Following are three student writers as they draft their paragraphs for the essay.
Observe how they discuss the theme of identity,
linking it to mobility and culture in their paragraphs.
Do you find the evidence presented convincing?
Are you persuaded by their ideas?
Let's look at what they've written for their first drops of their paragraphs.
You can either listen to the lecture as the student writers read their drafts,
or you can download their essays and read their work yourself.
Let's look at Ada's draft,
where she discusses her identity as someone whose parents have crossed racial borders.
Growing up, I've always known I was different,
even within my own home and family context in Nairobi.
Having a German father and a Kenyan mother meant I could also speak fluent German,
and because of my white German father I looked
different to the other children I grew up with in my neighborhood.
It took a long time for them to accept me as one of them,
even though I could speak Swahili,
I knew all of the local games and underwent all of the cultural rites of passage.
As far as I was concerned I was African,
just like my older sister who was born out of
my mother's previous marriage to a Kenyan teacher,
who had passed on when my sister was eight.
My sister was 10 when I was born and she has helped me
overcome many challenges as a child who looked different in our neighborhood.
As a married couple,
my parents had crossed a racial border and I
bore the brunt of that racial crossing as a child,
and also later as a student and as an adult working in
a foreign country in a highly competitive and cut-throat environment,
where I had to learn how to fit in,
how to compromise on things I held dear to me in order to survive and succeed.
It has not been an easy journey for me,
and now that I am also a mother,
I want to make sure my child is spared some of the trauma that I underwent.
I still bare those childhood scars and it has taken me
nearly 40 years of crossing different types of physical, psychological,
and even spiritual borders,
to learn how to grapple with an identity that's mine,
that I own, that has allowed me to say that I am comfortable being me.
In this essay, I wish to show that identity is not static,
it does not remain the same when it crosses from one space into another space.
Parts of one's identity does not change where one is
confronted with the enormous challenge of being a minority, an outsider.
I wish to argue that it takes courage and hard work to retain
a true sense of self in foreign context and that one is often at
a great risk of completely losing one's true sense of self
if one does not have a strong sense of home identity to draw on.
So, as much as identity changes when crossing borders,
there's also a part of identity that is unique to
you and that gives one a sense of "this is me."
In this essay, I'll draw on the works of the Sichone and
Blommeart to show how in the process of crossing borders,
the boundaries surrounding identity are policed,
how these identities are perceived by others and redefined,
how they become politicized,
and how they value changes even though some things stay the same.
Crossing the border carries great risk and
also possibility: the risk of losing any sense of who you were
and also the possibility of rediscovering a new
you that will allow you to feel at home and at peace with yourself.
Now, let's look at Ziggy's who defines himself primarily in terms of a black Zulu man.
I identify as a proud black Zulu man.
I was born on South African soil as part of the born-free generation.
I have escaped much of the hardships that my ancestors
had to endure under the oppressive apartheid regime,
where they were stripped of their identities as proud black Zulu men and
women and systematically reduced to the status of being a servant boys and girls,
in the eyes a racist and oppressive white system of the law.
The history of my people shows that my forebears were forcibly removed from
their homes under the apartheid government and sent to live in impoverished Bantustans,
where they were nothing more than a cheap source of migrant labour,
saving the white-owned mining industry in the very country of their birth.
These once proud Zulu men,
who had earned their right in the true Zulu tradition to be called men,
found that as they moved in and out of
the borders that defined their Bantustans to stand to work in the mines of SA,
their Zulu identities were accused by the apartheid government to
the simple nameless status of "a black migrant worker".
It took blood, sweat,
and many tears for my family to establish a successful black-owned business,
and an extremely cognisant of the types of sacrifices that were made to get us here,
to once again proclaim our proud Zulu heritage.
In our fast-paced and globalizing world,
we have reached a stage of mobility that allows us to cross any number of borders,
nationally, on the continent,
and internationally, in a matter of hours.
This has placed immense strain on
our identities and has made the concept of migrancy a global phenomenon.
When our own African continent,
those entering South African borders in seek of work have been
subjected to extreme xenophobic attacks (Sichone, 2008).
This movement from familiar to strange places changes the meanings of
things we are familiar with and which we regard as part of our identity.
(Blommeart, 2005), crossing borders
therefore affects the ways in which individuals view and enacts their identities.
As in the xenophobic attacks in South Africa,
reactions to foreigners and migrants can be extreme,
expressing itself in black-on-black violence.
In this essay, I draw on Woodward's (1997) theorizing of identity and
Blommeart's (2005) concept of "mobility"
and what it means to move from one context into another.
I want to look at the issue of black identity in particular,
and I want to argue that,
black identities that are mobile and that are engaged in border crossing to seek work,
are far more at risk of being devalued and negatively stereotyped, (Sichone,
2008) than that of white identities that are also border crossing.
The historical artifacts of white privilege and
black suffering therefore persist and must be confronted at all times.
Last up, we have Joey,
who provides a perspective on what it means to hold on to
a particular sexual orientation that is frowned upon by mainstream society.
So crossing borders is something I want to chat about today.
The LGBTQIA community, have walked
a very fine line with respect to revealing and hiding their identities,
and very often, they simply had no choice in the matter.
I want to make people aware of their own prejudices towards gays.
Sichone (2008) states quite nicely how prejudices towards outsiders can lead to violence,
as is the case of xenophobia.
We need to learn how to value each other,
even though we are different.
And I want to engage (Blommeart,
2005) to show that even though the meanings of things and
symbols can change and value when a person moves around from place to place,
that the choice to change one's identity must rest with the individual,
even though it is difficult to do so.
One ultimately has to live with the decisions one makes
about who one is and how one wants to identify.
Ada, Zigi, and Joey have presented
very interesting perspectives of identity, mobility, and culture.
In the next lecture,
I will give them some feedback on their paragraphs and
specifically the positions that they've
taken and how they have used evidence to support their stance.
Gideon NomdoLecturer
Aditi HunmaLecturer
