Tag Archives: the United States

Spring 2018 Issue XI: Every Picture Tells a Story

Dr. Martens: like a Fênix

We left Rio de Janeiro to travel to Belém, then to São Paulo, to Los Angeles, and to San Francisco. We thought that, together, we would go back to Rio within three months. We never did.

An unexpected sense of freedom extended our stay. San Francisco turned into a sanctuary, an ocean in an infinite state of intensity. Our new experiences, from a Bernal Hill first kiss to a camping trip to Big Sur, brought us deep feelings we could never imagine before. Each step taken was a new self-discovery. In 2014, we got lost looking for something we could not name. We fell in love with the rainbows from Castro street.

Oh, San Francisco! We didn’t know you would treat us so well. We challenged the capitalist systems that almost kept us away from the most important explorations of our lives. We challenged the people we left behind, our família, and our own belief system. We could not go back; we had to stay.

We learned English.
We learned that intimacy with a woman is what we have wanted the most.
We found our most valuable resource: therapy.
We went to our first gay pride parade.
We worked as an assistant producer for a short film.
We took placement tests.
We signed up for real college-level classes.
We took acting classes.
We were afraid of taking a risk bigger than ourselves.
We worked hard.

We learned about sexual health education, social psychology, neuroscience, and HIV prevention. We learned how intersectionality impacts the sex-gender system. We worked as a social media manager, sex educator, and English tutor. We read Anzaldúa, Lorde, hooks. We worked for a moving company, dog sitting, and tutoring a high school kid.

We faced the ups and downs of being an activist and dedicating our life and soul to a cause we believe in. We were called white, brown, you belong, you don’t belong. We were excluded when all we wanted was to fit right in. We felt alone around many people. We felt overwhelmed by ourselves.

We achieved the unachievable. We broke the unbreakable. We graduated from a community college as the commencement speaker of our graduation. We earned a full ride to an elite American college. We were homeless, jobless, feeling-less for a whole summer. We explored the complexities of our identities. We started to understand the injustices of this world from multiple perspectives, including one of experience.

We started a new life on the East Coast. Who would have thought we would end up in New England? After questioning all of the consequences of colonization and refusing to be part of the colonizer’s legacy, we ended up in the colonizer’s land. Church, church, church, church.

Hi, Massachusetts! Within all of your amazing opportunities, we felt lost. We struggled. We cried one, two, three, uncountable times. We were scared. We are still scared. We met a lover who made us believe in the most genuine feeling that can ever exist. We got to see the leaves turn: the fall season and all of its beauty. We went biking, we explored Western Massachusetts, and sometimes we forgot that we came from Rio. From Belém. We felt the snow.

We, my pair of white converse sneakers and I, crossed a milestone. We crossed the borders of the state, of love, sex, intellectuality, and intimacy. We found the transcendental. Three months turned into three years. We never went back. We don’t want to.

Is it a new era? Is it an end to a beginning? Is it a change of the seasons?

The rain takes away, refreshes, and cleans everything in the purest way.

It’s 2018 and my steps are still an exploration. A new one. A pair of black Dr. Martens: like a fênix.

 

Marcela Rodrigues is a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar and a Neuroscience student at Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts. As a sexual health educator and a human rights activist, she aims to combine science and social justice in order to create meaningful changes and a more just society to all.

 

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Special Issue: Cultural Encounters

To be Always Elsewhere

I could feel my heart pounding in my small chest faster and faster. I was on the verge of breaking out into an anxious sweat when it came to my turn. The words came out of my mouth sounding alien and awkward: “I am from the United States”. There were no looks of confusion, doubt, or suspicion, but I felt like an imposter. I was an imposter. My teacher and fellow second grade classmates nodded in approval of my response and the boy next to me proceeded to answer the teacher’s question: Where are you from?

While it seems like such a simple inquiry, usually following a trail of other repetitive, mundane questions of what one’s name, age, birthday, and favorite food are, it has continuously been a source of anxiety, confusion, and haunting throughout my life. I went home that day to ask my parents where I was truly from to give rest to my doubts. They themselves seemed slightly confused at my question telling me ‘why the United State of course!’. I proceeded to ask them where in the United States I was born, and whether or not we were Korean. At my early age of six years, I perceived true U.S. citizens to be white and was confounded by the idea that my ethnically Korean family could be from the U.S. All the pale skinned, freckled boys and girls at my school would proudly state I’m from California, Wyoming, and ‘insert US state’ before I moved to Singapore! All the little girls in Disney shows and movies depicting the typical American girl did not look like me. My parents curtly replied that I was born in Englewood, New Jersey, I was indeed Korean, but I was not from Korea because I never lived there. They were astounded as to how I could ask such preposterous questions and carried on with their adult matters as my child self tried to make sense of what I was told.

