00:00:30.300 --> 00:00:30.300
here

00:00:39.300 --> 00:00:42.000
ground control to Major Tom

00:00:46.100 --> 00:00:49.200
ground control to Major Tom

00:00:53.400 --> 00:00:56.900
take your protein pills and put your

00:00:56.900 --> 00:00:58.100
helmets on.

00:01:00.500 --> 00:01:01.400
Ground Control

00:01:12.600 --> 00:01:13.500
Oh.

00:01:17.100 --> 00:01:20.100
What where are you from?

00:01:22.700 --> 00:01:24.300
That's a good question. What?

00:01:25.100 --> 00:01:25.100
Are you?

00:01:27.500 --> 00:01:27.800
Yeah.

00:01:39.300 --> 00:01:40.400
I'm in Marathi.

00:01:41.100 --> 00:01:42.500
a suburb of Cairo Egypt

00:01:43.100 --> 00:01:43.600
9th grade

00:01:45.300 --> 00:01:46.300
Biking to school behind my brother.

00:01:47.300 --> 00:01:48.000
Helmets off.

00:01:48.600 --> 00:01:51.700
We put them on at home in front of our mom.

00:01:53.400 --> 00:01:55.400
And then remove them when we're out of sight.

00:01:56.200 --> 00:01:56.700
It's hot.

00:01:58.100 --> 00:01:59.700
The trees are brown with dust.

00:02:01.100 --> 00:02:03.000
I smell of Anais Anais perfume.

00:02:05.700 --> 00:02:06.500
and sardines

00:02:07.400 --> 00:02:10.300
Was my turn to feed the cats this morning. I can never open

00:02:10.300 --> 00:02:12.200
the can of sardines without splattering myself.

00:02:13.700 --> 00:02:14.900
sweats trickling down my back

00:02:15.800 --> 00:02:18.600
But my face and hands are chilled by the wind. My

00:02:18.600 --> 00:02:19.200
speed is creating.

00:02:20.600 --> 00:02:21.900
So I'm hot and cold at the same time.

00:02:24.700 --> 00:02:25.100
It's weird.

00:02:26.900 --> 00:02:28.300
This is the sixth country we've lived in.

00:02:29.100 --> 00:02:31.500
My dad works for Xerox. They move us around.

00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:35.100
You know how they're Foreign Service families and

00:02:35.100 --> 00:02:37.000
military brats.

00:02:37.700 --> 00:02:39.100
missionary kids

00:02:39.900 --> 00:02:40.800
I'm a business brand.

00:02:42.400 --> 00:02:45.100
cars driven by a young man with young women in the

00:02:45.100 --> 00:02:45.800
passenger seats

00:02:50.200 --> 00:02:53.300
close leaving millimeters between the car and the bike

00:02:53.300 --> 00:02:55.100
the bike and the sidewalk.

00:02:55.700 --> 00:02:58.400
I feel the car tease the

00:02:58.400 --> 00:02:59.300
air by my leg.

00:03:00.100 --> 00:03:03.300
I stop pedaling the balance and I keep my bike from hitting the

00:03:03.300 --> 00:03:06.900
sidewalk. Once I managed to Glide onto the

00:03:06.900 --> 00:03:09.800
sidewalk off hate in

00:03:09.800 --> 00:03:12.100
this neighborhood where there are no such things

00:03:12.100 --> 00:03:15.500
as ramped edges and the sidewalks are broken

00:03:15.500 --> 00:03:17.800
and covered in rubble.

00:03:18.500 --> 00:03:20.100
And we could never find out why.

00:03:20.800 --> 00:03:23.100
That's just how sidewalks and Modi looked back.

00:03:23.100 --> 00:03:26.400
Then you can't say it was poverty. We lived in other poor

00:03:26.400 --> 00:03:28.300
cities that did not look like the sidewalks have been bombed.

00:03:29.300 --> 00:03:32.700
Anyway, I can't avoid all the broken Concrete in

00:03:32.700 --> 00:03:35.900
the sidewalk. So soon I find myself flying head

00:03:35.900 --> 00:03:36.400
first.

00:03:37.200 --> 00:03:40.300
Through the air like Supergirl only dark

00:03:40.300 --> 00:03:43.600
getting clumsy and now my body smash kids cross

00:03:43.600 --> 00:03:44.400
the concrete.

00:03:48.300 --> 00:03:49.100
Can't breathe.

00:03:51.600 --> 00:03:53.900
knees and Palms scraped and bloody and

00:03:54.800 --> 00:03:56.100
helmet drop somewhere.

00:03:57.900 --> 00:04:00.000
And the people in the car laugh.

00:04:01.600 --> 00:04:02.400
And Drift Away.

00:04:05.900 --> 00:04:07.200
My jeans are torn.

00:04:08.200 --> 00:04:11.500
But I never patched them because now they are super fashionable.

00:04:13.200 --> 00:04:14.300
It's the 80s.

00:04:17.100 --> 00:04:20.300
I was relieved to learn recently that drivers in Philadelphia

00:04:20.300 --> 00:04:23.400
like to force bicyclists off the

00:04:23.400 --> 00:04:24.100
shoulder of the road.

00:04:26.100 --> 00:04:29.900
I was relieved because I felt bad about having

00:04:29.900 --> 00:04:32.600
any bad thoughts or feelings

00:04:32.600 --> 00:04:34.700
or memories about Egypt.

00:04:35.200 --> 00:04:36.400
Because I grew up in different countries.

00:04:37.200 --> 00:04:39.800
So I was trained by all of the adults around me.

00:04:40.600 --> 00:04:41.200
to concentrate

00:04:42.100 --> 00:04:42.800
on the positive

00:04:44.500 --> 00:04:46.400
and never complain.

00:04:49.900 --> 00:04:52.400
So I've always felt bad about thinking that that

00:04:52.400 --> 00:04:55.600
type of very dangerous very cruel Behavior

00:04:55.600 --> 00:04:55.900
was

00:04:57.100 --> 00:04:58.000
somehow

00:04:59.400 --> 00:05:02.800
Egyptian I'd feel so guilty and

00:05:02.800 --> 00:05:06.100
then I think but that only happened in

00:05:05.100 --> 00:05:08.800
Egypt and then think well many many

00:05:08.800 --> 00:05:11.200
other bad things happen all over the world. And then

00:05:11.200 --> 00:05:11.800
yeah.

00:05:14.200 --> 00:05:17.000
But that only happened in Egypt and then what are

00:05:17.100 --> 00:05:18.200
you trying to say? And

00:05:21.200 --> 00:05:22.800
oh, it happens in a stage, too.

00:05:23.600 --> 00:05:24.100
Yes.

00:05:25.600 --> 00:05:26.600
USA

00:05:29.100 --> 00:05:29.500
a few

00:05:30.300 --> 00:05:31.000
burden

00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:32.500
lifted

00:05:33.800 --> 00:05:36.700
Welcome to the mind of This

00:05:36.700 --> 00:05:37.900
Global nomad.

00:05:38.600 --> 00:05:40.500
Also known as a third culture kid.

00:05:41.400 --> 00:05:42.300
or tck

00:05:47.700 --> 00:05:50.100
shishi K is someone who has spent a significant part of their

00:05:50.100 --> 00:05:53.000
childhood outside their passport country.

00:05:53.800 --> 00:05:57.200
or in a culture that's not their parents'

00:05:56.200 --> 00:05:58.000
culture and

00:05:59.600 --> 00:06:02.000
Doesn't have full ownership.

00:06:03.100 --> 00:06:04.000
in any culture

00:06:08.700 --> 00:06:08.800
well

00:06:10.100 --> 00:06:11.700
I have more than one passport.

00:06:12.700 --> 00:06:15.100
And my parents are from different cultures.

00:06:17.300 --> 00:06:17.600
to the fun

00:06:18.700 --> 00:06:21.200
When I take standardized tests, well, I

00:06:21.200 --> 00:06:23.700
am growing up and they ask for my ethnicity.

00:06:24.800 --> 00:06:26.200
I check off the other box.

00:06:27.500 --> 00:06:29.600
Because I will not choose.

00:06:30.400 --> 00:06:32.900
between my parents

00:06:35.600 --> 00:06:37.400
still I have gotten so good.

00:06:39.100 --> 00:06:39.700
and it

00:06:40.800 --> 00:06:43.500
Blending here the American accent no

00:06:43.500 --> 00:06:46.700
the American affect but now people ask.

00:06:48.900 --> 00:06:50.200
Are you from?

00:06:51.300 --> 00:06:52.200
the Midwest

00:06:58.200 --> 00:07:01.700
which makes me feel like my life never happened.

00:07:02.700 --> 00:07:04.100
Like like I'm not here.

00:07:04.800 --> 00:07:07.200
Like I am lost in some Vortex all

00:07:07.200 --> 00:07:11.700
alone for eternity and whatever people see isn't me?

00:07:12.800 --> 00:07:13.800
like like they can't

00:07:14.900 --> 00:07:15.500
see me.

00:07:17.200 --> 00:07:17.500
and maybe

00:07:19.300 --> 00:07:20.000
it's my fault.

00:07:21.100 --> 00:07:22.500
Because I am so good.

00:07:23.800 --> 00:07:24.800
at adapting

00:07:27.300 --> 00:07:28.600
but in my earlier years

00:07:30.300 --> 00:07:30.700
nobody

00:07:31.700 --> 00:07:33.800
thought I was from the Midwest.

00:07:35.200 --> 00:07:38.300
I can tell you how I identified in the

00:07:38.300 --> 00:07:38.500
beginning.

00:07:42.900 --> 00:07:43.800
guatemal

00:07:46.400 --> 00:07:49.700
an my brother and I are born in Guatemala City Guatemala to

00:07:49.700 --> 00:07:52.400
a Guatemalan dad of Chinese Spanish descent.

00:07:53.300 --> 00:07:57.100
And an American mom of European hodgepodge descent.

00:07:56.100 --> 00:08:00.100
I am my Chinese grandfather's favorite

00:07:59.100 --> 00:08:02.600
grandkid, but I'm what

00:08:02.600 --> 00:08:03.300
they're my dick.

00:08:06.900 --> 00:08:08.400
What day?

00:08:08.800 --> 00:08:10.500
That's what Guatemalans called Guatemala.

00:08:11.200 --> 00:08:11.700
smells like

00:08:12.600 --> 00:08:15.400
wood fire burning cooking tortillas

00:08:16.300 --> 00:08:17.200
and Frijoles

00:08:18.300 --> 00:08:21.300
the sky is an astonishing blue.

00:08:22.500 --> 00:08:25.300
And the capital sits on a plateau so it has that feeling of

00:08:25.300 --> 00:08:26.200
crispness.

00:08:27.100 --> 00:08:27.600
and elevation

00:08:29.600 --> 00:08:31.700
Chris mass in guape is the

00:08:33.400 --> 00:08:35.200
gigantic nasimiento

00:08:36.500 --> 00:08:37.100
or nativity scene

00:08:38.900 --> 00:08:41.700
in the living room of the big house

00:08:41.700 --> 00:08:44.300
where my dad and grandmother were born through a

00:08:44.300 --> 00:08:47.600
beautiful statues of Mary and Joseph about yay

00:08:47.600 --> 00:08:50.000
high and a baby Jesus the size of

00:08:50.300 --> 00:08:53.800
a real newborn and there's Shepherds and sheep

00:08:53.800 --> 00:08:56.200
and the three kings and an

00:08:56.200 --> 00:08:56.700
angel in flight.

