
but culturally, I'm British Pakistani.
- That's another thing too, like, you know,
like the difference between,
like your race or your ethnicity
and like the actual cultures that you celebrate.
I really don't--
- That would be, that could be its own video on itself.
That is...
- All right, I don't know.
I've never like created an identity
that like bridged all these cultures together.
I just kind of like chilled here.
- I feel like it's not active.
Like, I'm not like actively like,
"Hmm, I'm going to get to participate in the culture."
If you're like a buffet, you're like,
"Oh, I'm going to take a little bit of this
and a little bit of this."
Whereas I feel like my culture is just like, soup.
Just everything, just all in one thing.
- (giggles) soup?
- And I'm just like, Ooh.
- I think like, apart from like, I don't know,
clothes and language and all the other things
that make up culture, for me, it's like, been food.
That's been one of the only things that confident
or like comfortable, just like bring out into the world.
- Being in a household where like everyone is Pakistani
means that we can like, really be Pakistani.
But then also I think the food is like a massive part of it
because I think that like the food of Pakistan
has so much like, history and like,
culture wrapped up in it.
I also don't know what it's,
what it means to interact with culture.
'Cause I'm like, I'm just kind of eating food, like--
- Yeah, same.
- It doesn't feel like this grand statement like,
Oh, I'm interacting with culture because I'm eating rice.
- I don't know.
I do feel that though.
Like when I'm eating food from all these different places,
it's like, I don't know.
Maybe it kinda like takes you home in a sense.
But like you said, like when like the outside environment
is not what, like your culture is inside your house,
it's like, it's the only way that you can really...
- Replicate it.
On Facebook, they have that thing where it's like,
one year ago today.
- [Melissa] Yeah.
- I feel like food does that for me.
It just hits different, you know?
- Yeah, you're right.
- And that's--
- Food just does hit different.
- Exactly.
It just hits different.
And I think that's beautiful.
- Thank you.
- [Taha] Amazing.
- For chatting with me.
- No problem. Any time.
- Food has always been a big part of my life growing up.
Thanks to my parents and grandparents,
I was able to eat a lot of different foods
from our cultures.
And it's kind of been the only way
that I've been able to access these cultures,
especially the places that I've never been to before.
So the other day, I talked to my grandpa
to ask him some questions about food
and what it is about food that makes us feel so connected
to where we came from.
After that conversation,
I was inspired today to try to make some homemade doubles.
They're like a really popular Trini street food dish.
I've never made them before.
So while I try to figure out how to make doubles,
here's what my grandpa had to say.
- [Alvin] My name, my name Alvin.
- [Melissa] So, you know how you look Chinese?
- [Alvin] Uh-huh.
- [Melissa] Did y'all come from China at some point?
- [Alvin] Yes.
- [Melissa] Do you know how long ago that was?
- [Alvin] Oh boy.
In 1835, when the Chinese were leaving China.
And that's when my grandfather went to Guyana.
So I'm Guyanese.
Guyana was ruled by the British at that time.
So we didn't have no opportunity to go
and learn the language.
Not that we didn't want to.
At that time, maybe now I look back,
I will not mind learning Chinese, but it's too late.
From Guyana, I went to England.
- [Melissa] Why?
- [Alvin] To study.
After I finish study,
then I start to work in England.
From England I came here.
And that's where I am now, here.
- [Melissa] Where is here?
- [Alvin] In Canada.
- [Melissa] What do you remember about Guyana?
- [Alvin] Yeah, what my mother used to cook.
Mostly curry chicken, Christmas time.
She made a, what, garlic pork, pepper pot
and I sure that is your favorite.
What we cook now, like mainly like curry.
There's no difference with the curry that you cook in Guyana
than the curry we cook here.
The ingredients will not be the same or taste the same,
but its close as what you can get, especially with curry.
By eating certain food, doing certain things
to preserve culture and to pass on to the younger generation
is to maintain that tradition.
Say something that they will remember you by.
Remember certain things that you did,
certain food that one cook,
so they could pass it on to their children,
namely, like you.
But then again, I don't see that you cooking any food,
like what I've mentioned to you.
So I don't know if you learn or you didn't learn.
- It's so good.
You know, I don't think I found all the answers
I was looking for today,
but food really does just make you feel like home
or feel at home.
Like obviously food is only one way that you can feel
connected to your culture.
Like I said, there's language,
music, fashion, customs, and all that other stuff.
Food is just it for me.
And like my grandpa was saying,
it's important not to forget your culture
and where you came from and not let those recipes
and stories and histories get lost.
But if I've learned anything on this journey
of self discovery...
Ew.
it's that I don't have to be this one version
or this person, the ideal version
of a Trini and Guyanese, Goan, et cetera.
This is gonna be very cheesy, but...
I mean, I can just be me and that be enough and be okay.
I hope you learned something.
Um, happy cooking, question mark?
If you wanted to cook.
I realized I never actually described
what the heck I was making.
It's basically these two fried pieces of bara,
I've already bitten this one,
is like fried dough with like turmeric and geera,
with like a chickpea curry situation inside.
This one has chickpeas and potatoes.
And then some sort of like, chutney.
So this is a, like a sweet and spicy mango chutney
that we put in there.
It is so good.
I'm going to stop eating right now so I can finish
closing out this video.