Ths really spoke to me

[minoanmiss]

A Black kid, an immigrant kid, goes to Ghana and finds that the Ghanaians
don't regard him as their kin, but finds his way to his friends and a new
understanding, and groundnut soup.

This really resonates with me. A lot of people have expected me to be
something simpler and different than I am because I'm Black, and I can
totally see having been the teenager expecting a kinship that didn't come
on that basis.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2017/06/ghana-west-african-groundnut-soup-peanut-stew.html

Comments

[weepingnaiad]

Oh! That was lovely!

I'm not an immigrant so don't have the feelings he writes about, but I understand exactly where's coming from. I see his experience a bit through my children's eyes with a view to their dad's heritage in Mexico. Dear daughter is there now and absolutely loving it, which is wonderful. (I was worried her anxiety would take away her ability to enjoy it, but it hasn't. Thank goodness!)

With the way things are here and now, I almost hope that she will intern there and embrace her cousins and that culture fully.

[minoanmiss]

I think expeeriences overlap, and can resonate with us without matching entirely. And I am so delighted your daughter is loving Mexico!

[lb_lee]

Thank you for this one! I never would've read it otherwise, and I liked it a lot.

Even though the focus was different, it reminded me a little of my colleague Whit Taylor's comic The Anthropologists, and of being a black student overseas in Australia, researching aboriginal culture. I wonder if that sort of dislocation is at all analogous to my experiences at the mental health conference for my diagnosis, and realizing I had very little in common with most of the folks there.

--Rogan

[minoanmiss]

*beams* Youre totally welcome. and I can defintely see the analogy between two different experiences of "I was supposed to fit here and I don't; these people were supposed to be of like mind to me, and reject that notion."

[cmcmck]

Fabulous!

We can't share exact experiences you and I, but so much yes.

I can feel my Romani great grandad's hand on my shoulder as he nods wisely. :o)

[minoanmiss]

beams a lot

[amaebi]

I love that essay. Thank you.

[minoanmiss]

beams You're totally welcome. :)