00:08:59.200 --> 00:09:01.000
And it smells like Sawdust.

00:09:01.800 --> 00:09:04.700
Because they use died sawdust for the Green Grass

00:09:04.700 --> 00:09:06.300
and the brown dirt.

00:09:06.900 --> 00:09:08.200
the red path

00:09:08.900 --> 00:09:09.500
to the manger

00:09:11.200 --> 00:09:14.800
in front of it. My grandmother is oldest sister.

00:09:15.800 --> 00:09:18.400
leads the litanya responsorial

00:09:19.400 --> 00:09:23.100
Santa Maria shreka Partners sometimes

00:09:25.200 --> 00:09:26.900
and the kids all drum on turtle shells.

00:09:32.700 --> 00:09:36.300
And at some point everybody's sings many

00:09:35.300 --> 00:09:41.600
five stars. See us baby losses.

00:09:43.300 --> 00:09:45.800
Santa Maria immaculada, so he

00:09:47.900 --> 00:09:49.500
the firecrackers at midnight.

00:09:50.400 --> 00:09:52.300
dinner at 2 am

00:09:53.600 --> 00:09:55.100
and there is always.

00:09:56.400 --> 00:09:58.800
a food fight with nuts

00:10:00.200 --> 00:10:01.500
and marshmallows

00:10:03.200 --> 00:10:06.500
And if you are very lucky when you're maybe four years

00:10:06.500 --> 00:10:10.100
old, my grandmother's two brothers rush

00:10:09.100 --> 00:10:10.300
you.

00:10:10.600 --> 00:10:13.800
Face around you and make

00:10:13.800 --> 00:10:16.300
violent motions around you well musting up

00:10:16.300 --> 00:10:19.400
your hair and messing up your clothes and making funny noises and

00:10:19.400 --> 00:10:20.500
talk.

00:10:26.200 --> 00:10:27.300
It's incredibly violent.

00:10:29.200 --> 00:10:30.600
But you remain unharmed?

00:10:32.200 --> 00:10:33.700
You never feel safer.

00:10:34.800 --> 00:10:35.700
or more loved

00:10:38.400 --> 00:10:38.700
later

00:10:39.700 --> 00:10:42.500
when we live in Fairfield County, Connecticut

00:10:45.500 --> 00:10:47.300
one of my sixth grade classmates

00:10:48.700 --> 00:10:51.800
My dad says there's a Civil War in

00:10:51.800 --> 00:10:52.600
Guatemala.

00:10:54.100 --> 00:10:58.300
It's not just because there's curfews the

00:10:57.300 --> 00:10:59.100
occasional car bomb.

00:10:59.900 --> 00:11:00.300
It's not.

00:11:01.100 --> 00:11:02.000
war on

00:11:03.300 --> 00:11:04.300
Yeah, there is.

00:11:05.100 --> 00:11:06.400
My dad says there is.

00:11:07.400 --> 00:11:08.500
You don't know about it.

00:11:09.100 --> 00:11:10.900
You're probably on the wrong side.

00:11:12.500 --> 00:11:13.700
At home. I tell my mom.

00:11:15.100 --> 00:11:18.400
You didn't tell him there's no war on

00:11:18.400 --> 00:11:19.200
you you didn't.

00:11:21.400 --> 00:11:22.600
Turns out there's a war on.

00:11:23.400 --> 00:11:26.600
And it's one of the reasons we left Guatemala, but

00:11:26.600 --> 00:11:29.300
nobody tells me until the sixth grade.

00:11:30.200 --> 00:11:31.700
My parents never say anything.

00:11:33.800 --> 00:11:34.900
Maybe they're shielding me.

00:11:35.800 --> 00:11:38.100
And the words in the highlands and my family's in the capital.

00:11:38.800 --> 00:11:41.800
My dad tells me yes before I

00:11:41.800 --> 00:11:44.800
worked for Xerox. I worked in your grandfather's

00:11:44.800 --> 00:11:46.000
thermos Factory.

00:11:47.100 --> 00:11:50.900
Every day the army truck would drive by to

00:11:50.900 --> 00:11:51.500
recruit.

00:11:54.100 --> 00:11:55.000
kidnap

00:11:55.500 --> 00:11:56.700
no soldiers

00:11:57.700 --> 00:12:00.400
your mother would tell me and I tell the glass blowers. I

00:12:00.400 --> 00:12:00.800
can't see.

00:12:01.300 --> 00:12:03.900
And every time the truck around in the corner and out of sight the men would take off.

00:12:04.600 --> 00:12:06.400
In ones and twos across the cornfields.

00:12:07.200 --> 00:12:07.900
and disappear

00:12:09.800 --> 00:12:12.800
to make the four hour walk home.

00:12:17.500 --> 00:12:18.500
There is a war on.

00:12:20.500 --> 00:12:21.500
and genocide

00:12:25.800 --> 00:12:26.000
Oh.

00:12:28.100 --> 00:12:31.200
Huh? How can I say I'm Guatemalan when I haven't even

00:12:31.200 --> 00:12:34.300
known about this and and who who am I

00:12:34.300 --> 00:12:37.200
to complain when people misidentify me

00:12:37.200 --> 00:12:40.600
ethnically and nationally, which

00:12:40.600 --> 00:12:42.800
they do all the

00:12:44.800 --> 00:12:47.400
Time when I've been identifying, it's something I don't know

00:12:47.400 --> 00:12:49.200
the most important stuff about.

00:12:51.200 --> 00:12:53.400
So stupid and embarrassed.

00:12:54.200 --> 00:12:57.100
Like I've been caught flying, but I haven't.

00:12:57.800 --> 00:12:58.200
Oh.

00:12:59.700 --> 00:13:00.600
I'm just

00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:03.700
ignorant

00:13:04.700 --> 00:13:07.500
Which is the one thing I like to think I'm not

00:13:07.500 --> 00:13:10.400
because I have been so many more places in my classmates

00:13:10.400 --> 00:13:11.800
and I speak more than one language.

00:13:13.800 --> 00:13:14.700
And it doesn't matter.

00:13:16.700 --> 00:13:18.300
I wish my parents had told me sooner.

00:13:19.200 --> 00:13:19.400
because

00:13:20.500 --> 00:13:22.400
makes me feel like I've been playing make believe.

00:13:24.600 --> 00:13:26.000
Without knowing I was playing it.

00:13:30.300 --> 00:13:30.500
still

00:13:31.700 --> 00:13:33.300
I feel very connected to go out there.

00:13:34.700 --> 00:13:35.800
Half my family is there.

00:13:37.100 --> 00:13:37.700
It's where I was born.

00:13:39.900 --> 00:13:42.300
I should probably tell you now that we move

00:13:42.300 --> 00:13:45.100
when I'm only a year old, but we come back.

00:13:46.100 --> 00:13:46.600
for Christmas

00:13:48.100 --> 00:13:50.200
almost every year for decades.

00:13:51.300 --> 00:13:54.800
The one place we come back to consistently and

00:13:54.800 --> 00:13:56.700
it's almost never in the news.

00:13:57.700 --> 00:14:00.000
The one place that's kind of sort of

00:14:00.100 --> 00:14:03.000
home base ish for me. Well, I'm growing up.

00:14:04.900 --> 00:14:07.700
Does not exist for anybody outside of

00:14:07.700 --> 00:14:07.900
it.

00:14:09.500 --> 00:14:10.500
Unless they're Guatemalan.

00:14:12.400 --> 00:14:15.300
from guate Xerox moves our family to Costa Rica

00:14:15.300 --> 00:14:16.400
just in time to

00:14:17.300 --> 00:14:19.700
because the Army starting to pay us visits at home.

00:14:20.800 --> 00:14:22.100
My parents hide the guns.

00:14:24.700 --> 00:14:26.400
Everybody has guns. There's a war on.

00:14:28.200 --> 00:14:30.800
And I think just that everybody has guns underneath the mattresses.

00:14:31.700 --> 00:14:34.200
of my brothers and my

00:14:35.100 --> 00:14:38.200
Cribs and put our Saint Bernard and Great Dane

00:14:38.200 --> 00:14:41.100
in front of the bedroom door and my folks say

00:14:41.100 --> 00:14:41.700
to the soldiers.

00:14:44.500 --> 00:14:47.100
Los Nunez estan dormiendo

00:14:51.900 --> 00:14:52.200
h

00:14:54.600 --> 00:14:55.500
Los Niners

00:14:58.900 --> 00:15:00.100
The soldiers never entered the room.

00:15:07.400 --> 00:15:10.100
Xerox moves us to San Jose Costa Rica because they need a new

00:15:10.100 --> 00:15:13.400
general manager there and they offer the job to my dad

00:15:13.400 --> 00:15:16.800
who is more than happy to get his family out of Guatemala.

00:15:17.300 --> 00:15:20.700
Now my memories from Costa Rica are mostly foggy

00:15:20.700 --> 00:15:23.400
because I was so little when we

00:15:23.400 --> 00:15:23.800
lived there.

00:15:24.400 --> 00:15:25.600
But I can't tell you this.

00:15:26.700 --> 00:15:29.200
When we got tarika, everybody talked to

00:15:29.200 --> 00:15:29.600
me in Spanish.

00:15:30.500 --> 00:15:33.900
But not my papa who talked to my brother Juanito and

00:15:33.900 --> 00:15:36.300
me in English because they want us

00:15:36.300 --> 00:15:37.600
to be bilingual.

00:15:40.200 --> 00:15:41.400
My English not so good.

00:15:42.500 --> 00:15:45.200
When Mama asks, where do our neighbors live?

00:15:46.300 --> 00:15:46.400
I say

00:15:47.900 --> 00:15:49.500
oh in the housewife.

00:15:51.700 --> 00:15:54.500
Costa Rica is also where people start asking my mom if I

00:15:54.500 --> 00:15:57.100
am adopted from Hawaii when they see us together.

00:15:59.300 --> 00:16:00.600
They look surprised.

00:16:01.300 --> 00:16:01.900
when she says

00:16:05.900 --> 00:16:06.200
no.

00:16:07.400 --> 00:16:08.400
And it doesn't bother her.

00:16:09.300 --> 00:16:12.300
But it bothers me when I hear about it years later because I

00:16:12.300 --> 00:16:14.900
always looked like both of my parents.

00:16:16.500 --> 00:16:17.300
including my mom

00:16:18.300 --> 00:16:19.700
but with different eyes and coloring

00:16:20.700 --> 00:16:21.700
and when I am growing up

00:16:23.700 --> 00:16:24.500
That's all.

00:16:25.400 --> 00:16:27.400
anybody see

00:16:42.900 --> 00:16:45.400
Xerox moves us today USA. I'm only

00:16:45.400 --> 00:16:46.600
three and a half so I just go with it.

00:16:51.800 --> 00:16:53.000
Fairfield County, Connecticut

00:16:53.700 --> 00:16:57.500
with four whole seasons

00:16:58.200 --> 00:17:00.400
including winter

00:17:02.100 --> 00:17:04.500
and the people are even colder than the winter.

00:17:06.800 --> 00:17:10.100
And we're American tooth. Oh, we've

00:17:09.100 --> 00:17:11.500
come to our other home.

00:17:12.600 --> 00:17:13.000
I guess.

00:17:15.700 --> 00:17:17.100
We watch TV after school.

00:17:17.800 --> 00:17:19.600
The kids in the commercials look so happy.

