The Franco-American Flophouse is a bi-lingual, bi-cultural family (even the cats understand English, French and Frenglish.) Contrary to what some people think it was not obvious when we had children that we would succeed in making it so. It takes more than one foreign parent to create a truly bi-cultural family in which everyone is “at home” wherever you decide to live. Success depends on your persistence and on your awareness of the forces that are aligned against you (schools, family members, the dominant culture). Here are four strategies that we have used that we think were particularly effective:
Language Equality - my husband and I use the One Parent, One Language method (OPOL). He speaks French to the Frenchlings and I speak English. This is the foundation but it is far from sufficient. Over the years we have come up with other strategies that we have added to OPOL:
*My husband and I are bi-lingual and we demonstrate daily to the children that we are competent in both languages. Since we live in France where the dominant language is French my husband and I reinforce English by speaking it to each other at home.
*French and English books and movies are always read/shown in the original language (no cheating and turning on the French soundtrack to Harry Potter :-)
*Recognize that language is a very emotional topic in many countries and that the larger society (in particular the public schools) has interests that are not necessarily compatible with your multi-lingual, multi-cultural goals. This has been my experience in both the US and France (in the latter I was scolded by the teachers when my children were young for speaking English at home). My advice is to not get into it with the schools or argue about it with family or friends. Just smile, thank them for their advice and then go home and do what you think is right.
Staying Connected
Language is only half the battle, culture is just as important. Frequent visits to the Other Country are indispensable. Our Frenchlings spend part of their vacation in France (Brittany) and part in North America (Canada and the U.S.) where they stay with grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and friends. This not only enriching from a cultural standpoint but it keeps the extended family firmly in the present.
Choosing a Third Place
Three years ago we packed up and moved to Tokyo, Japan for two years. It was the first time we lived as a family in a place where none of us were citizens and none of us spoke or read the language. The home court advantage was completely erased. For the first time we could see the subtle advantages that my French husband has when we live in France or I had when we lived in the U.S. It also gave us a completely different perspective on European/North American cultures which, seen through the eyes of our Asian friends and co-workers, are not so different...
The Grass is NOT Greener
The grass is not greener on the other side of the Atlantic. We do not live in France because it is a nicer place than North America and we do not spend our days filled with regret that we are not living in the U.S. This is what we believe and what we teach our children: there is no “better” place, there are only different places with different charms and challenges.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Entering a new country
For years I have travelled and lived in different countries but there was one place where I was immediately at home wherever I went: Smoker Land.
It was a great place. Lots of fun and cameraderie. Can't even begin to count the number of people I met and chatted with from Boston to LA, from Lille to Barcelona, from Tokyo to Bangalore outside of restaurants and airports because we had one thing in common - cigarettes - the ultimate international ice-breaker.
On November 17, 2008 I decided to quit. I am 43 years old and constantly playing the Cosmic Crapshoot of Life by consuming a pack + per day was getting a bit perilous. I was also starting to feel some of the negative health impacts - shortness of breath, lack of energy, trouble sleeping and so on. And, finally, while I had deluded myself into thinking that I had voluntarily applied for a residency permit for Smokersville, I discovered that it was less a choice of a nice destination and more of a prison state that is damned difficult to get out of.
But I did. And the best part is that I am not alone on this trip. Many many thanks to the leaders and participants at the About.com Smoking Cessation Forum who have been invaluable in helping me to take up residence in a much nicer and healthier (and just as intellectually stimulating) place.
QuitMeter Counter courtesy of www.quitmeter.com.
It was a great place. Lots of fun and cameraderie. Can't even begin to count the number of people I met and chatted with from Boston to LA, from Lille to Barcelona, from Tokyo to Bangalore outside of restaurants and airports because we had one thing in common - cigarettes - the ultimate international ice-breaker.
On November 17, 2008 I decided to quit. I am 43 years old and constantly playing the Cosmic Crapshoot of Life by consuming a pack + per day was getting a bit perilous. I was also starting to feel some of the negative health impacts - shortness of breath, lack of energy, trouble sleeping and so on. And, finally, while I had deluded myself into thinking that I had voluntarily applied for a residency permit for Smokersville, I discovered that it was less a choice of a nice destination and more of a prison state that is damned difficult to get out of.
But I did. And the best part is that I am not alone on this trip. Many many thanks to the leaders and participants at the About.com Smoking Cessation Forum who have been invaluable in helping me to take up residence in a much nicer and healthier (and just as intellectually stimulating) place.