It was true that I was Korean but had never lived in South Korea. Both my parents immigrated to the United States when they were entering their first year of high school. But what was also true was that I had never lived in the United States either. I had no recollection of this so called Englewood, New Jersey. My mother gave birth to me in New Jersey but almost immediately returned to Japan, where she was living at the time. Technically, I was from Japan. It was the last country I lived in. But regardless of this confusion, I took my parents word as a six-year-old child does, and proceeded to live my life with the belief that I was from the United States. During the following years of my life, a myriad of events occurred that caused me to feel more of an imposter, stranger, and foreigner no matter where I was.

I hailed down a cobalt blue taxi with its signature 6552-1111 Comfort imprinted on its side. The air was thick and humid, as it is every day in Singapore, and I was running late for a family dinner. I jumped in the cab. Hi Uncle, Tanglin Road in front of Tanglin Mall please. A few minutes had passed as I cooled down in the air conditioned vehicle, when the conversation began. You Korean ah? Yes, yes I am. Ahn-yeong-ha-sei-yo (hello in Korean)! Oh wow that was very good! So how many year you live in Korea before coming to Singapore mm? This is the typical conversation I have had with Singaporean taxi drivers during my 19 years of living there. Singapore is an incredibly diverse country, not just amongst its citizens, but also with its array of  expatriates who move to live there for the long term like myself. Because of Singapore’s diversity and constant influx and flux of expatriates and travelers, there tends to be an interest in one’s origins and ethnicity. I lived in Korea for a few years but moved to Singapore when I was five. Wow! You like Singapore more? Yes, yes I do. While I lived in Singapore, I was comfortable and even at home. I loved the heat and humidity, the greenery everywhere, the food, the people, the transportation. I have such longing when I see photos of Singapore’s skyline, feel an intense humidity like Singapore’s, and eat dishes with similar flavors as those of Singapore. But it was these day to day conversations with taxi drivers, cooks at hawker centers, and locals that caused me to feel so out of place in a country where I felt so at home. It was a daily reminder that, no, I was not Singaporean and would never be. I did not have any local friends and neither did my parents. We stayed in our expatriate bubble, with our expatriate friends and expatriate schools. I was never asked if I was from Singapore. It was always assumed that I was from South Korea, because I was Korean.

I looked calm, but my heart was racing and a thin layer of cold sweat covered my body under my thick winter coat. I was in Seoul, South Korea, for my winter break in 2016. As I got into the taxi, I pulled myself together and confidently stated gang-nam-yuk (Gangnam station). I rejoiced on the inside as the cab driver silently started to drive. I took out my headphones and plugged them in. Please do not talk to me. Please do not talk to me. But of course he sparked a conversation with me. I know how to say hello, count to five, and a few food items in the Korean language. With this minimal vocabulary, Singaporean cab drivers thought I was fluent. But in Korea itself, I was hopeless. A few seconds had passed since the cab driver asked me something. I swore under my breath and finally replied. Oh, no Korean, Chinese. I am Chinese. Oh you China! Okay. And then silence.

I sat in my own shame and embarrassment for the rest of the ride. I had learned throughout my life that being Korean and not being able to speak the language is an incredible disgrace. My mom has been berated by her aunt-in-law for not teaching me the language. I have been called ‘not Korean enough,’ ‘fake Korean,’ ‘not really Korean,’ and ‘you’re just American’ by Korean peers in both high school and college. There are times when I wonder how different my life and identity would have been if I was fluent in Korean. The conversations I could have joined, the nuances of a culture I could have understood, the possible connection and relationship to my grandparents are all what-ifs. But then I realize the prejudice, shame, and disgrace I have felt by a country and very group of people I could have been a part of. Is language a requirement for belonging to a country? When I speak aloud in Korea, I speak English, my only language, my native tongue. When I’m with my Korean friends, I am called their mee-gook-sah-dam-ching-goo (American friend).