00:17:21.300 --> 00:17:24.900
my valony and the birthday it always the

00:17:24.900 --> 00:17:26.800
AR by baloney and

00:17:31.400 --> 00:17:32.700
nobody on TV

00:17:34.300 --> 00:17:35.100
looks like me.

00:17:37.900 --> 00:17:40.100
except maybe Spock on the Star Trek

00:17:40.100 --> 00:17:40.600
reruns

00:17:41.600 --> 00:17:44.000
Leonard Nimoy Nimoy Nimoy must be

00:17:44.100 --> 00:17:45.700
a Japanese name. It's not Chinese.

00:17:47.100 --> 00:17:47.500
I know that.

00:17:48.800 --> 00:17:51.600
When I'm five in kindergarten walking the recess

00:17:51.600 --> 00:17:54.200
one day three boys surround me

00:17:54.200 --> 00:17:57.000
Chinese Japanese. What are you?

00:17:58.600 --> 00:18:02.600
Oh, I'm Chinese taking Chinese.

00:18:03.800 --> 00:18:06.000
Soon as I get home, I rush to the

00:18:06.300 --> 00:18:06.600
bathroom mirror.

00:18:08.100 --> 00:18:08.700
See what they're talking about.

00:18:11.600 --> 00:18:12.200
I don't see it.

00:18:15.800 --> 00:18:16.100
Oh.

00:18:18.200 --> 00:18:18.800
Is it bad?

00:18:20.500 --> 00:18:23.100
Next day when it happens again. I tell my mom.

00:18:28.200 --> 00:18:28.800
Tell them.

00:18:29.600 --> 00:18:30.100
the Chinese

00:18:31.200 --> 00:18:32.500
had great doctors

00:18:33.300 --> 00:18:35.000
before anyone else did

00:18:36.100 --> 00:18:39.700
tell them the Chinese invented

00:18:39.700 --> 00:18:40.800
gunpowder and

00:18:41.500 --> 00:18:42.400
fireworks

00:18:43.300 --> 00:18:45.900
Your grandfather was a diplomat for Shanghai Sheikh.

00:18:46.600 --> 00:18:49.500
So next day when it happens again, I'm Chinese and we

00:18:49.500 --> 00:18:52.500
are great doctors and fireworks and my grandfather.

00:18:54.200 --> 00:18:55.100
cheeky Chinese

00:18:56.200 --> 00:18:59.100
So next day when it happens again as it does

00:18:59.100 --> 00:19:03.000
like clockwork Chinese Japanese. What are

00:19:02.000 --> 00:19:03.000
you

00:19:04.400 --> 00:19:10.700
I want a mile and it works.

00:19:11.600 --> 00:19:15.300
They've never heard of what

00:19:14.300 --> 00:19:16.600
in my life.

00:19:18.400 --> 00:19:22.000
When we come back to what there from Fairfield County for the first time my grandmother

00:19:21.000 --> 00:19:22.900
good.

00:19:29.300 --> 00:19:29.800
Thank you.

00:19:37.200 --> 00:19:40.600
I want to say yes, I have grown and yes, I miss Guatemala.

00:19:42.300 --> 00:19:45.100
But I can't get the words out. And when I

00:19:45.100 --> 00:19:48.800
finally get the words they come out whole thing

00:19:48.800 --> 00:19:49.900
Lee.

00:19:50.300 --> 00:19:51.800
My godmother tells my grandmother.

00:19:54.200 --> 00:19:55.400
Nice. Thank you.

00:19:59.900 --> 00:20:01.700
So as smart as my brother.

00:20:03.100 --> 00:20:04.400
What the words won't come.

00:20:05.200 --> 00:20:07.700
I understand everything. Everyone says to me.

00:20:08.700 --> 00:20:09.900
I can't talk to my family.

00:20:12.900 --> 00:20:14.400
They're already treating me different.

00:20:16.100 --> 00:20:17.700
What if they stop talking to me?

00:20:18.400 --> 00:20:19.600
Because they think I can't understand.

00:20:21.600 --> 00:20:25.000
Feels like I'm falling into a big hole.

00:20:25.500 --> 00:20:26.800
And I'm gonna be left behind.

00:20:28.200 --> 00:20:28.500
lost

00:20:31.900 --> 00:20:34.200
back in the States. I'm trying to say something

00:20:34.200 --> 00:20:37.600
to Philomena our housekeeper who came with us from what they Myla.

00:20:40.300 --> 00:20:42.600
But I can't find the words.

00:20:43.400 --> 00:20:46.700
English and I

00:20:46.700 --> 00:20:49.300
can't take it anymore grandma broom and I'm trying to

00:20:49.300 --> 00:20:52.700
beat her with it, but it's too heavy because I'm too small

00:20:52.700 --> 00:20:55.700
and my brother nonisa no and Filomena

00:20:55.700 --> 00:21:01.100
I know in no, no need anything. No, no,

00:21:00.100 --> 00:21:01.600
no, no, no, no.

00:21:07.200 --> 00:21:08.500
Filomena left her home

00:21:16.500 --> 00:21:18.400
in the highlands of Guatemala

00:21:20.800 --> 00:21:24.200
to live in the coldest unfriendliest town

00:21:23.200 --> 00:21:25.200
in New England

00:21:26.700 --> 00:21:28.100
to take care of my family.

00:21:30.500 --> 00:21:31.000
and me

00:21:33.500 --> 00:21:35.400
between my shyness and school

00:21:36.300 --> 00:21:39.700
And my minorities status basically friendless,

00:21:39.700 --> 00:21:42.600
so I fantasize all the

00:21:42.600 --> 00:21:42.700
time.

00:21:46.100 --> 00:21:49.600
Here I come to save the day. I'm the

00:21:49.600 --> 00:21:50.800
girl version of mighty.

00:21:52.800 --> 00:21:55.600
mouse version of Superman Superman

00:21:57.400 --> 00:21:58.600
Who's from another planet?

00:22:00.200 --> 00:22:03.400
At home, I'm clumsy. I spill milk and ice

00:22:03.400 --> 00:22:06.600
cream and my dad. Oh, honey. Look what

00:22:06.600 --> 00:22:09.600
you did. Come on, clean it up clean it

00:22:09.600 --> 00:22:09.600
up.

00:22:12.100 --> 00:22:13.500
Even when I'm not clumsy.

00:22:15.100 --> 00:22:16.400
I can never tell when he's gonna blow up.

00:22:21.700 --> 00:22:23.000
My brother is older than me.

00:22:23.800 --> 00:22:27.900
But I'm taller I grow

00:22:27.900 --> 00:22:28.500
faster.

00:22:29.200 --> 00:22:32.700
So at home, I shut up time. Don't be so stupid God.

00:22:35.500 --> 00:22:36.400
Can't seem to help myself.

00:22:38.200 --> 00:22:41.200
At the end of first grade my parents tell us

00:22:41.200 --> 00:22:43.100
Xerox is moving us.

00:22:43.900 --> 00:22:45.700
to Panama City

00:22:46.600 --> 00:22:47.600
Panama

00:22:59.200 --> 00:23:03.600
I'm six.

00:23:05.100 --> 00:23:09.800
when I step out of the plane, I'm immediately slammed by

00:23:09.800 --> 00:23:13.200
a wall of humidity and

00:23:12.200 --> 00:23:13.500
he

00:23:15.700 --> 00:23:18.300
First thing I want to do is peel off

00:23:18.300 --> 00:23:22.200
my clothes and dive into a pool of cold

00:23:21.200 --> 00:23:22.800
water.

00:23:24.300 --> 00:23:27.900
From the house. We live in in the city. I run Barefoot across

00:23:27.900 --> 00:23:30.200
the seating street with my best friend

00:23:30.200 --> 00:23:33.500
Susie. Look at a Coca Cola or orange Fanta.

00:23:34.900 --> 00:23:37.100
From the soda dispenser at the gas station

00:23:37.100 --> 00:23:38.900
cold soda.

00:23:39.200 --> 00:23:40.600
You know doing glass bottle.

00:23:41.200 --> 00:23:42.600
Maybe real sure.

00:23:44.500 --> 00:23:46.100
You have to cross the street again.

00:23:46.700 --> 00:23:49.100
And watch out for all the broken glass.

00:23:50.300 --> 00:23:51.300
the gutter water

00:23:52.200 --> 00:23:53.400
all the filth

00:23:54.100 --> 00:23:55.000
of the city

00:23:56.600 --> 00:23:58.500
under your bare.

00:23:59.200 --> 00:23:59.200
feet

00:24:01.300 --> 00:24:01.800
who cares?

00:24:02.600 --> 00:24:05.600
I'm a kid. I have friends. We're in

00:24:05.600 --> 00:24:06.200
Panama.

00:24:10.900 --> 00:24:11.600
and the Fanta

00:24:12.500 --> 00:24:14.000
tastes like paradise

00:24:17.600 --> 00:24:21.000
My Guatemalan grandmother is horrified when

00:24:20.300 --> 00:24:21.900
she sees.

00:24:23.900 --> 00:24:26.500
How Brown I am?

00:24:27.200 --> 00:24:28.300
every time we visit

00:24:34.900 --> 00:24:35.600
Ciety is this.

00:24:37.500 --> 00:24:40.700
her entire generation of upper

00:24:40.700 --> 00:24:43.100
class guatemaltekas including the part Chinese

00:24:43.100 --> 00:24:44.600
ones like my family are

00:24:46.300 --> 00:24:48.900
upset with keeping their light skin light.

00:24:50.800 --> 00:24:52.200
Because it means you're not indigenous.

00:24:53.300 --> 00:24:55.000
Which is the serving class in guate?

00:24:57.600 --> 00:24:58.400
Which you don't?

00:24:59.200 --> 00:24:59.800
want to be

00:25:01.500 --> 00:25:02.000
if you're not.

00:25:04.300 --> 00:25:07.200
But most people in Panama don't care about my

00:25:07.200 --> 00:25:10.100
color. Maybe they notice a Chinese and me

00:25:10.100 --> 00:25:11.500
they don't care.

00:25:12.900 --> 00:25:15.900
And I'm completely accepted at my

00:25:15.900 --> 00:25:17.900
American schools in the Canal Zone.

00:25:19.300 --> 00:25:22.300
I'm just another expat kid. I'm in

00:25:22.300 --> 00:25:22.900
the Girl Scouts.

00:25:23.600 --> 00:25:26.400
And when I'm not outside playing with my

00:25:26.400 --> 00:25:26.600
friends.

00:25:28.200 --> 00:25:29.300
Joe was very tall.

00:25:30.600 --> 00:25:31.800
thin and brown

00:25:33.100 --> 00:25:36.300
and reminded one of a cult for she never seemed to know what

00:25:36.300 --> 00:25:38.300
to do with her long limbs.

00:25:40.800 --> 00:25:43.200
I'm nine and I am Joe and Little Women

00:25:43.200 --> 00:25:46.700
I reread it over and over and

00:25:46.700 --> 00:25:48.500
all the black stallion books.

00:25:49.200 --> 00:25:50.500
and the Nancy Drew Mysteries

00:25:53.600 --> 00:25:56.800
There is a Light in the Attic Window of the old haunted

00:25:56.800 --> 00:25:56.900
house.

00:26:00.100 --> 00:26:03.800
It is one. Am I better investigate

00:26:03.800 --> 00:26:04.600
you?

00:26:08.900 --> 00:26:11.300
My family loves to read.