QuitMeter Counter courtesy of www.quitmeter.com.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Where I Sit bis (Lost in Translation)
In my previous post I included a rather long quotation from "Lost in Translation" by Eva Hoffman. I have included this book in the My Favorites section of this blog for the simple reason that this is THE book that captures most accurately my own experiences as an immigrant.
There are differences. Eva left Poland for Canada as an adolescent. I left the United States for France as a young bride. Eva left with her family and seems to have been aware that this was pretty much a one-way trip (un aller simple). I left alone and in a situation that was ambiguous at best. We were married in France but my French husband could get a green card and we could move to the U.S . That question, "So, where are we going to live?" has been asked and re-asked many times in the nearly 20 years my husband and I have been together.
And if I may cite another difference? In her book I am reading the words of a woman who grieves for what she has lost but Poland, her home country, seems to exist more and more only in her memory. It is not a constant unescapable presence in her life. She challenges her adopted culture on the basis of her status as a foreigner, not as as an Eastern European.
In constrast, an American emigrant anywhere in the world does not have the luxury of relegating his country to an abstract ideal or a mere memory. The activites of the American president, the opinions of the American people, the policies of the American government are the object of intense scrutiny. And you become painfully aware as you read the local papers and talk to your friends that all of the above matter very much to the people you interact with on a daily basis. There is no escape as much as you would like to hide yourself behind the "I am an individual speaking for myself," the interpretation is entirely beyond your control because it relies utterly on their perception of your identity.
It took me years to come to terms with this. In the beginning it infuriated me because I wanted desperately to assimiliate. Later I went to the other extreme thinking that if the only part I was allowed to play was The American, then I would do so. These days I am more centered, more forgiving of myself and of other people. Today, I cheerfully answer the inevitable question, "McCain or Obama?" and I try to be as gentle as I can with those people in both my countries when they decide to share their more violent stereotypes of the Other with me.
Eva Hoffman wites, "It is only after I have taken in disparate bits of cultural matter, after I have accepted its seduction and snares, that I can make my way theough the medium of language to distill my own meanings; and it is only coming from the ground up that I can hit the tenor of my own sensibility, hit home."
There are differences. Eva left Poland for Canada as an adolescent. I left the United States for France as a young bride. Eva left with her family and seems to have been aware that this was pretty much a one-way trip (un aller simple). I left alone and in a situation that was ambiguous at best. We were married in France but my French husband could get a green card and we could move to the U.S . That question, "So, where are we going to live?" has been asked and re-asked many times in the nearly 20 years my husband and I have been together.
And if I may cite another difference? In her book I am reading the words of a woman who grieves for what she has lost but Poland, her home country, seems to exist more and more only in her memory. It is not a constant unescapable presence in her life. She challenges her adopted culture on the basis of her status as a foreigner, not as as an Eastern European.
In constrast, an American emigrant anywhere in the world does not have the luxury of relegating his country to an abstract ideal or a mere memory. The activites of the American president, the opinions of the American people, the policies of the American government are the object of intense scrutiny. And you become painfully aware as you read the local papers and talk to your friends that all of the above matter very much to the people you interact with on a daily basis. There is no escape as much as you would like to hide yourself behind the "I am an individual speaking for myself," the interpretation is entirely beyond your control because it relies utterly on their perception of your identity.
It took me years to come to terms with this. In the beginning it infuriated me because I wanted desperately to assimiliate. Later I went to the other extreme thinking that if the only part I was allowed to play was The American, then I would do so. These days I am more centered, more forgiving of myself and of other people. Today, I cheerfully answer the inevitable question, "McCain or Obama?" and I try to be as gentle as I can with those people in both my countries when they decide to share their more violent stereotypes of the Other with me.
Eva Hoffman wites, "It is only after I have taken in disparate bits of cultural matter, after I have accepted its seduction and snares, that I can make my way theough the medium of language to distill my own meanings; and it is only coming from the ground up that I can hit the tenor of my own sensibility, hit home."
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Where I sit
Right now I am sitting in front of a crackling fire in my apartment in Versailles which is not too far from the lovely chateau and gardens for which this city is well known.
The children (my Frenchlings are in bed), my French husband is in Tokyo but my thoughts are turning toward my friends and colleagues all over the world.
A quick glance at my systray shows that it is nearly 11 PM in France (digestif, anyone?), 5 AM in Tokyo (the party is just winding down in Roppongi), 5 PM on the US East Coast (the cocktail hour is just beginning) and nearly 2 PM in Seattle (the time zone in which most of my close family lives).
I never meant to leave my home permanently. Whole generations of my family have lived and died in the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America having made tentative (but very temporary) forays into other places. But they always came home. I didn't. Not permanently anyway. And for the life of me sometimes I don't understand why. It just happened. A sequence of events that had its own momentum and has taken me to this place and this time which could be anywhere and nowhere all at once.