Hi! You Chinese? Ni hao! I finally snapped. I’m fucking Korean! Walking the streets of New York City as an Asian woman can be exhausting some days. I slammed the door on my way into the one room apartment in Brooklyn my two friends from Smith and I had rented for the summer. I was still in fury. The air conditioner was balancing the humid, sweltering summer day. Amidst the heat and my own sentiments, I missed Singapore. I later went to Korea Town for dinner with high school friends from Singapore. I felt safe and comfortable surrounded by other Asians; I could let my guard down. Between boarding school and college,  I have lived in the United States for the past eight years of my life, and I am here to stay. Throughout my time in the United States, I have become hyper aware of my Asianess, my race, meaning the very fact that I am Asian isolates and alienates me. This hyper awareness is a hum singing throughout all times of the day. You are our token Asian friend! What are you eating? It smells weird. I heard in Singapore you can’t chew gum. Do Koreans eat dog meat? Are you good at math? Later that night when I returned to my Brooklyn apartment, I thought about the incident again and recollected that I had stated that I was Korean. But was I? Ethnically yes, but identity wise? No. What did it mean to be Korean, American, or Singaporean? A few days later, I was walking around Manhattan. Again, Ni hao! You are Chinese? Go back to China. I whipped around and yelled I am American, there’s nowhere to go back to.

Labels, terms, and categories can have detrimental connotations. But on the other end of the spectrum, they can give one an identity, community, culture, and dialogue to engage with and belong to. It is these positive attributes of defining words that propelled me to constantly search for a category I could compartmentalize myself into. Third culture kid, Asian, Korean, Korean-American, Asian-American, American, expatriate, 1.5 generation, 2nd generation, Asian, Singaporean, international student, and more are all terms that have been used by others or myself to grasp who I am, where I am from, and where I belong. I am a United States citizen, ethnically Korean, and grew up in Singapore. But it is not that simple. There were times when I so wanted to be a Korean, an American, or a Singaporean to each of its own. But I realize that in my own case and that of many others I am none and all of these. When I replied I am American, that statement in itself holds so much meaning and questions. Could I say it because I am a citizen? Did my family moving back to Connecticut recently have something to do with my response? Was it because I have felt more at home here day by day? What if I moved to another country? Depending on the time, place and context, how I define myself is constantly changing. I use to want to fit right into one compartment, having felt like an outsider no matter where I was, but my life has been shaped and influenced by all three countries and its people.

 

Geena Choo is currently a senior at Smith College majoring in Anthropology. She was born in Englewood, NJ to Korean parents, lived in Singapore for the majority of her life, and moved to Hartford, CT recently. She loves drinking lattes, reading books, and dreaming about her future pet golden doodle and wire fox terrier.

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Special Issue: Cultural Encounters

Surmounting Class Differences in a Collegiate World

Although I have only recently realized it, I have always felt like an outsider while at school. It first occurred in high school when I decided to take classes within the International Baccalaureate program. I had always been very good at making friends and did not expect to feel uncomfortable. I was, after all, still at the same institution, though with new peers. When I walked into class with a group of students who had been studying together for four years or more, it was one of the first times in my life that I felt ostracized. They knew a plethora of writing strategies, study habits, and academic rules that I had never heard of before. School became something at which I had to work hard, even though in the past I was able to navigate it with ease. Socially we were even more different.

When the students from my program were studying with private tutors and taking expensive ACT prep classes, my friends and I were stealing booze from our alcoholic parents and sneaking out of the house to smoke cigarettes at the park. While they were scheduling their SAT subject tests and college interviews, I was trying to figure out how best I could help three of my best girlfriends who had all somehow gotten pregnant in their teens.

The problem was only exacerbated when I started working and moved out of my mother’s house during my senior year of high school. I suspected that no one else was experiencing anything similar to my newfound independence and it made me feel so alone. When I decided to go to community college, my peers judged me and questioned my decision. In a class where the majority of students were going to Ivy League schools and their liberal arts equivalents, going to a two year school was not only unacceptable but embarrassing. Financially, it was the best option for me. Since I was supporting myself, I needed to go to a school that allowed me to work full-time. While at community college, I joined an honors program and could not help feeling a similar dissonance. Although the other students in the program tried their best to invite me to group activities, I could never go because I was always working. With my busy schedule, I found it difficult to keep up with the workload. Although my grades were adequate, I always felt less intelligent than the other students. When everyone else moved on to four-year universities, I stayed behind because I was unsure as to how to go about balancing my personal and financial responsibilities while still pursuing my education.