00:26:12.200 --> 00:26:15.900
A book is a world you escaped and

00:26:15.900 --> 00:26:20.100
you can leave it and come back whenever you

00:26:18.100 --> 00:26:20.700
want.

00:26:24.200 --> 00:26:27.300
Want some

00:26:27.300 --> 00:26:27.900
Eminem's?

00:26:30.100 --> 00:26:31.400
I'm watching the movie Grease.

00:26:32.700 --> 00:26:36.100
With my best friend Susie for the 22nd

00:26:35.100 --> 00:26:36.300
time.

00:26:38.300 --> 00:26:41.100
It never changes Danny and Sandy are always winning the

00:26:41.100 --> 00:26:41.800
dance contest.

00:26:42.600 --> 00:26:44.600
Cha-Cha always Moves In For The Kill

00:26:48.400 --> 00:26:50.000
Sandy always dresses like a hooker.

00:26:51.800 --> 00:26:52.600
smokes near the end

00:26:54.500 --> 00:26:55.100
and they always

00:26:56.200 --> 00:26:58.200
drive to

00:26:59.200 --> 00:26:59.700
Wow.

00:27:04.800 --> 00:27:06.800
after four years my parents tell us

00:27:07.400 --> 00:27:08.800
Xerox is moving us again.

00:27:24.700 --> 00:27:26.900
another town in Fairfield County

00:27:33.200 --> 00:27:33.700
sixth grade

00:27:34.700 --> 00:27:37.900
I'm a head taller that everybody else and

00:27:37.900 --> 00:27:40.700
several Shades Darker than most

00:27:40.700 --> 00:27:42.500
and I'm wearing glasses.

00:27:43.600 --> 00:27:45.300
And itchy New England clothing.

00:27:46.300 --> 00:27:47.700
like corduroys

00:27:48.900 --> 00:27:51.800
and the only kids at school. We'll talk to me at first the black

00:27:51.800 --> 00:27:54.400
girls in my class who are bust in from

00:27:54.400 --> 00:27:57.500
out of town because there are no black people

00:27:57.500 --> 00:27:59.200
in this.

00:28:00.100 --> 00:28:00.700
town

00:28:02.600 --> 00:28:05.400
and we play I'm almost 11 and we

00:28:05.400 --> 00:28:05.900
play

00:28:06.600 --> 00:28:07.200
tag

00:28:08.300 --> 00:28:10.000
and other games

00:28:11.800 --> 00:28:12.800
I keep

00:28:16.100 --> 00:28:16.600
losing

00:28:18.400 --> 00:28:20.100
because overnight I've gotten slow.

00:28:21.300 --> 00:28:24.900
It's like it's a different body. I don't recognize his body is these

00:28:24.900 --> 00:28:26.200
new hips and breasts growing in and

00:28:27.300 --> 00:28:29.300
I think that must be why I've gotten slow.

00:28:30.500 --> 00:28:31.300
and then make some kind of

00:28:32.200 --> 00:28:32.700
awful

00:28:35.700 --> 00:28:36.400
But I have friends.

00:28:38.600 --> 00:28:42.000
Who nobody else talks

00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:42.100
to?

00:28:43.500 --> 00:28:45.600
And nobody else plays.

00:28:46.500 --> 00:28:48.000
on the playground

00:28:52.100 --> 00:28:55.500
I'm torn between wanting to have fun with my new friends and not stand

00:28:55.500 --> 00:28:57.600
out too much from the majority.

00:28:58.600 --> 00:29:00.800
So I play with my friends at recess and

00:29:02.900 --> 00:29:03.800
around the other kids

00:29:05.800 --> 00:29:07.000
in the first couple weeks of school

00:29:07.900 --> 00:29:10.300
We're walking to the cafeteria when a

00:29:10.300 --> 00:29:11.200
bunch of boys come up to us.

00:29:11.800 --> 00:29:13.300
And stare at me.

00:29:15.300 --> 00:29:16.400
Are you black?

00:29:17.900 --> 00:29:18.100
Oh.

00:29:19.100 --> 00:29:21.100
I feel my friends spines.

00:29:21.800 --> 00:29:22.300
stiffen

00:29:24.100 --> 00:29:26.100
What are you?

00:29:27.700 --> 00:29:30.200
I don't know what I said. All I know is my friends heard something

00:29:30.200 --> 00:29:33.200
different when I said no. I meant you don't have to be the same

00:29:33.200 --> 00:29:35.000
color as your friends to be friends.

00:29:36.400 --> 00:29:37.200
But they heard.

00:29:38.600 --> 00:29:40.700
No, oh.

00:29:41.400 --> 00:29:44.100
I said that's not what I meant,

00:29:44.100 --> 00:29:47.700
but they won't look at me. They're not

00:29:47.700 --> 00:29:50.000
talking to me and I I don't have

00:29:50.100 --> 00:29:53.800
the words to say but you guys if you were Norwegian and

00:29:53.800 --> 00:29:56.100
he said are you Norwegian out of that? No.

00:29:57.600 --> 00:29:58.000
Because I'm not.

00:29:59.700 --> 00:30:01.000
And why do they care so much?

00:30:03.600 --> 00:30:06.300
Will they treat me differently depending on the

00:30:06.300 --> 00:30:07.400
ants?

00:30:09.600 --> 00:30:09.800
and

00:30:10.700 --> 00:30:13.200
why can't anybody see?

00:30:14.300 --> 00:30:15.200
What I am.

00:30:17.900 --> 00:30:19.300
But I'm almost 11.

00:30:20.300 --> 00:30:21.800
And I don't have the words.

00:30:23.200 --> 00:30:25.200
And my first friends and Fairfield County.

00:30:26.800 --> 00:30:28.200
Never speak to me again.

00:30:34.300 --> 00:30:38.400
Why do this stuff always happen in the state?

00:30:40.200 --> 00:30:41.300
this stuff never

00:30:44.800 --> 00:30:46.600
I mean, I know it happens everywhere.

00:30:48.800 --> 00:30:52.100
But no one ever asks me. What are

00:30:51.100 --> 00:30:52.400
you?

00:30:53.300 --> 00:30:54.200
in Central America

00:30:55.500 --> 00:30:58.900
That only happens in the states here in the states. No

00:30:58.900 --> 00:31:01.300
one will even share their seat on the school bus

00:31:01.300 --> 00:31:01.600
with me.

00:31:02.500 --> 00:31:06.600
Like I would be invading and defiling their

00:31:06.600 --> 00:31:08.100
personal space.

00:31:09.300 --> 00:31:10.600
So I sit in the back.

00:31:12.100 --> 00:31:14.600
Till I make friends with another misfit.

00:31:15.300 --> 00:31:16.600
Also known as an Australian.

00:31:19.600 --> 00:31:20.700
We both sit in the back.

00:31:25.300 --> 00:31:28.300
I don't know why this stuff has to happen to anybody anywhere. I'm eating a lot

00:31:28.300 --> 00:31:31.600
lots of bananas. Lots of whatever's in the refrigerator. Lots of

00:31:31.600 --> 00:31:35.000
whatever my newest friends don't eat at lunch and stuffing it

00:31:34.100 --> 00:31:37.700
down me helps me to stuff down the feelings. I

00:31:37.700 --> 00:31:40.200
don't want to feel and I don't want to think about

00:31:40.200 --> 00:31:43.300
it and my clothes are getting tight on this

00:31:43.300 --> 00:31:45.300
body. I don't recognize anyway.

00:31:47.200 --> 00:31:48.500
and the TV commercials

00:31:49.300 --> 00:31:51.400
take on real importance.

00:31:52.500 --> 00:31:56.100
Tab tab call of what a beautiful drink tap

00:31:55.100 --> 00:31:59.200
Tab cola for a beautiful people tap

00:31:58.200 --> 00:32:02.400
tab call let your beautiful Timmy great

00:32:02.400 --> 00:32:05.200
cold days. Just one calorie tab.

00:32:08.500 --> 00:32:11.700
All the commercials show a USA. I would love

00:32:11.700 --> 00:32:13.800
to live in.

00:32:16.100 --> 00:32:17.100
but don't

00:32:19.100 --> 00:32:22.700
I must be the problem. So I bury myself in books and naturally

00:32:22.700 --> 00:32:24.100
obsess.

00:32:25.200 --> 00:32:26.000
over Clark Gable

00:32:28.200 --> 00:32:31.400
First got a crush on him in Panama when I

00:32:31.400 --> 00:32:35.000
saw Judy Garland sing to him in That's Entertainment on

00:32:34.500 --> 00:32:37.600
video made me.

00:32:37.600 --> 00:32:38.500
Love you.

00:32:39.400 --> 00:32:43.300
I start writing a novel sit in the wild west with Gable.

00:32:44.700 --> 00:32:45.200
and me

00:32:52.100 --> 00:32:52.900
Well, hello there.

00:32:55.100 --> 00:32:55.300
Hello.

00:32:57.100 --> 00:33:01.000
I want to talk pretty thing like you doing in a dangerous town like this.

00:33:02.900 --> 00:33:03.900
It's not dangerous to me.

00:33:05.300 --> 00:33:06.300
I'm dangerous to it.

00:33:09.300 --> 00:33:10.000
That's all.

00:33:10.700 --> 00:33:13.100
You got some fire in you. I like that. No woman.

00:33:15.400 --> 00:33:16.900
There's more to it, but I will spare you.

00:33:20.200 --> 00:33:24.000
I would do anything to be Clark Gables girl.

00:33:24.900 --> 00:33:26.100
in a movie

00:33:27.800 --> 00:33:29.900
far away from real life

00:33:31.400 --> 00:33:34.500
when I'm in the middle of the seventh grade my parents tell

00:33:34.500 --> 00:33:37.500
my brother and me at dinner one night that Xerox

00:33:37.500 --> 00:33:40.500
is moving us to Casablanca, Morocco.

00:33:42.700 --> 00:33:44.200
I'm gonna be the new kid again.

00:33:47.300 --> 00:33:50.300
But considering what Fairfield County has been like I'm also kind of

00:33:50.300 --> 00:33:50.800
relieved.

00:33:51.600 --> 00:33:54.200
My family looks up Morocco in my

00:33:54.200 --> 00:33:55.400
dad's National Geographic.

00:34:00.100 --> 00:34:00.600
Wow.

00:34:17.100 --> 00:34:18.900
Casablanca eighth grade

00:34:19.900 --> 00:34:20.600
I'm walking to school.

00:34:21.900 --> 00:34:22.100
when

00:34:23.600 --> 00:34:24.200
There's a sudden.

00:34:26.500 --> 00:34:28.700
a sandstorm

00:34:29.700 --> 00:34:30.900
so fierce

00:34:31.900 --> 00:34:32.800
I get lost.

00:34:33.600 --> 00:34:34.900
between the street

00:34:36.400 --> 00:34:37.700
And the entrance to the school?

00:34:39.300 --> 00:34:41.400
It's maybe six feet.

00:34:42.600 --> 00:34:46.100
Up. I've taken out entire Bedouin

00:34:45.100 --> 00:34:47.200
tribes and there's a heart.

00:34:48.100 --> 00:34:51.600
It's a blizzard of brown you're blind and it hurts you being alive.

00:34:55.800 --> 00:34:58.300
Grabs my

00:34:58.300 --> 00:35:03.100
arm and Yanks me into the school Courtyard cutting cleaning.

