RP2: Alienation

I really appreciated the Ang, Palumbo, and Parreñas and Siu readings. Those readings as well as our class discussions about diaspora have helped me negotiate some of my own experiences and sense of placement.

“Displacement from the homeland under the nexus of an unequal global political and economic system, the simultaneous experience of alienation and the maintenance of affiliation to both the country of residence and the homeland, and finally the sense of collective consciousness and connectivity with other people displaced from the homeland across the diasporic terrain,” is a definition of the experience of diaspora used by Parreñas and Siu. In 2006, my parents and I were relocated to China due to the construction of a new chemical plant. Over the next five years, we would return to the US in the summer and occasionally in the winter to visit family. Otherwise, US politics and events were experienced indirectly if we experienced them at all. Stuff like the 2008 election and whatnot was a blip on the radar compared to the uprisings in Tibet and the Xinjiang Autonomous Region or the unrest in Thailand. There also weren’t many students from the US at the school I attended or at the branch of the company my parents worked at, which increased the sense of distance from the “homeland”. But that kind of experience was really common at my school there, so it wasn’t really an issue. People came and went, Shanghai changed, and those of us there changed with it. Eventually we decided to move back so I could be better able to attend college in the US. I’d be able to have more class options in junior and senior year, and it would be easier to get informed about different colleges.

The sense of alienation came after we moved back to Midland. I ended up in a different school district than the one I did in elementary school. Most of the students had known each other since at least the beginning of high school. I did have a couple of friends who I’d kept in contact with while I was in China, so it wasn’t like I was all alone or anything. But there were simply these fundamental differences in experience. I had never taken US history or US literature, for example. Midland is also much, much smaller than Shanghai (40,000 people compared to over 20 million). In general, life became incredibly different in a very short amount of time. I just didn’t really feel like I belonged anywhere. 

Through the readings’ various discussions on diaspora and alienation, I already feel more equipped to work through what I’ve been feeling and move forward with those feelings. It has been complicated negotiating my feelings since my parents agreed to move to China and involved me in our decision process, so it isn’t like we were forced to move and move back. I also think it’s interesting that my sense of alienation became exponentially stronger after moving back to the US compared to what it was in China. While the readings aren’t necessarily directly relevant to my experiences, the ideas in them have helped me better understand how I have felt over the past three years.