There is nothing particularly unique in my experience. France is a nation of immigrants and I meet people (Serb taxi drivers, Algerian system administrators, and so on) who struggle with the same things. Struggling with language and cultural differences, wanting to go home, wanting to stay in our adopted world. Feeling safe, feeling scared. Feeling connected and then feeling so foreign.
But if I had a chance to do it all again, I would. What I lost (loss of place, identity, language) has been more than compensated by the truly remarkable people I have met and the places I have experienced. I have lived in two of the world's great cities: Paris and Tokyo. I went to India and fell in love with Chennai, Mumbai and Bangalore. Most recently I have discovered parts of my own country that I never knew before, , Detroit, Boston and Providence. . Everywhere I go, I marvel at the ingenuity, passion, ambition and energy of the people I meet.
I have never seen a culture or language that was not complex or beautiful in its own particular way once I surrendered myself to it. And as I enter the second half of my life I believe that I am so fortunate and so blessed to have had the chance to experience some of this complexity and beauty. This is a chance my grand-parents and great-grand-parents never had. They had roots and continuity; I have something else.
From Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation:
"Multivalence is no more than a condition of contemporary awareness, and no more than the contemporary world demands. The weight of the world used to be vertical: it used to come from the past, or from the hierarchy of heaven and earth and hell; now it's horizontal, made up of the endless multiplicity of events going on at once and pressing at each moment on our minds and our living rooms. Dislocation is the norm rather than the aberration in our time, but even in the unlikely event that we spend an entire lifetime in one place, the fabulous diverseness with which we live reminds us constantly that we are no longer the norm or the center, that there is no one geographic center pulling the world together and glowing with the allure of the real thing; there are instead, scattered nodules competing for our attention. New York, Warsaw, Tehran, Tokyo, Kabul - they all make claims on our imagination, all remind us that in this decentered world, that every competing center makes us marginal."
The children (my Frenchlings are in bed), my French husband is in Tokyo but my thoughts are turning toward my friends and colleagues all over the world.
A quick glance at my systray shows that it is nearly 11 PM in France (digestif, anyone?), 5 AM in Tokyo (the party is just winding down in Roppongi), 5 PM on the US East Coast (the cocktail hour is just beginning) and nearly 2 PM in Seattle (the time zone in which most of my close family lives).
I never meant to leave my home permanently. Whole generations of my family have lived and died in the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America having made tentative (but very temporary) forays into other places. But they always came home. I didn't. Not permanently anyway. And for the life of me sometimes I don't understand why. It just happened. A sequence of events that had its own momentum and has taken me to this place and this time which could be anywhere and nowhere all at once.
There is nothing particularly unique in my experience. France is a nation of immigrants and I meet people (Serb taxi drivers, Algerian system administrators, and so on) who struggle with the same things. Struggling with language and cultural differences, wanting to go home, wanting to stay in our adopted world. Feeling safe, feeling scared. Feeling connected and then feeling so foreign.
But if I had a chance to do it all again, I would. What I lost (loss of place, identity, language) has been more than compensated by the truly remarkable people I have met and the places I have experienced. I have lived in two of the world's great cities: Paris and Tokyo. I went to India and fell in love with Chennai, Mumbai and Bangalore. Most recently I have discovered parts of my own country that I never knew before, , Detroit, Boston and Providence. . Everywhere I go, I marvel at the ingenuity, passion, ambition and energy of the people I meet.
I have never seen a culture or language that was not complex or beautiful in its own particular way once I surrendered myself to it. And as I enter the second half of my life I believe that I am so fortunate and so blessed to have had the chance to experience some of this complexity and beauty. This is a chance my grand-parents and great-grand-parents never had. They had roots and continuity; I have something else.
From Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation:
"Multivalence is no more than a condition of contemporary awareness, and no more than the contemporary world demands. The weight of the world used to be vertical: it used to come from the past, or from the hierarchy of heaven and earth and hell; now it's horizontal, made up of the endless multiplicity of events going on at once and pressing at each moment on our minds and our living rooms. Dislocation is the norm rather than the aberration in our time, but even in the unlikely event that we spend an entire lifetime in one place, the fabulous diverseness with which we live reminds us constantly that we are no longer the norm or the center, that there is no one geographic center pulling the world together and glowing with the allure of the real thing; there are instead, scattered nodules competing for our attention. New York, Warsaw, Tehran, Tokyo, Kabul - they all make claims on our imagination, all remind us that in this decentered world, that every competing center makes us marginal."
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