00:35:04.800 --> 00:35:07.700
The Bow Wow, the school Guardian is rescued

00:35:07.700 --> 00:35:10.400
me. He speaks to me as he pulls me across the

00:35:10.400 --> 00:35:14.000
yard and to the corridor and into

00:35:13.400 --> 00:35:16.400
my first class his head wrappings

00:35:16.400 --> 00:35:19.500
all around his face. Now only his eyes are uncovered

00:35:19.500 --> 00:35:20.400
barely.

00:35:23.200 --> 00:35:25.400
I don't know what he's saying, but it's something compassionate I think.

00:35:26.800 --> 00:35:28.300
I don't speak Moroccan Arabic.

00:35:32.200 --> 00:35:33.400
He saved me.

00:35:36.400 --> 00:35:38.600
I spend the rest of the day in school fine.

00:35:41.300 --> 00:35:41.700
wine

00:35:44.200 --> 00:35:47.200
Because when you're the new kid, you're fine.

00:35:48.900 --> 00:35:49.800
by men and

00:35:56.200 --> 00:35:57.600
a bow of guards the building

00:35:58.400 --> 00:36:00.200
runs errands does basic maintenance

00:36:01.200 --> 00:36:05.700
traditionally about knows everything about everyone in

00:36:05.700 --> 00:36:06.900
the neighborhood.

00:36:07.900 --> 00:36:09.500
You don't hire a bow up.

00:36:10.200 --> 00:36:11.100
It comes with the house.

00:36:12.900 --> 00:36:15.500
My school's tall lean bowab is

00:36:15.500 --> 00:36:16.000
Steely eyed.

00:36:16.700 --> 00:36:17.500
and hook like

00:36:18.600 --> 00:36:20.800
and I think he hates me.

00:36:22.100 --> 00:36:23.100
from the way he looks

00:36:24.200 --> 00:36:24.900
at me

00:36:26.200 --> 00:36:29.200
but after he saves me, I think maybe he just

00:36:29.200 --> 00:36:32.500
doesn't smile much in public like many Moroccans.

00:36:34.800 --> 00:36:37.600
On our first morning in Casablanca. I'm 12.

00:36:38.500 --> 00:36:40.100
And I wake up it Dawn.

00:36:42.700 --> 00:36:43.200
to this

00:36:45.900 --> 00:36:46.500
and this

00:36:51.100 --> 00:36:51.800
so I get up.

00:36:52.500 --> 00:36:53.400
And look out the window.

00:36:55.300 --> 00:36:57.200
And see five.

00:36:58.300 --> 00:37:02.200
of the most beautiful Arabian stallions

00:37:03.300 --> 00:37:04.600
like fairy tale horses.

00:37:05.400 --> 00:37:07.500
straight out of my favorite childhood books

00:37:08.300 --> 00:37:11.900
and they're being led single file by writers down

00:37:11.900 --> 00:37:12.400
the street.

00:37:14.700 --> 00:37:18.000
Turns out we live next door to

00:37:17.100 --> 00:37:19.600
the king's Stables.

00:37:21.300 --> 00:37:22.800
There's a king here.

00:37:23.900 --> 00:37:24.600
We never see him.

00:37:25.400 --> 00:37:28.600
But living by a stables means there's a constant buzzing

00:37:28.600 --> 00:37:32.000
of huge black flies around our

00:37:31.000 --> 00:37:32.500
windows.

00:37:33.400 --> 00:37:35.100
flies so drunk

00:37:36.100 --> 00:37:39.100
from Horace manure that they can't

00:37:39.100 --> 00:37:40.100
really do anything.

00:37:42.400 --> 00:37:43.800
When we can't take it anymore.

00:37:45.800 --> 00:37:46.100
Oh.

00:37:48.700 --> 00:37:51.500
We've been posted in Casablanca for specific purpose.

00:37:52.400 --> 00:37:56.000
Xerox is losing money in Morocco and

00:37:55.200 --> 00:37:58.500
my dad's Mission as the new general manager is

00:37:58.500 --> 00:37:59.700
to set that to rights.

00:38:00.300 --> 00:38:02.900
Which means he spends the first several months in Kaza?

00:38:03.800 --> 00:38:07.200
Firing people who don't pull their

00:38:06.200 --> 00:38:08.100
weight.

00:38:09.100 --> 00:38:09.800
He comes home.

00:38:13.200 --> 00:38:14.100
late late at night

00:38:19.500 --> 00:38:19.900
Hello.

00:38:23.300 --> 00:38:25.700
Never seen him come home sad before.

00:38:28.100 --> 00:38:31.600
Morocco is like the moon to us

00:38:31.600 --> 00:38:34.500
at first. My mom takes me with her when she

00:38:34.500 --> 00:38:37.600
goes grocery shopping because it is so different

00:38:37.600 --> 00:38:38.500
here for us.

00:38:40.500 --> 00:38:40.700
She's scared.

00:38:47.100 --> 00:38:47.800
bonjour

00:38:49.100 --> 00:38:50.000
It's about here.

00:38:54.400 --> 00:38:56.400
Some of the women are all covered up.

00:38:57.400 --> 00:38:58.300
like ghosts

00:38:59.400 --> 00:39:00.500
summer in western clothes

00:39:01.700 --> 00:39:03.700
the signs are in French and Arabic.

00:39:04.300 --> 00:39:07.400
And my folks put my brother in me into Spanish schools.

00:39:08.800 --> 00:39:10.600
Yes in Morocco.

00:39:12.700 --> 00:39:16.600
Where Moroccan Arabic French amazing

00:39:15.600 --> 00:39:18.200
and other dialects are spoken,

00:39:18.200 --> 00:39:21.100
but it is time for us to fully regain Spanish.

00:39:22.900 --> 00:39:23.900
our native tongue

00:39:27.300 --> 00:39:28.700
breakfast on the first day of school

00:39:29.600 --> 00:39:30.100
eighth grade

00:39:31.300 --> 00:39:34.600
I started drinking coffee in the morning, which is a really nice not

00:39:34.600 --> 00:39:37.700
tradition because my dad makes it for me the way

00:39:37.700 --> 00:39:39.100
I like it with milk and sugar.

00:39:41.200 --> 00:39:44.300
The best part awaken up his folders in your

00:39:44.300 --> 00:39:44.800
cup.

00:39:46.300 --> 00:39:47.500
coffee makes my heart race

00:39:48.300 --> 00:39:48.600
Yeah.

00:39:49.600 --> 00:39:51.500
Now I'm in the car on the way to school and my heart.

00:39:57.200 --> 00:40:01.700
I cannot understand a word anyone says

00:40:01.700 --> 00:40:01.900
to me.

00:40:05.400 --> 00:40:06.000
my name

00:40:12.800 --> 00:40:14.500
not the toymanando.

00:40:16.400 --> 00:40:20.700
Perdido it's not the fancy. Castillian

00:40:19.700 --> 00:40:22.500
Kings Spanish. I'd expected.

00:40:22.500 --> 00:40:23.700
It's this regular.

00:40:24.900 --> 00:40:26.300
Street Spaniard Spanish

00:40:26.900 --> 00:40:29.300
They don't have any students from Latin America.

00:40:30.200 --> 00:40:32.100
They sure don't have any Americans.

00:40:33.200 --> 00:40:36.300
I am completely foreign.

00:40:38.600 --> 00:40:40.200
at the foreign School

00:40:43.600 --> 00:40:44.900
They look at me like this.

00:40:47.500 --> 00:40:50.500
and it takes a whole year for my Spanish to improve because

00:40:50.500 --> 00:40:53.800
you need to practice and all

00:40:53.800 --> 00:40:54.300
I do is

00:40:57.500 --> 00:41:00.200
Have I mentioned that we're learning classical Arabic in

00:41:00.200 --> 00:41:03.900
school? I have to learn the entire Arabic alphabet overnight.

00:41:03.900 --> 00:41:07.700
So the next day when the teacher Kim with

00:41:07.700 --> 00:41:10.500
the most flood Como escribe.

00:41:17.400 --> 00:41:20.300
So I go to the board.

00:41:21.600 --> 00:41:22.100
and right

00:41:24.200 --> 00:41:25.900
give me

00:41:29.700 --> 00:41:30.300
Which means?

00:41:32.200 --> 00:41:32.700
big

00:41:37.400 --> 00:41:41.300
perfect Miracles. Okay, I

00:41:41.300 --> 00:41:44.500
Una estudiante impressionante.

00:41:46.200 --> 00:41:47.500
He thinks I'm impressive.

00:41:48.400 --> 00:41:48.700
see

00:41:49.600 --> 00:41:52.700
I am smart. I am

00:41:52.700 --> 00:41:54.400
good at languages.

00:41:56.700 --> 00:41:59.000
Accept Spanish my native language.

00:42:01.300 --> 00:42:03.700
Have I mentioned that during recess everybody speaks French?

00:42:05.100 --> 00:42:06.000
My French gets pretty good.

00:42:08.200 --> 00:42:10.900
So I develop a kind of multiple personality disorder.

00:42:11.800 --> 00:42:12.600
That's cool. I'm

00:42:14.100 --> 00:42:14.400
see

00:42:16.100 --> 00:42:17.300
Yeah, where?

00:42:18.700 --> 00:42:21.900
But with my friends at the Churchill Club this old

00:42:21.900 --> 00:42:24.800
Villa that's like a home away from home for all

00:42:24.800 --> 00:42:26.900
the English speakers in Kaza.

00:42:27.400 --> 00:42:30.800
Where weed wafts through the air at night there. I'm

00:42:30.800 --> 00:42:31.300
hey.

00:42:33.400 --> 00:42:34.000
How you doing?

00:42:35.200 --> 00:42:36.200
And I learned how to flirt.

00:42:37.400 --> 00:42:38.000
and one night

00:42:39.200 --> 00:42:40.500
a boy takes me by the hand.

00:42:41.500 --> 00:42:44.200
Out to the swing set in the garden.

00:42:45.300 --> 00:42:48.500
And I lean back against one of the poles like this

00:42:48.500 --> 00:42:49.900
because I'm three inches taller than he is.

00:42:51.800 --> 00:42:53.600
And he puts his hands on my hips.

00:42:54.800 --> 00:42:56.600
And gives me my first.

00:42:58.100 --> 00:42:58.700
kiss

00:43:01.100 --> 00:43:02.800
which is a lot of tongue.

00:43:05.200 --> 00:43:06.400
Just kind of exhausting.

00:43:07.400 --> 00:43:11.200
We get better at it and he does a lot of James deaning.

00:43:19.800 --> 00:43:23.400
He's my

00:43:23.400 --> 00:43:27.300
first boyfriend and I learned how it feels to lie

00:43:26.300 --> 00:43:29.800
beneath and entire boy

00:43:29.800 --> 00:43:32.500
fully clothed and make out.

00:43:34.700 --> 00:43:35.800
for hours

00:43:36.800 --> 00:43:40.500
and I am all for it at

00:43:39.500 --> 00:43:41.000
the dinner table.

00:43:42.400 --> 00:43:42.800
at home

00:43:43.700 --> 00:43:43.900
I

00:43:55.700 --> 00:43:57.400
and my parents never say anything.

00:43:59.600 --> 00:44:00.500
She's nice.

00:44:02.200 --> 00:44:03.000
Indoors I'm safe.

00:44:04.500 --> 00:44:05.100
Outdoors

00:44:06.500 --> 00:44:08.700
on the sidewalks of Kaza

00:44:09.400 --> 00:44:10.600
when I walk from my school.

