CAKE | 11 — Here we go

I am Polish. Born and raised. I have a flat head and the existential dread to show for it. I also thrive on fatalism. And yet, when among Polish at a family gathering I feel like an imposter. I speak their language but I can never seem to drop the false accent. After many years in Germany I somehow have lost the ability to relate. Standing in the kitchen with my sister, my mom and the nephews, aunts and uncles, listening to them talk, I sometimes feel like I am only in it for the food.

This is the conflict of displacement, of not being able to identify neither with the normative nor with the native, and ultimately overwritten narrative. My view of Polish identity is limited to the things that were preserved in our migration to Germany. Things that many immigrants desperately hold on to amid the currents of new possibilities. Like my father's jars of homemade pickles. And my mother’s tendency to revert to Catholicism in times of despair. Or our propensity for insecurity. Though the latter might have more to do with us being immigrants than with Polish identity itself. My German attributes derive from things I had to adapt to and traits I adopted, some of them reluctantly so. Oscillating between these two countries and two cultures is challenging at best. Most of the time it’s exhausting. After a while some leave in despair and in search for the third space. Something of their own in which they can negotiate their selves again. I certainly did. I don’t quite know how to be Polish, I will definitely never be German enough but trying on American for size for a couple of years didn’t get me anywhere either.

What constitutes an immigrant experience is a fabricated and distorted narrative. When looking at me you would never assume I was an immigrant. And I possess enough self-reflection to understand that mine is the light version of an immigrant life. I am as white as it gets with no evident markers of distinction others can point at. After many years of struggle I now lead a privileged life in Europe. I can only imagine how much racist vitriol hurts. I have only experienced sprinkels of it. There have always been people who exhibit apprehension as soon as they encounter somebody other than themselves. Immigration has always caused tensions and frequently brings out the worst in people. Nothing new here. Yet the immigrant who has found herself within this discourse is even more distressed, having been thrown into unfamiliar territory and lacking the skills to navigate it. Immigration is the deep end of identity. Our individual self-concept derives from our cultural inventory of signs. If our cultural inscription does not correspond with the context, if we cannot even read the signs surrounding us, our self-concept has to be altered accordingly. And this is what's hard. “Immigration is an ontological crisis because you are forced to negotiate the conditions of your selfhood under the perpetually changing existential circumstances,” explains Aleksandar Hemon’s narrator in “The Lives of Others” in The Book of My Lives. The consolidation of two distinct identities, the emplotment of the new self, confronts the immigrant with challenges people without a migratory background typically do not experience, at least not to such an extent. 

After many years in Germany and lessons in integration and travels I have come to terms with the idea that home is not a static concept but an ever-shifting paradigm. One I will have to continue to renegotiate. The feeling of displacement has become a way of life. And I am oddly fine with it. Though I still find the thought of being able to go back to where you came from astounding. The sheer possibility to return to the city you were born in, to the same streets, the same house or apartment and to sit at the same table with the same set of faces. It's staggering and sadly it's not for me.

A few years ago Taiye Selasi famously inquired not to ask her where she was from but to ask where she's local. She dismisses the concept of multinationalism for the idea of multilocalism. Countries and borders can disappear, she says. But cultures remain. As do places we have inhabited. Her sense of self derives from these places and the people and cultures that have constructed them. I, too am local in places scattered around the globe that have had a profound impact on my sense of self. I still know the way to some of these places by heart and feel an inexplicable, instant connection as soon as I return. But Selasi's concept is a privileged version of migration. Mobility is a coveted value and many do not have the means to travel and improve their lives via immigration. They lack the necessary money, the passport, the visa, the connections or the education to leave – or the permission to stay. Being local in a globalized world can be as much a sign of social deprivation and degradation as it is to her the source of a sense of belonging.

And yet. This is what sustains me. Tiny particles of other places and its cultures. Where I am from is wherever I go. All these places I have carved out for myself in this world and its people constitute who I am today. What I think. What I like. How I treat others. And what I eat. I have tasted life in various corners of the world. Mom's chicken giblets and her fried carp, beets with horseradish, Nutella on rolls, fresh corn from a farm stand in Michigan, oysters in Maine, Janine's sherry liver, the wedding pizza in New York, ramen in Tokyo, oysters in Chicago, pasta in Brunate, whiskey in Edinburgh, even the Peruvian potatoes at the Christmas Market in Essen of all places, ice cream with Christie, and so many other offerings. These are all ingredients of my life so far. Maybe I really am only in it for the food after all.