Yeah, lost is the right word, I'd say. I never thought I'd be part of the process. But it's one of those things where you kind of look at the situation and ask yourself, What am I striving to keep? For me, being Chilean meant the Spanish language, dropped-s's included; a history of diaspora after Pinochet; songs from the sixties that talked about revolution and poverty and power and justice; various foods that my mother cooked; the Chilean expats I grew up with in Ottawa...
Since my mother's death, I have nobody to speak Spanish with, and the dialects of other Latinos often leave me confused. Even the Spanish spoken by Chileans today is foreign to me; picture trying to understand people talking about Epic Fail and saying D'oh! and My bad when your slang consists of "groovy" and "can you dig it?" and you don't know what to call the interwebs or DVDs. The diaspora mostly returned to Chile after 17 years of exile. The songs that I learned are as familiar to modern Chileans as Hey Jude, Quarter to Three, and Pinball Wizard. Ideas of revolution or social justice are very passe, apparently. My mom didn't cook a lot of Chilean food in the last few years she was alive, since she lived with a Franco-Ontarian and had Canadian grandkids. Besides, there's a lot of beef in there. Most of the Chilean expats I grew up with went back to Chile, or were friends of my mother's, whom I lost touch with after her death.
The culture itself apparently (I'm told) prides itself on devotion to family - extended family, that is - with people respecting their elders (as in, obeying them) until they die. Chilean men are Men, not househusbands who actually, you know, do dishes and take care of their kids. Chilean women are real women, who actually care about their appearance and wear makeup and heels to the grocery store and don't try to be men. The Church is not all-important, but everyone belongs to it and goes on important days like weddings and funerals and Christmas.
Um... as a person who was treated like a capable, independent adult by her mother since age 17 or so, who's married to a former househusband who can in fact do the bloody dishes and still feel like a man, as a woman who only wears heels and makeup if it's required by her job, and doesn't think of herself as a pseudo-man for doing so, as an atheist... I eventually had to ask myself what connection I actually had. And found to my dismay that the answer was, not a hell of a lot :(
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 02:15 am (UTC)Since my mother's death, I have nobody to speak Spanish with, and the dialects of other Latinos often leave me confused. Even the Spanish spoken by Chileans today is foreign to me; picture trying to understand people talking about Epic Fail and saying D'oh! and My bad when your slang consists of "groovy" and "can you dig it?" and you don't know what to call the interwebs or DVDs. The diaspora mostly returned to Chile after 17 years of exile. The songs that I learned are as familiar to modern Chileans as Hey Jude, Quarter to Three, and Pinball Wizard. Ideas of revolution or social justice are very passe, apparently. My mom didn't cook a lot of Chilean food in the last few years she was alive, since she lived with a Franco-Ontarian and had Canadian grandkids. Besides, there's a lot of beef in there. Most of the Chilean expats I grew up with went back to Chile, or were friends of my mother's, whom I lost touch with after her death.
The culture itself apparently (I'm told) prides itself on devotion to family - extended family, that is - with people respecting their elders (as in, obeying them) until they die. Chilean men are Men, not househusbands who actually, you know, do dishes and take care of their kids. Chilean women are real women, who actually care about their appearance and wear makeup and heels to the grocery store and don't try to be men. The Church is not all-important, but everyone belongs to it and goes on important days like weddings and funerals and Christmas.
Um... as a person who was treated like a capable, independent adult by her mother since age 17 or so, who's married to a former househusband who can in fact do the bloody dishes and still feel like a man, as a woman who only wears heels and makeup if it's required by her job, and doesn't think of herself as a pseudo-man for doing so, as an atheist... I eventually had to ask myself what connection I actually had. And found to my dismay that the answer was, not a hell of a lot :(