00:44:11.900 --> 00:44:14.200
to the ESL school where Mom

00:44:14.200 --> 00:44:14.300
teaches

00:44:15.100 --> 00:44:19.200
I get you which means

00:44:19.200 --> 00:44:21.700
come here have something to tell you come here. I'll show you.

00:44:23.300 --> 00:44:24.800
from every single

00:44:26.200 --> 00:44:26.500
man

00:44:28.200 --> 00:44:28.900
I pass

00:44:30.200 --> 00:44:31.200
so I try different tactics.

00:44:40.300 --> 00:44:40.900
and I get

00:44:42.700 --> 00:44:43.700
winter Gaga

00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:50.200
so

00:44:51.400 --> 00:44:52.700
I try.

00:44:57.300 --> 00:44:57.900
and I get

00:45:00.400 --> 00:45:00.700
good.

00:45:10.500 --> 00:45:13.200
What did donkeys do to get such a bad rap?

00:45:15.500 --> 00:45:15.800
so

00:45:18.600 --> 00:45:19.400
I try.

00:45:36.100 --> 00:45:38.400
It worked but it's kind of hard to keep that up.

00:45:39.400 --> 00:45:42.000
And I can't really see where I'm going.

00:45:43.100 --> 00:45:44.300
So mostly

00:45:45.600 --> 00:45:46.600
I just look down.

00:45:49.400 --> 00:45:50.100
And take it.

00:45:54.600 --> 00:45:57.400
It's just them in on the sidewalk. It's not the shopkeepers.

00:45:58.200 --> 00:45:59.400
It's not the guys at the gas station.

00:46:01.300 --> 00:46:04.800
It's just on the sidewalk and I I know my hair

00:46:04.800 --> 00:46:08.300
and elbows are showing visibly taking

00:46:07.300 --> 00:46:09.400
up space.

00:46:10.500 --> 00:46:13.900
But I say Moroccan girls in skirts.

00:46:14.800 --> 00:46:17.600
And kitten heels and big hair and makeup and

00:46:17.600 --> 00:46:20.300
they are magnificent these girls.

00:46:21.300 --> 00:46:23.200
think Sophia Loren at 18

00:46:24.400 --> 00:46:25.500
nobody bothers

00:46:28.800 --> 00:46:30.100
they're with their boyfriends.

00:46:31.400 --> 00:46:32.400
or some man

00:46:34.200 --> 00:46:34.900
and I'm alone.

00:46:37.500 --> 00:46:39.900
Well, I wish the man on the sidewalk wouldn't take that out on me.

00:46:43.400 --> 00:46:44.600
because it makes me feel like

00:46:47.600 --> 00:46:48.000
filled

00:46:52.300 --> 00:46:55.400
I'm trying to be the good guest like my parents

00:46:55.400 --> 00:46:58.200
taught me you're getting the best education.

00:46:59.600 --> 00:47:02.900
Learn the languages love the food.

00:47:03.900 --> 00:47:05.800
See the beauty around you.

00:47:07.500 --> 00:47:08.600
I do.

00:47:09.400 --> 00:47:12.200
I love Moroccan food. I eat it

00:47:12.200 --> 00:47:15.400
compulsively like I mean everything compulsively now and I

00:47:15.400 --> 00:47:16.200
love all my

00:47:17.300 --> 00:47:20.200
we're talking American and all my friends at the church of club and

00:47:20.200 --> 00:47:23.100
and Kaza is beautiful and we live here.

00:47:25.200 --> 00:47:26.000
with the bougainvillea

00:47:29.300 --> 00:47:30.300
and I still feel like

00:47:31.300 --> 00:47:31.700
Phil

00:47:33.200 --> 00:47:36.500
one afternoon. I'm walking to the American Cultural Center.

00:47:37.400 --> 00:47:40.900
And I passed two young men who say the usual things.

00:47:41.600 --> 00:47:44.100
And before I know it go f*** yourself.

00:47:46.800 --> 00:47:47.800
today

00:47:51.300 --> 00:47:51.600
you

00:47:52.800 --> 00:47:53.100
say

00:47:54.500 --> 00:47:54.800
f***

00:47:56.200 --> 00:47:59.300
I should have known that even in non-english-speaking countries. Everybody knows what

00:47:59.300 --> 00:48:02.100
f*** means and they surround me so my back is against the

00:48:02.100 --> 00:48:05.900
wall and I'm trying to look calm and I'm carrying a twirling baton

00:48:05.900 --> 00:48:08.200
because I'm playing a baton twirler in a

00:48:08.200 --> 00:48:11.400
play at the church of Club. So I'm always practicing and a nonchalantly tap

00:48:11.400 --> 00:48:14.300
the Baton against my palm to show that I have a weapon and I'm

00:48:14.300 --> 00:48:17.300
not scared but they're not fooled. They see my

00:48:17.300 --> 00:48:20.300
tear and I think I'm gonna get hurt when suddenly a car

00:48:20.300 --> 00:48:23.200
pulls around the corner and onto the sidewalk and it's

00:48:23.200 --> 00:48:25.400
my mom who flies out of it.

00:48:26.800 --> 00:48:30.200
Costco who fatter Cinema fear

00:48:31.400 --> 00:48:32.700
say my fear.

00:48:34.700 --> 00:48:37.500
And their faces change and I

00:48:37.500 --> 00:48:40.400
can see she's gonna get hurt. They're gonna get violent and I keep tapping the

00:48:40.400 --> 00:48:43.300
Baton I guess my palm because I'm too scared to use it and I think we both

00:48:43.300 --> 00:48:46.400
make it killed in American woman was killed right after we moved

00:48:46.400 --> 00:48:49.300
here stabs to death by her adult ESL student

00:48:49.300 --> 00:48:52.400
because she told him to stop bothering her and they're

00:48:52.400 --> 00:48:55.400
breathing on my mom when suddenly a man from inside the cultural center

00:48:55.400 --> 00:48:58.300
comes rushing down the stairs and the two men who take off.

00:49:02.200 --> 00:49:04.600
Because some Man rushed down the stairs.

00:49:09.000 --> 00:49:09.300
Oh.

00:49:12.300 --> 00:49:13.200
Is that all it takes?

00:49:21.400 --> 00:49:23.900
I have a wonderful group of friends.

00:49:25.200 --> 00:49:27.400
from all over the world including Morocco

00:49:28.100 --> 00:49:28.800
and I have books.

00:49:30.200 --> 00:49:33.500
And I have movies on video now. I'm dreaming

00:49:33.500 --> 00:49:36.200
of George shakiris in West

00:49:36.200 --> 00:49:36.700
Side Story.

00:49:39.100 --> 00:49:43.300
He plays a Latin guy and he dances for his girl. I

00:49:42.300 --> 00:49:45.300
want to play Anita in West Side Story

00:49:45.300 --> 00:49:47.900
so bad so so bad.

00:49:48.800 --> 00:49:51.900
My first boyfriend's a great dancer to we dance

00:49:51.900 --> 00:49:53.000
at the Churchill Club.

00:49:53.700 --> 00:49:57.400
And then he dumps me right before I get the chickenpox, which

00:49:56.400 --> 00:49:59.400
nearly kills me because at 13.

00:50:00.400 --> 00:50:03.000
It's a high health risk my mom.

00:50:03.800 --> 00:50:05.200
Spoon feeds me soup.

00:50:05.800 --> 00:50:07.300
Is a lion a fever dream?

00:50:08.500 --> 00:50:11.900
But the fever breaks and by now ex-boyfriend visits

00:50:11.900 --> 00:50:11.900
me.

00:50:13.300 --> 00:50:17.100
While I'm still covered in pox.

00:50:19.300 --> 00:50:20.900
the king stables next door

00:50:22.200 --> 00:50:23.800
the fat flies

00:50:25.100 --> 00:50:26.400
my pustelled face

00:50:27.800 --> 00:50:28.800
the sea breeze

00:50:30.600 --> 00:50:31.500
My Broken Heart

00:50:34.700 --> 00:50:37.200
Xerox moves us to Cairo Egypt

00:50:50.500 --> 00:50:55.000
our first

00:50:54.200 --> 00:50:57.800
night arriving in Cairo. I'm almost 14.

00:50:58.800 --> 00:50:59.900
And a look out from the car.

00:51:00.700 --> 00:51:01.100
and see

00:51:03.100 --> 00:51:03.900
at the

00:51:05.700 --> 00:51:06.200
mosques are different.

00:51:07.500 --> 00:51:10.800
And Morocco they have one tall thick rectangular

00:51:10.800 --> 00:51:13.300
Tower. They're made of beautiful marble and

00:51:13.300 --> 00:51:15.600
stone and they Shimmer in the Sun.

00:51:17.400 --> 00:51:20.600
Here in Cairo. They're Byzantine.

00:51:21.800 --> 00:51:24.300
With thin minarets that give off an

00:51:24.300 --> 00:51:25.800
eerie green light at night.

00:51:26.900 --> 00:51:27.300
It's pretty.

00:51:29.800 --> 00:51:32.300
And it means I'm gonna be a brand new country.

00:51:33.400 --> 00:51:36.100
with nothing in the environment to hang on to

00:51:37.500 --> 00:51:37.800
again

00:51:40.200 --> 00:51:43.000
and stupid me for expecting the mosques to be the same.

00:51:44.600 --> 00:51:47.800
Catholic churches in Central America are not all alike.

00:51:49.600 --> 00:51:52.300
And Central America is a thumbprint Compared to North Africa. So

00:51:53.300 --> 00:51:55.400
stupid me for feeling bad the mosque.

00:51:57.300 --> 00:51:57.900
stupid stupid

00:52:01.700 --> 00:52:02.300
ignorant

00:52:05.200 --> 00:52:05.600
alien

00:52:07.800 --> 00:52:10.800
Learn the languages love the

00:52:10.800 --> 00:52:11.100
food.

00:52:12.500 --> 00:52:13.200
See, what's good?

00:52:14.400 --> 00:52:15.900
And let's go back on Weight Watchers.

00:52:17.100 --> 00:52:18.700
Yeah.

00:52:20.400 --> 00:52:22.700
You're going to go on a diet, right?

00:52:26.100 --> 00:52:27.300
We have a cook in Egypt.

00:52:28.700 --> 00:52:30.800
Xerox pays hardship pay

00:52:32.200 --> 00:52:34.800
To the employees they send to live in developing nations.

00:52:36.600 --> 00:52:37.000
Egypt's pyramids

00:52:38.300 --> 00:52:41.700
Are close to 5,000 years old?

00:52:43.200 --> 00:52:45.600
So it's a little weird to think of it as a developing Nation.

00:52:49.200 --> 00:52:50.500
But it is poor.

00:52:51.400 --> 00:52:54.200
Which is why my parents can afford.

00:52:55.200 --> 00:52:55.800
to hire

00:52:57.300 --> 00:52:57.600
help

00:52:58.700 --> 00:53:00.200
I mean as our koku hates cooking.

00:53:00.900 --> 00:53:02.600
We can tell because she usually burns the food.

00:53:03.600 --> 00:53:06.500
I can tell because when I come home from school I

00:53:06.500 --> 00:53:09.400
get to see the look on amina's face. She stands

00:53:09.400 --> 00:53:10.300
over the stove.

00:53:11.300 --> 00:53:12.300
here

00:53:26.300 --> 00:53:29.500
After school when I'm 16, I'm grabbing a

00:53:29.500 --> 00:53:32.200
snack and Amina Lisa. Do you

00:53:32.200 --> 00:53:32.600
drink wine?

