Other than myself/my other self (Trinh T. Minh-ha)

I really enjoyed this article not only for its content but also because of the fluidity of the words. I had never read Minh-ha's work but had heard wonderful things about her writing. The way she writes, although for an academic purpose, sounds almost poetic. I didn't feel stressed when reading this piece. It especially spoke to me on issues of language and identity. Even though I am not visibly marginalized, I am a minority in Canada based on my language and heritage. I have felt this marginalized not so much while I was living in the National Capital but more so in my hometown when I was growing up.

The author begins her by writing about language and it is not 'It' that travels but the 'I' that carries a few fragments of it as we travel. We take bits and pieces of our pasts and move forward in forming our own identity. She explains that language "is the site of return and the site of change" in that it changes its rules as it goes. I see language as part of the self. I often feel challenged and conflicted with my identity as a Francophone. I cherish my mother tongue very dearly however it has become increasingly difficult to preserve it as I move around the country and encounter new people who do not share this same language. This is especially true of my current situation here in Newfoundland. I feel as though I have left part of my language back home, even back in Ottawa and have only taken certain pieces of this identity with me. I feel as though I have done this because I fear not being understood. I also feel as though what I have taken with me and use (not very often) is not personal but like what Minh-na writes of exiled writers= choice of tales no longer belong to them as individuals. I speak not for myself but for my 'people'. (Now I realize that this article is speaking of 'others' in terms of races and ethnicities and that my Francophone identity perhaps does not compare but it is somewhat along the same lines of what she is describing.)When I go back to the origin of my language, I feel like a stranger because I have not spoken it for a significant amount of time and have not tried hard enough to preserve my individual identity. I hear it in my dialect and as I search for my words because I can only think of them in English.

Minh-na also argues that as you come to love your new ‘home’, it is thus implied, you will immediately be sent back to your old 'home' where you are bound to undergo again another form of estrangement. (13) So she is saying that once you become comfortable in new surrounding whatever that may be, you can then be your true self once again. However it is difficult to go back to your old self in a new setting I think. Although you may value your identity and your language for example, part of you feels displaced and misunderstood. This often results in performing a variation of your true identity to ‘fit in’. Once you become fully comfortable, it risky to bring forth your true identity. Isn’t it? A trivial example of this is a personal intimate relationship. When you first meet or start a new relationship, very often we do not feel at ease being ourselves in this new and uncertain environment. Once the relationship is more stable and you feel "at home", bits and pieces of your original self begin to show. This is not always a positive thing as it can result in rejection from the partner. So in relation to what the author is discussing, those who are exiled, the experience (…) is never simply binary (…), [It is] hard to be stranger and hard to stop being one.

Finally, I want to bring up the significance of her idea that by assimilating or conforming the self can get lost. This is something I’ve been bringing up all throughout the semester in my posts during the semester. I’ve been working through the idea of knowing who I am. In writing these pieces I have come to the realization that in the past I have often worried too much about what others thought and tried to conform to what was/is considered ‘normal’ cultural practices. But as I think I’ve mentioned before, in assimilating myself, I felt as though parts of the ‘real me’ had faded away. It was until I reminded myself of my true identity that I started to accept the fact that I was not going to conform to ways of dressing, or speaking or consuming for example. However, and I want to end on this, as Minh-na reminds us, "to strive for likeness to the original - which is ultimately an impossible task - is to forget that for something to live on, it has to be transformed. So I have learned that I do not want to conform but, in order for my true ‘self’ to live on, it has to change in the process. I cannot be who I was 10 years ago for example. This means embracing my new surrounding and taking bits and pieces that will not completely disrupt my identity but make only make it richer.