The third year of community college was imperative for my academic career because it connected me with an administrator who initiated my transfer to a four-year school. With the help of some fantastic professors, I became much more confident in my academic abilities during my first year at Smith. Socially, however, I was even worse off than before. Being geographically separated from my friends and family made the differences between other Smith students and I seem insurmountable. I have still not overcome this divide. It emerges in class, at meal times, at campus events, and anywhere else you can imagine. I might say something that would be completely acceptable at home that is completely unacceptable here on campus. I frequently do not understand words in class that are common knowledge to the other students (it was at Smith that I discovered the meaning of “neoliberalism”). Oftentimes I hope to engage in healthy debates with other students that quickly get out of control–conversations gone awry when passionate debate becomes an argumentative struggle. It is not uncommon for me to feel misunderstood, shut down, and confused.

Thankfully, my experiences at these institutions has given me the vocabulary to speak about these issues. I was amazed by how simply having the words to describe what I was feeling made my struggles concrete and real. It was at Smith that I realized the root of my discomfort developed from class differences. I also “discovered” that I am a first-generation college student. Terms like these clarified and explained the differences that I had not been able to put into words and helped me find a few other students with whom I could relate. I realize that there are many students on campus who come from working class families and countless students who are first generation. However, I frequently find that because we are at different points in our lives, we have little in common. Those differences make me, sometimes irrationally, uncomfortable. I know that there are very few students on campus who have jobs and that, out of those who do, very few of them rely on those jobs to pay for food or bills or rent. Many students on campus come from liberal families that have instilled progressive values into them from a very young age. Countless students engage in excessive drinking and smoking which I, having done it for most of my adolescence, have moved on from. Even small things like the fascination that most students have with the play Hamilton seem elitist and therefore out of my reach.

Fortunately, now that I have access to this new vocabulary I am better able to recognize the reasons for my feelings. That is a tool I wish I had had access to before my time at Smith. Yet, recently, I have realized that I wish I did not see the differences between my peers and I so clearly. Because I have such an amazing and supportive group of friends at home, my relationships at Smith can be awkward and inconsequential in comparison. Differences between my peers and I cause rifts in both social discourse and ritual. As a result, my experience at college has been lonely. Although I originally blamed other students for creating the divide between us, I am also at fault for our lack of meaningful communication. Over time, I have subconsciously cultivated an intense prejudice against the wealthy and elite. Because of this, I often misjudge others before getting to know them simply because we come from different social classes. Lately, I have been spending more time getting to my peers and attempting to look past our differences. I approach this by thinking of my experience at Smith as if I were an anthropologist and the college is my field site. I try to consider every student and professor here to be subjects who behave in ways that I simply do not understand. More importantly I strive not to perceive those unfamiliar actions as negative experiences that divide us. Instead, I aspire to understand where the other students come from. Everyone experiences struggle in their lives and social class is far from the only factor that generates adversity. I hope to work on listening to those hardships and putting them into perspective by striving for less biased interactions. Consequently, I hope to be able to recognize why my biases exist and how they play into the formation of my relationships at Smith and elsewhere.

 

Tiffany Wilt ’17is a transfer student from Montgomery Community College. She was born and raised on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. and currently calls Wheaton, Maryland her home. After graduation this Spring, Tiffany plans on attending Georgetown University to complete a Masters degree in Latin American Studies.

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Special Issue: Cultural Encounters

When I Discuss Anthropology with People in China

Recently, one of my friends said to me, “All anthropologists are lonely.” I had never really thought about the loneliness of anthropologists until that moment. For a long time, I have agreed with the view that almost all humans are lonely, so her comment somewhat sounded like a cliché. However, after a second rumination, I began to understand what she was referring to: anthropologists have an additional layer of loneliness, because they consciously choose to take a step away from a community to acquire a more effective perspective to critically observe, analyze, and criticize social dynamics. I revisited this idea a couple of times, and realized that as a Chinese international student majoring in anthropology at Smith College, I have indeed encountered interesting as well as bitter situations in which I experience this loneliness, particularly when I talk about anthropology outside classes. When I engage in such uncommon conversations with people in China, I have found my academic training and international experiences help me to untangle the invisibility and mysteriousness of the discipline back in my home country.