00:53:33.500 --> 00:53:34.000
What?

00:53:35.100 --> 00:53:35.600
Can you drink?

00:53:37.200 --> 00:53:37.500
Why?

00:53:39.200 --> 00:53:42.200
I cannot drink alcohol. I need you to taste this wine. I don't

00:53:42.200 --> 00:53:44.900
know if it is good. I have to use it for the cooking.

00:53:46.800 --> 00:53:49.300
Oh, yeah, I can taste it

00:53:49.300 --> 00:53:52.300
but I don't know. I don't like wine doesn't taste good

00:53:52.300 --> 00:53:52.700
to me anyway.

00:53:54.600 --> 00:53:54.800
please

00:53:56.100 --> 00:53:56.900
face it.

00:53:58.600 --> 00:54:00.500
I need to know for the cooking.

00:54:05.400 --> 00:54:06.800
Oh, that's awful.

00:54:08.500 --> 00:54:10.400
Vinegar, it's not good. No.

00:54:13.100 --> 00:54:15.100
Maybe it's fine.

00:54:17.200 --> 00:54:18.200
If you cook it.

00:54:20.300 --> 00:54:21.800
They won't drink it.

00:54:23.100 --> 00:54:24.000
Maybe it's okay if you cook it.

00:54:29.300 --> 00:54:29.900
another day

00:54:31.400 --> 00:54:34.500
Amina can you tell me what this word is does it

00:54:34.500 --> 00:54:37.800
say Kataba or kutu?

00:54:39.300 --> 00:54:40.900
oh Lisa, I

00:54:42.100 --> 00:54:45.200
I do not read as well as I

00:54:45.200 --> 00:54:45.300
like.

00:54:46.500 --> 00:54:46.700
Oh.

00:54:48.300 --> 00:54:49.500
I will see.

00:54:51.000 --> 00:54:51.400
I think

00:54:56.100 --> 00:55:00.100
I I am not sure I I do not

00:55:00.100 --> 00:55:02.300
go to school as long as I like.

00:55:05.300 --> 00:55:06.900
Then how did she learn English?

00:55:08.900 --> 00:55:11.300
by ear alone

00:55:12.800 --> 00:55:14.400
I don't know how I mean I get to our house.

00:55:15.800 --> 00:55:16.200
bus

00:55:17.600 --> 00:55:18.300
Taxi

00:55:20.800 --> 00:55:23.000
If she walks does she have to

00:55:23.300 --> 00:55:24.000
deal with this?

00:55:30.900 --> 00:55:32.000
blue short

00:55:38.200 --> 00:55:39.600
Or she left alone.

00:55:42.100 --> 00:55:44.700
Because she wears the hijab and I got Avea.

00:55:45.600 --> 00:55:48.300
I don't know I get it from every

00:55:49.300 --> 00:55:52.100
Third man, I pass in Cairo unless my

00:55:52.100 --> 00:55:55.100
brother's walking with me a couple steps ahead. But if it doesn't

00:55:55.100 --> 00:55:56.500
happen right in front of my parents.

00:55:57.100 --> 00:55:59.300
It never does again after that one time in Kaza.

00:56:01.800 --> 00:56:03.400
I'm not supposed.

00:56:04.300 --> 00:56:05.700
to complain

00:56:07.100 --> 00:56:10.400
I hardly ever experience it. It's no worse

00:56:10.400 --> 00:56:12.600
than what I was a teenager in Boston.

00:56:14.500 --> 00:56:15.900
Much worse than yeah.

00:56:25.700 --> 00:56:27.400
What's the matter?

00:56:28.500 --> 00:56:31.200
Why are you always in a bad mood? Don't make

00:56:31.200 --> 00:56:31.800
me angry.

00:56:38.700 --> 00:56:40.200
I don't have words for this so.

00:56:41.500 --> 00:56:42.300
I never talk about it.

00:56:44.100 --> 00:56:45.900
I just realized one day at my locker.

00:56:47.500 --> 00:56:48.500
That I am angry.

00:56:50.100 --> 00:56:51.900
All the time now.

00:56:54.600 --> 00:56:55.200
on the inside

00:56:56.200 --> 00:56:56.400
and

00:56:58.200 --> 00:57:01.500
On the outside. I'm painfully shy again.

00:57:02.800 --> 00:57:03.300
Why?

00:57:04.100 --> 00:57:07.900
The school is great. Everyone's across

00:57:07.900 --> 00:57:10.200
cultural kid. The teachers are

00:57:10.200 --> 00:57:13.900
awesome. But even though I have crushes on so many

00:57:13.900 --> 00:57:14.700
boys.

00:57:15.500 --> 00:57:16.300
at this school

00:57:17.400 --> 00:57:18.700
if any of them is nice to me.

00:57:22.100 --> 00:57:22.700
Hey Lisa.

00:57:24.600 --> 00:57:26.200
Goodbyes on the very long.

00:57:30.100 --> 00:57:34.600
What's wrong with me? Why am I so stupid for a

00:57:34.600 --> 00:57:37.400
whole year? I can't look at anyone.

00:57:38.400 --> 00:57:40.300
for more than a Split Second

00:57:41.900 --> 00:57:43.000
because I just feel like

00:57:45.100 --> 00:57:46.200
everything's wrong with me.

00:57:47.100 --> 00:57:50.500
It's been called transition fatigue when

00:57:50.500 --> 00:57:52.900
there doesn't have to be any Rhyme or Reason for it.

00:57:54.100 --> 00:57:56.300
The number of moves is irrelevant.

00:57:57.700 --> 00:57:59.000
You could get it on the second move.

00:58:00.600 --> 00:58:02.200
You could get it on your 22nd move.

00:58:04.300 --> 00:58:05.100
You could never get it.

00:58:08.300 --> 00:58:08.800
I get it.

00:58:10.100 --> 00:58:11.200
on the sixth move

00:58:12.100 --> 00:58:12.900
or I just

00:58:13.800 --> 00:58:14.100
shut

00:58:15.500 --> 00:58:15.800
down

00:58:17.600 --> 00:58:18.400
but not completely.

00:58:19.600 --> 00:58:22.900
I am still a good student and by the second

00:58:22.900 --> 00:58:23.900
year 10th grade.

00:58:24.900 --> 00:58:26.100
I make a new best friend.

00:58:27.300 --> 00:58:28.000
Jean

00:58:29.100 --> 00:58:31.400
Come on, at least let's learn to scuba dive.

00:58:32.100 --> 00:58:34.100
Let's become lifeguards. It'll be fun.

00:58:35.600 --> 00:58:36.000
Okay.

00:58:38.600 --> 00:58:41.700
and then her family is moved back to the states after

00:58:41.700 --> 00:58:43.400
junior year, but

00:58:44.300 --> 00:58:48.300
Senior year I make my first Egyptian friend.

00:58:49.300 --> 00:58:52.900
I have Egyptian American friends. I have European Egyptian

00:58:52.900 --> 00:58:54.800
friends, but Hamed.

00:58:56.400 --> 00:59:00.600
Hamid is my first fully both

00:59:00.600 --> 00:59:04.100
sides of his family Egyptian friend.

00:59:05.900 --> 00:59:06.900
Are you going to ignore me?

00:59:08.500 --> 00:59:09.000
What?

00:59:10.100 --> 00:59:11.000
You won't look at me.

00:59:11.700 --> 00:59:14.500
Am I not cool enough for you the nerdy

00:59:14.500 --> 00:59:15.000
Egyptian?

00:59:15.900 --> 00:59:18.200
So he was right. I was being rude because he

00:59:18.200 --> 00:59:18.500
was nerdy.

00:59:19.700 --> 00:59:20.100
Are you from?

00:59:21.200 --> 00:59:25.000
I was born in Guatemala half my family's there we moved

00:59:24.000 --> 00:59:25.100
around.

00:59:26.300 --> 00:59:27.600
The other half's in the states.

00:59:29.400 --> 00:59:30.400
What them?

00:59:31.800 --> 00:59:34.200
I've never met a what a man before

00:59:34.200 --> 00:59:35.300
what's it like

00:59:36.700 --> 00:59:38.400
well, we have our own pyramids.

00:59:39.200 --> 00:59:42.400
The Mayan pyramids of the

00:59:42.400 --> 00:59:47.400
girl. Oh, yes Human Sacrifice. Those

00:59:45.400 --> 00:59:48.100
are the Aztecs.

00:59:50.400 --> 00:59:53.100
He sure is the Mayans too. Your last name is

00:59:53.100 --> 00:59:55.100
not mine. Is it it's Chinese?

00:59:56.600 --> 00:59:59.500
What are you Guatemalan or Chinese? I'm both. I

00:59:59.500 --> 01:00:02.700
don't and there's even more on my mom's side.

01:00:05.200 --> 01:00:07.700
Do you speak any Mandarin or Cantonese?

01:00:10.100 --> 01:00:13.000
Well, you're Egyptian, so I bet your Muslim so if you've been

01:00:13.400 --> 01:00:13.600
to Mecca.

01:00:14.800 --> 01:00:18.100
My father and uncle took me to make it was awful. It

01:00:17.100 --> 01:00:20.700
was so hot. I was boring sweat and we

01:00:20.700 --> 01:00:22.300
walked around the Dome about 100. That's what

01:00:23.400 --> 01:00:26.700
You know the black stone so many times I got blisters

01:00:26.700 --> 01:00:27.400
from my sandals.

01:00:30.800 --> 01:00:33.400
Don't hate seeing men in sandals and it's

01:00:33.400 --> 01:00:35.500
not so much like sweat a good queasy.

01:00:36.600 --> 01:00:38.900
But isn't it holy?

01:00:41.900 --> 01:00:45.000
You know my cousins call me the fake Egyptian because I've

01:00:44.200 --> 01:00:47.600
never gone through an Egyptian School. I've only been to this school.

01:00:48.800 --> 01:00:51.200
So my Arabic has a slight accent they can

01:00:51.200 --> 01:00:52.000
hear the American.

01:00:53.300 --> 01:00:58.200
But your English has an accent too. No, it doesn't. Yes. It

01:00:57.200 --> 01:00:59.100
does. No it

01:01:02.100 --> 01:01:03.400
Does not be perfect when you grew up.

01:01:05.300 --> 01:01:09.600
Here you mean you don't speak any language without a

01:01:08.600 --> 01:01:12.100
foreign accent? No what

01:01:11.100 --> 01:01:14.100
I don't I don't have

01:01:18.300 --> 01:01:20.000
why are you saying this?

01:01:22.500 --> 01:01:23.400
I think I guess I

01:01:27.300 --> 01:01:28.800
You're upsetting me Lisa.

01:01:30.800 --> 01:01:33.000
We become excellent friends in spite of me.

01:01:34.300 --> 01:01:37.200
I study hard and moon after all the

01:01:37.200 --> 01:01:40.700
cute boys at the dances on the

01:01:40.700 --> 01:01:41.500
school's rooftop.

01:01:42.800 --> 01:01:44.300
staring up at the desert sky

01:01:45.500 --> 01:01:47.600
waiting for someone to ask me.

01:01:48.600 --> 01:01:49.200
to dance

01:02:00.300 --> 01:02:00.600
they usually don't.

01:02:04.200 --> 01:02:06.700
I love to dance I am not good at it.

01:02:07.500 --> 01:02:08.700
But I love it.

