Pollock, David C., and Ruth E. Van Reken - Third Culture Kids

[oyceter]

(subtitled The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds, but it wouldn't fit in the subject field)

ETA: rachelmanija, this is the book I was talking about in the food post before. Offer to lend it still stands.

I liked this book more for what it wanted to say than for how it said it, if that makes any sense at all. Mostly I liked that little moment of revelation in which I went "Oh! There's a term for people like me." The premise is basically that third culture kids (TCKs) and ATCKs (adult third culture kids... er, you know what they mean) have more in common with each other, despite completely different cultural backgrounds, than they might have with people from cultural backgrounds that they partially share. Of course I generalize horribly when I say that I feel this is true, but in my own experience, having moved around to a different country is something that people have in common. Whether it's a closer bond than that shared by people who read the same books or watch the same TV shows is an entirely different matter.

My main problem with the book was just how anecdotal it all was. It's all good and fine to say that people's stories have similar threads to them, but I really wanted something much more substantive than aforementioned anecdotes. And then they took the anecdotes and began with common character traits of TCKs, and while that was sort of fun, part of me (most likely the bit still left over from AP Psychology in high school) kept thinking that the definitions were so vague and so flip-floppy that they could apply to anyone, not just TCKs. And once the authors began dispensing advice as to how to deal with TCKs (finding schools, etc.), it did get a little better. Well, mostly just the finding schools section, because it was more specific to the entire situation in which one is moving around. The others mostly just sounded like good overall family advice (aka. communicate with your kids. Duh).

Also, I kept getting confused by trying to find myself in the examples. Pollock defines a TCK as "a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents' culture" and adds that what distinguishes a TCK from an immigrant is the fact that there is the expectation that the TCK and family will eventually re-locate to the original home culture. I probably shouldn't be trying to make it so specific to fit me, but since I bought the book mostly for that reason, I did anyway. So I had a rather hard time figuring out what was supposed to be my home culture and what was the host culture. America should technically be the home culture, because that's where I first lived, and I have sort of adopted the host culture of Taiwan in a way that many of the other TCKs do. But according to the definition, it doesn't quite work, because America isn't my parents' culture. Whenever I try to figure out culture and nationality in context of my own life, I just end up with a giant mess on my hands. Pollock does briefly say something about children born in the host culture while their parents are staying there, but doesn't go into detail, and thereby skips the entire section I'm interested in for navel-gazing purposes.

I also wanted a large, fat study on if TCKs did have a sort of signature worldview, and what were common problems and benefits and etc, with lots of statistics and graphs that I would probably end up skimming over anyway. Actually, now that I think about it, I don't really want some giant psychology text. I want some giant treatise on culture and authenticity and liminality and the imagined communities of nation and ethnicity and the problems thereof. Of course, that's pretty much what I always want....

Comments

Re: immigrants

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

But there seems to be this push (at least among people I know back in Taiwan) to want all the material benefits America has to offer (education, English, better living standards) and somehow try to preserve "Chinese-ness" if there is such thing, except the kids usually end up self-defining themselves as American. The weirdest thing is that I've noticed an interesting trend of Asian-Americans gravitating toward Chinese classes and Asian Studies in college as a sort of way to explore roots... I wonder if some form of this happens with everyone? Maybe college just brings out a desire to do these things?

Actually that sort of echoes my experience again, because while the grandkids weren't interested in the folktales, Hungarian food, &c &c, while we were growing up, nearly all of us tried to learn Hungarian once we were in our 20s (with really sad results. Hungarian is not a language you want to attempt with an adult brain). The same thing even happened with my mother, who was bilingual til about five, then refused to speak Hungarian and forgot it all -- she tried to learn it again later as well, with about as much success as the rest of us. I think partly it's as people grow older they get more curious about their families and where they come from -- or children stop rebelling and see their families as halfway interesting, instead of smothering -- and in modern colleges you do have a lot more cultural offerings than even 20 years ago; also I think when kids go to college all of a sudden you're out in the world, on your own, having to define yourself, and suddenly your family looks more interesting, or at least it's something to fall back on. -- just me rambling, really.

Re: immigrants

[oyceter]

Yeah, me too ^_^. After years and years of completely scoffing at Chinese classes back in high school, I ended up being an East Asian Studies major. But yes, I still regret that I didn't concentrate more on learning Chinese back when I lived in Taiwan, where it would have been ten times easier.

I think when kids go to college all of a sudden you're out in the world, on your own, having to define yourself, and suddenly your family looks more interesting, or at least it's something to fall back on. -- just me rambling, really.

That's how I felt in college! Like there was nothing really to hang on to, so I started by doing research into my own past -- all the stories of my grandpa being in the Navy, my grandparents having to immigrate to Taiwan from China because of the war, all that suddenly started being more interesting to me. Of course, half of being in EAS was also because I wanted to learn Japanese so I could write my thesis on Japanese girls' comics.

Re: immigrants

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

That's how I felt in college! Like there was nothing really to hang on to, so I started by doing research into my own past -- all the stories of my grandpa being in the Navy, my grandparents having to immigrate to Taiwan from China because of the war, all that suddenly started being more interesting to me. Of course, half of being in EAS was also because I wanted to learn Japanese so I could write my thesis on Japanese girls' comics.

Ooh my. Did you?

I'd love to find some kind of record of my grandpa emigrating (supposedly through Ellis Island) in I think the mid-20s, but haven't had any luck so far (admittedly have not tried that hard). But I can't say I'm exactly enthused about a lot of Hungarian cooking, because so much of it is based on FAT. As in lard. As in pouring off bacon grease and saving it up in a jar (which my grandma used to do). But apparently it works for East European peasants, cause my grandpa is on his way to his 102nd birthday and hasn't had a stroke or dimming of mental faculties and I think his cardiac health is fine as well....