Anthropology is yet to be a part of public discussions in China. When I tell people that anthropology is my major, they have a hard time envisioning both my academic life at school and the discipline in general. No matter where the conversation happens – at my high school reunion party, at a bank when I was opening a new online account, in an Uber, at the museum where I was interning, or family meetings – the following question is always asked, “What is anthropology?” or, “What does anthropology do?” Sometimes, I hear other feedback such as, “Wait, I have only heard about sociology. What’s the difference?” “Are you talking about ethnology?” or, “Oh, that sounds like the study of the arts of minority ethnic groups in China.” These unexpected, sometimes slightly irritating comments indicate that most Chinese people have not yet established conceptions of modern anthropology as a research field. It takes me a lot of time to introduce the field and explain my experiences in most conversations. In the end, many of my listeners joke that I should prepare a short introduction essay on my smartphone, so that I can ask people to read it before clarifying people’s misunderstandings. (I am seriously considering this advice.) Since most Chinese I encounter lack a fundamental recognition of anthropology as a discipline, I have had many opportunities to analyze the reasons behind such unfamiliarity and to reexamine my own perceptions of the field.

The Chinese outside academia have a very vague impression of social science. The basic education system in the country focuses on science and humanities, and the subjects closest to social science include history, introductory politics and economics, and socialist ideologies. If people have not taken relevant social science courses in college, they probably have not had a chance of encountering, let alone knowing, any theories or research methods in the disciplines, unless they have read about them on the Internet. They might not be able to engage with anthropology’s basic tenet that almost all ideas and thoughts are culturally constructed and people are capable of self-reflecting on what they observe, which is critical not only for individuals’ lives but also for higher-level decision making in all social sectors.

For people who have occasionally heard about social science in China, their understandings of anthropology are largely different from what I view as American anthropology. Their responses reveal certain historical developments and theoretical advancements particular to Chinese anthropology and its own political environment. Chinese anthropology developed from British anthropology. It has its own history and respected anthropologists with whom I was less familiar. Though I could recognize a few European theorists and some early American anthropologists who had been discussed in my theory class at Smith, other scholars and theories were new to me. Chinese anthropology also acknowledges a distinct category of anthropologists from western countries who conducted their fieldwork in China. I needed to construct a new academic toolkit to understand their language of research. I noticed that the focus of Chinese anthropology was different from that of American anthropology. Chinese anthropology focused on minority ethnic groups in Yunnan, Guangxi, and other less-industrialized regions, while the American discipline expanded to study all social groups and industries in society. That is perhaps one of the main reasons that I found people were more familiar with terms and topics related to these minority ethnic groups than immigration, technology, or other heated sub-fields addressed in the U.S. Thus, I needed to insist on the existence of urban anthropology, science and technology studies, or even economic anthropology to people who tried to correct me that we might be talking about ethnology.

The last but perhaps very significant observation I had was about the conscious or unconscious patriotism existing in Chinese anthropological research. When I asked about the current direction of Chinese anthropology, people with some knowledge of the discipline sometimes suggested that Chinese researchers were trying to find their unique theories and paths of anthropological research instead of building on Western knowledge. These assertions derived largely from the broader social context of Chinese history in the last century; after the series of wars in the first half of the twentieth century and the subsequent development of a modern country, a nation-wide intention of regaining respect and rights in the international community emerged across Chinese society. However, the confrontation between communist and capitalist ideologies in larger global politics led to China’s amplified attempts at establishing the  visibility of its own political and economic achievements in a global community controlled by the assumed animosities of opponent countries. Consequently, patriotism seemed to become a political necessity, for the nation and for its citizens. In anthropology, domestic social scientists tried to construct their unique specific identities, contexts, and knowledge to gradually formulate the independence of the discipline.

As a student majoring in American anthropology, I then had to approach China and Chinese anthropology in a new way. Because the anthropologists in the two countries have created completely different paths for their research, I could not automatically interpret Chinese anthropology as though I have studied it, which I indeed have not. While I still identify as belonging to China, my anthropological training is distinctly American. My own opportunity to  study abroad has been a privilege and a chance for me to gain a singular experience. Though I see the unique traits of Chinese anthropology better now, I also want to deconstruct the complicated domestic puzzles in the Chinese practice of the discipline by applying insights from American academia. I continue to ask myself and will ask others: what is anthropology in China? And, as I pose these questions, I feel the loneliness of anthropologists that my friend and I discussed not too long ago.

