The American society around me looked at me and saw Japanese. Then, when I was 19, I went to Japan for the first time. And suddenly - what a shock - I realized I wasn't Japanese; they saw me as American. It was an enormous relief. Now I just appreciate being exactly in the middle.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the complexity of cultural identity and the relief of finding a balance between two cultures.
Ruth Ozeki shares her experience of navigating cultural identity as someone who appears Japanese but is perceived as American. Her journey to Japan and the realization that she is viewed as American by the Japanese people provided her with a sense of relief, as she embraces her unique position between cultures and values the blending of her identities.
In practice
During a presentation on cultural diversity, one might use this quote to illustrate the personal journey of understanding identity.
People have always heard voices. Sometimes they're called shamans, sometimes they're called mad, and sometimes they're called fiction writers. I always feel lucky that I live in a culture where fiction writing is legal and not seen as pathology.
I did documentary film for a long time, and I spent a lot of time behind the camera, fervently wishing that the reality I was filming would conform to my narrative propriety. But you can't control it.
Fiction is an elemental force, which has the power to shape reality in its own image - or images, I should say - because reality, like light, exists not only as a single point or particle, but also as an array of possibilities.
What's fascinating to me is the way that multiple stories go into creating any world - a fictional world, but certainly the world that we live in as well. Of course, I cannot control that world. I can just control the fictional world.
Both life and death manifest in every moment of existence. Our human body appears and disappears moment by moment, without cease, and this ceaseless arising and passing away is what we experience as time and being. They are not separate. They are one thing, and in even a fraction of a second, we have the opportunity to choose, and to turn the course of our action either toward the attainment of truth or away from it. Each instant is utterly critical to the whole world.
I have a pretty good memory, but memories are time beings, too, like cherry blossoms or ginkgo leaves; for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die.
I remember, as a child, lying in my bed at night praying that I would wake up the next day and be a girl, to be my authentic self, and to just have my family be proud of me. I remember looking into the mirror struggling to say just two words, 'I'm transgender.'
I have my own identity ... The whole Michael thing does drive me nuts sometimes because people won't leave it alone. He's bald, I have hair. He's almost 40, I'm 22. Seriously though, I wish people would let it be and let me just be Kobe.
When I first came to Harvard, I thought to myself, 'What kind of an Indian am I?' because I did not grow up on a reservation. But being an Indian is a combination of things. It's your blood. It's your spirituality. And it's fighting for the Indian people.
I don't feel I was 'born American,' but my homeland was denied to me after the end of World War II, and I craved something I could identify with. When I became a student at Harvard in the 1950s, America very quickly filled the vacuum. I felt I was American, but I think it's more revealing of America how quickly others here accepted me.
There is something missing in Asian America. They're missing people to tell them, 'It's okay to be who you are - you belong. Just be unapologetically you; you're not less than anybody else.'
Even though I'm a hairdresser and I love doing hair, I feel like I don't look like a groomer. When I think of how a groomer would look in relation to the first version of 'Queer Eye,' I feel like I don't fit in that box.
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