Affirming identity

I read Greg Mortenson 's children's version of Three Cups of Tea to a group of 4 year olds last week. It was their 100th read aloud book and the reading had evolved into a highly anticipated event. They were listening to every word.

The book first describes Mortenson as a mountain climber who goes to Pakistan to climb K2. He become ill and is nursed back to health by people in the village of Korphe who find him. They learn later that he is a nurse and refer to him as Dr. Greg. Grateful for their care, Dr. Greg makes a promise to help build schools for the children of Korphe. At one point, after hearing both references to the same man, a child asks, "Can you be two things at the same time, a mountain climber and a nurse?" I take a moment to think of the appropriate response, but another child says, "Yes. See my babysitter is a babysitter and an actress," and another child says, "I'm a kid and I'm an animal expert!" 

I had recently been told by a teacher in our high school that his concern is how students foster a sense that you belong or you don't based on the way they define themselves and their sense of group. This pressure to be more like the group or to risk exclusion pressures many students to feel they have to make hard choices about how they define themselves. The community can, in effect, shut down the possibility that a person can be identified by more than one "thing" by expecting a person to choose among the possibilities to better fit into the group or to work toward a more one-dimensional identity. Kenji Yoshino raises the same question in his book, Covering. As a student and a young man, he struggled with how to be a gay male and an Asian American male and a lawyer when each identifier was not always compatible in the daily life of the others. 

I just viewed Mai's America  on YouTube. It's the story of an exchange student's experience living in the American South (Mississippi and Louisiana) and searching for her identify as her environment pushes her to see herself from new perspectives. At every turn Mai is forced to think about her identity as she tries to build new relationships far from her home and family. It reveals the great human desire to fit in or belong and the hard work of identity development.

When a four year old says with confidence that someone she knows can be two things there is great hope. She, in her moment of human development, knows that one part of forming an identity is how you see yourself reflected back through other's eyes. She is doing that all the time as she listens, sees, and watches to understand what others are telling her about who she is. Her babysitter is lucky to have her as a babysittee.