I have a relatively strange cultural background. My mother is from Pakistan and my dad is from New York but I spent the majority of my childhood in Bangkok, Thailand. My parents moved there for work when I was 5 and it was, and continues to be, my home. I moved to New York in my sophomore year of high school and it was a very strange transition for me. I was familiar with New York, as I visited every summer, but there were certain things that still surprised me. Namely the seasons. In Thailand we had the rainy season and dry season but in New York it got cold and the leaves changed colour. I’ll never forget seeing snow for the first time. I was 15 years old in art class and I remember absolutely freaking out at the notion that snow was real and not just something I saw in Christmas movies. I also visited Pakistan, not as frequently as I did the US but I’d go once or twice every two years to see my family.
I went to an international school and so growing up my friends were from all over the world and I’d go to their house and get a little snippet of different cultures. Most of the students at schools were like me—Third Culture Kids—mixed kids whose parents were not Thai but settled in Thailand for whatever reason. Since everyone had similar backgrounds to me I had never thought about cultural heritage or navigating cultural identity in a homogenous populace. I had never heard the terms “wasian” or POC or stopped to consider what I was. But after I moved to New York I was bombarded with the unanswerable question: where are you from? It only got worse when I came to college and it was the icebreaker question in every single class. I still don’t have a clean answer. I’m certainly not Thai but I would feel like I am dismissing a large part of myself if I said I was from New York. When it comes to my “Pakistani-ness” I’ve always had a bit of imposter syndrome, since I don’t look like your typical South Asian and my mother never really taught me Urdu growing up. It’s a familiar language and I can understand household speak and say a few things, but I’d hardly call myself bilingual. While my mother comes from a Muslim household she is an Atheist and I never learned about Pakistani or Muslim traditions. And while my dad is Ashkenazi Jew I didn’t attend my first passover until I was 16 and I honestly had no idea what it meant. If anything I’d say the religion I’ve been exposed to the most is Buddhism, just from my years in Thailand.
As you can see, a lot of strange cultural turmoil going on with me. I came to this minor to try and understand a little bit more about myself and attempt to identify what it means to me to be mixed race, or a third culture kid who no longer lives in her third culture. I’m an East Asian Studies major, and wanted to branch out a bit. I didn’t only want to focus on East Asia, I’d like to take classes about different regions of the world, and so this minor seemed like a great fit for me.
I’m really excited to be here and learn more about cultural competence and hopefully find some semblance of a cultural identity for myself along the way.
UPDATE FROM APRIL 2025 LYLA
It’s really quite interesting to see the mindset I had going into this minor and the goals I was hoping to achieve. The idea of the dreaded “where are you from” question used to really plague me because I had no clear answer, but as time went on and I learned more about the world through the various global coursework classes I took as part of the minor, I came to realize that everyone is complicated. Even those that have a seemingly “simple” cultural background have multiple layers to their history. In that way everyone has a complicated answer to that question.
I find it interesting I used the words “cultural turmoil,” I wasn’t too secure in my cultural identity when I first wrote this. Funnily enough, the experience of studying abroad in japan not once but twice has made me very confident in my cultural identity as an American. I’m not ignoring the parts of me that aren’t American of course—Thailand will always be my home and many of the family members I care about are in Karachi—but I really grew into my American identity. When I first wrote this post I had lived in the US for 4 years and now it’s been around 7, but truly the process of going overseas as an American, as part of an American program, was eye-opening to me. When I lived in Japan, my Japanese friends and roommates would often remark on how “I’m friendly like an American” or that I was enthusiastic,loud, and not afraid to be familiar, like an American. And these comments would make me happy. These experiences helped me grow more confident in my American identity, and I began to feel pride for my home state of New York and the culture we have. It’s funny, nothing will make you feel more like an American than leaving America.