 

Danyi Zeng ’17 is a senior majoring in anthropology at Smith College. She grew up in Southwest China and moved to the eastern coast of China with her family. With the experience of living in different areas and feeling the cultural diversity within the country, Danyi found anthropology is an inspiring discipline that offers her a highly self-reflexive toolkit to re-understand her own identities. Recently, she aims at bringing her knowledge and skills acquired from social science into real-world industries as well as seeking her further academic interests in East Asia.

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Fall 2014 Issue II: Adapting

A Scientific Theory of Adapting

Prologue: propose your theory

I begin at carbon.

Time goes by and I wonder what parts of me are like the rings of a tree that I can come back to count.

I begin at the earth’s orbit.

Time goes by and I cannot decide if I would rather dance through the monsoon, watch marigolds bloom, or pounce on a pile of sugar maple leaves.

I begin at evolution.

Time goes by and I wonder what I have inherited to escape extinction and what will become of me next.

 

Memoir: perform your experiments

I

In India, community is a way of life. Tradition dictates co-existence in large “joint families,” and this is where I began. Until the age of six, I did not leave this world.

VI

At the age of six, my family moved to Belgium, where I spent the next eight years at a British school. Here, I escaped bullies by playing with bugs instead and fended off the freezing weather with the excitement of first snowfalls. I learnt to hike the Black Forest Mountains and orienteer in the woods surrounding a former Belgian palace. Most importantly, it was in Belgium that I found the taste buds in me dedicated to odorous cheese.

XIV

At the age of fourteen, moving back to India did not feel like moving back home. Joint families were being dismissed as impractical and careers swallowed us. While we still fussed fondly over each other in the family, we now often had to let Skype be our proxy. I found new comforts in watching monsoon showers and learnt to keep windows closed, lest a monkey should stroll in and help itself to the bananas I’d saved for myself.

XVIII

At the age of eighteen, I took off once again, but this time alone, to the United States for four years of college. In this journey, first year’s excitement countered second year’s homesickness, while third year’s adventurous spirit clashed with fourth year’s unyielding demands to deliver a relentless work ethic. I learnt over potlucks and poetry readings that my new sisters would be from every continent and I wouldn’t try to hide the tears when alumnae came back with touching stories of how their best friends decades on were the Smithies they grew up with.

XXI

At the age of twenty-one, I returned to Europe for a semester in London. This city grew to be the melting pot that merged my childhood and adolescent homes, churning out a savoury mélange. While I let myself revel here in the British slang I had grown up with, I puzzled over how unbelievably at home I felt in this city I had never before lived in. Yet, I yearned for the sisterhood I had at Smith and the sense of community I had with my family in India.

 

Epilogue: analyze your results

What changes during each move is not the skeleton from which I am composed, the species to which I belong, or the axis on which my world rotates. Instead, what living abroad – although I could not tell you where abroad is anymore – has taught me is to embrace. Travel has the transformative power to breed new tongues, new friendships, and new outlooks. But travel also turns the lights on stark truths and uncomfortable realizations. Chapter XVIII was my greatest challenge despite it being lived in my first home. What stood in the way of my re-assimilation was an unfair expectation that time and evolution had paused in the eight years that I had lived away. However, during my recent return to Europe, to my second home, what played in my favor was a faith in the place to offer me what it had, rather than demand of it what I thought it ought to have. And it was thus that we lived in a state of symbiosis.

If there’s one thing I carry with me, it’s the habit to never say goodbye when I leave each new place I’ve imbibed. There is only ever “I will leave and be back,”for in Tamil, my mother tongue, that is what we say when parting. We will not leave people or places behind, but rather take them along and revisit them when we are miles away and desperately in need of a slice of home.

 

Venkataraman bio photoKrithika Venkataraman considers herself a modern nomad, pausing to think each time when asked where home is. Home, for her, spans three continents and her assimilation and re-assimilation across these has been purely organic, much like the molecules she studies as a student of biochemistry and neuroscience. As a citizen of the 21st century, she is witnessing a beautiful move towards a global culture, and it is to this culture that she belongs.

 

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