01:02:09.400 --> 01:02:12.800
And one night when I am home alone. I can't bear

01:02:12.800 --> 01:02:15.400
to be a teenager who's not living a

01:02:15.400 --> 01:02:18.200
fun teen life like in the

01:02:18.200 --> 01:02:20.100
movie Grace.

01:02:21.700 --> 01:02:25.400
Or to be a girl whose bodies considered filthy every

01:02:24.400 --> 01:02:26.300
time I step outside.

01:02:28.300 --> 01:02:30.500
So I climb.

01:02:31.600 --> 01:02:34.400
on to the dining room table

01:02:35.800 --> 01:02:38.700
After I turn on maybe he'll

01:02:38.700 --> 01:02:41.700
know by Cyndi Lauper and dance.

01:02:44.700 --> 01:02:45.200
hear that

01:02:46.800 --> 01:02:48.400
That's Bowser. I think that's Bowser.

01:02:49.100 --> 01:02:53.100
From Shawna from the

01:02:52.100 --> 01:02:55.800
movie Grease. My bows

01:02:55.800 --> 01:02:58.500
are singing with Cindy just for

01:02:58.500 --> 01:02:58.500
me.

01:02:59.800 --> 01:03:02.100
Yes more me.

01:03:15.100 --> 01:03:18.300
I love to dance but when heaven and I

01:03:18.300 --> 01:03:19.600
see each other at a dance one night.

01:03:21.100 --> 01:03:22.200
Would you like to dance?

01:03:25.600 --> 01:03:27.500
You don't want to dance at a dance.

01:03:31.400 --> 01:03:31.600
Oh.

01:03:32.200 --> 01:03:32.800
Lisa

01:03:34.400 --> 01:03:35.400
you won't dance with me.

01:03:36.600 --> 01:03:37.200
Will you?

01:03:38.700 --> 01:03:40.200
Who do you want to dance with?

01:03:42.800 --> 01:03:45.200
Was like, oh my antharic and Steve

01:03:45.200 --> 01:03:48.400
and Javier with the cool jackets and the cool clothes and the

01:03:48.400 --> 01:03:48.600
cool hair.

01:03:49.800 --> 01:03:51.400
You know, these are my best clothes.

01:03:52.700 --> 01:03:53.400
Look, very nice.

01:03:54.500 --> 01:03:55.200
and he did

01:03:55.900 --> 01:03:56.200
He had.

01:03:59.600 --> 01:04:00.100
pull over

01:04:01.100 --> 01:04:02.800
open up shirt. He got a haircut.

01:04:03.900 --> 01:04:05.400
He looked like a guest at a bar. Mitzvah.

01:04:07.600 --> 01:04:08.300
Very nice.

01:04:12.200 --> 01:04:12.900
just not

01:04:14.500 --> 01:04:14.700
cool

01:04:17.900 --> 01:04:20.400
I don't know why Hamid chooses to remain my friend.

01:04:23.800 --> 01:04:26.300
Not long before we leave Cairo.

01:04:27.200 --> 01:04:30.300
I'm waiting in the car for my mom who's running an

01:04:30.300 --> 01:04:30.800
errand.

01:04:32.300 --> 01:04:34.600
And I see a group of ragtag kids playing football.

01:04:36.600 --> 01:04:38.400
They're all dressed in tattered, Calabasas.

01:04:39.200 --> 01:04:41.400
It's all boys. Maybe six to eight years old.

01:04:42.800 --> 01:04:45.500
And there's one little girl who's maybe four

01:04:45.500 --> 01:04:48.300
and she tries to get into the game and

01:04:48.300 --> 01:04:51.800
gets clobbered and nearly trampled you.

01:04:52.300 --> 01:04:55.700
whales and one of the boys who's maybe seven comes to

01:04:55.700 --> 01:04:57.200
her and helps her up and

01:04:58.100 --> 01:04:59.400
dusts her off and

01:04:59.900 --> 01:05:01.000
dries her tears

01:05:02.300 --> 01:05:04.800
and says something to her as he pushes her gently away.

01:05:05.800 --> 01:05:08.500
And goes back to the game Ed. She follows him and

01:05:08.500 --> 01:05:12.100
gets clobbered in stores balling again

01:05:11.100 --> 01:05:14.800
and every time he goes

01:05:14.800 --> 01:05:15.200
to her.

01:05:15.900 --> 01:05:18.200
And sometimes he Shields her as the game

01:05:18.200 --> 01:05:19.900
Thunder's around them.

01:05:24.600 --> 01:05:24.800
I think

01:05:25.600 --> 01:05:26.900
Maybe he's her brother.

01:05:28.800 --> 01:05:29.400
And then I see.

01:05:30.600 --> 01:05:33.100
There's another kid watching them from the scoop of his house.

01:05:34.200 --> 01:05:35.800
bigger kid plump

01:05:36.700 --> 01:05:39.300
looks Europeans judging from his haircut and clothes and everything.

01:05:40.100 --> 01:05:42.000
And the ball suddenly comes towards many catches it.

01:05:43.200 --> 01:05:43.900
And they all look at him.

01:05:48.100 --> 01:05:48.800
And he starts.

01:05:49.800 --> 01:05:50.900
to taunt them

01:05:51.600 --> 01:05:54.700
with fake Arabic

01:05:55.900 --> 01:05:56.900
and they all just looking him.

01:05:58.100 --> 01:06:00.100
and there's so many more of them than him but

01:06:01.800 --> 01:06:06.900
And after a good long taunting

01:06:05.900 --> 01:06:08.500
he throws the ball back

01:06:08.500 --> 01:06:11.400
and the game continues and a little Sideshow of

01:06:11.400 --> 01:06:12.700
the tiny girl and her brother.

01:06:13.700 --> 01:06:14.400
Keeps happening.

01:06:16.900 --> 01:06:18.200
She's so brave.

01:06:20.200 --> 01:06:22.200
And he's so tender with her.

01:06:25.700 --> 01:06:26.500
And I Cry.

01:06:28.700 --> 01:06:31.000
And I love Egypt so much in this

01:06:31.500 --> 01:06:33.000
moment. It knocks the wind out of me.

01:06:33.800 --> 01:06:37.300
And I feel helpless after four years

01:06:36.300 --> 01:06:39.600
to have anything to

01:06:39.600 --> 01:06:41.100
do with Egypt.

01:06:42.300 --> 01:06:43.200
among Egyptians

01:06:45.600 --> 01:06:48.800
Nations have risen taken over Egypt and

01:06:48.800 --> 01:06:51.200
fallen and the pyramids are still

01:06:51.200 --> 01:06:51.300
here.

01:06:52.400 --> 01:06:53.300
And so are the people.

01:06:55.500 --> 01:06:59.000
Difference are actually quite welcoming and blase about foreigners because

01:06:58.100 --> 01:07:00.000
they know you won't last.

01:07:03.800 --> 01:07:04.600
Alexander the Great didn't

01:07:05.500 --> 01:07:09.100
Napoleon Bonaparte

01:07:08.100 --> 01:07:09.300
didn't

01:07:11.500 --> 01:07:13.900
the British Empire didn't

01:07:17.200 --> 01:07:17.300
so

01:07:20.100 --> 01:07:20.900
who are you kidding?

01:07:22.900 --> 01:07:24.200
And I'm just as helpless.

01:07:26.600 --> 01:07:27.300
privileged

01:07:28.000 --> 01:07:28.600
useless

01:07:29.800 --> 01:07:30.600
teenager from

01:07:38.500 --> 01:07:38.700
well

01:07:41.300 --> 01:07:42.000
I'm not from here.

01:07:48.900 --> 01:07:52.000
zodoni goodness

01:08:15.700 --> 01:08:18.400
So this is normally where our heroine goes

01:08:18.400 --> 01:08:18.900
to college.

01:08:19.600 --> 01:08:20.600
follows her Bliss

01:08:21.300 --> 01:08:25.700
has her eyes opened different people and experiences and emerges

01:08:24.700 --> 01:08:26.600
from her cocoon.

01:08:27.800 --> 01:08:28.500
butterfly

01:08:31.200 --> 01:08:32.100
But this is my story.

01:08:33.200 --> 01:08:35.600
tck Global Nomad story

01:08:36.500 --> 01:08:39.900
I've spent most of my childhood outside my passport countries.

01:08:40.700 --> 01:08:43.700
Having my eyes open to different people and experiences

01:08:43.700 --> 01:08:45.800
and I know from experience.

01:08:47.200 --> 01:08:48.800
That coming back to the States?

01:08:50.200 --> 01:08:51.400
is hard

01:08:52.500 --> 01:08:53.300
and this time

01:08:55.500 --> 01:08:56.500
I'm alone.

01:08:58.500 --> 01:09:01.400
But I have so much. Hope worldly College.

01:09:01.400 --> 01:09:05.400
It is gonna be this Haven for

01:09:04.400 --> 01:09:08.200
intelligent young women who champion

01:09:07.200 --> 01:09:10.800
each other and their natural feminists the

01:09:10.800 --> 01:09:13.200
Glorious steinam kind after the

01:09:13.200 --> 01:09:18.000
last six years of and good

01:09:17.000 --> 01:09:18.900
Manila.

01:09:20.700 --> 01:09:23.000
I will find my people.

01:09:23.900 --> 01:09:26.600
And they will remind me of how

01:09:26.600 --> 01:09:28.100
fantastic it is.

01:09:28.900 --> 01:09:30.000
to be female

01:09:32.400 --> 01:09:35.700
Right. There are

01:09:35.700 --> 01:09:38.200
very cool. Brilliant.

01:09:39.500 --> 01:09:40.700
hilarious students

01:09:41.600 --> 01:09:42.300
that Wellesley

01:09:43.400 --> 01:09:44.300
and then there's my roommate.

01:09:45.400 --> 01:09:46.100
you

01:09:48.700 --> 01:09:52.000
let me pass tomorrows by ality exam. Please.

01:09:51.800 --> 01:09:54.300
Help me eat more

01:09:54.300 --> 01:09:57.200
protein and not so much bread and

01:09:59.400 --> 01:10:03.000
And don't let the lesbians make a pass at me. So Jesus, please.

01:10:07.500 --> 01:10:10.600
Six years in Muslim countries not one Fanatic in

01:10:10.600 --> 01:10:10.900
my life.

01:10:22.500 --> 01:10:23.700
If they're not Christian.

01:10:24.600 --> 01:10:25.300
how do you

01:10:26.700 --> 01:10:27.400
knowing

01:10:27.900 --> 01:10:30.900
that my grandfather's side of the family who died

01:10:30.900 --> 01:10:33.400
in the Holocaust are burning.

01:10:34.100 --> 01:10:37.700
Fraternity because they didn't convert. You

01:10:37.700 --> 01:10:40.800
don't know how to make me feel tears project

01:10:40.800 --> 01:10:42.500
out spreading out of her eyes.

01:10:47.700 --> 01:10:50.400
And it seems like every other girl not every girl,

01:10:50.400 --> 01:10:53.000
but every other girl says things like I never

01:10:53.500 --> 01:10:54.700
wanted to come to Wild Thing.

01:10:55.300 --> 01:10:58.000
And where did you go to amers? And what did you

01:10:58.100 --> 01:10:58.800
go to Brown?

01:11:01.600 --> 01:11:02.400
like girls

01:11:05.200 --> 01:11:06.800
for you are

01:11:11.700 --> 01:11:16.600
It's so disappointing and

01:11:15.600 --> 01:11:17.900
such.

01:11:18.700 --> 01:11:20.100
a betrayal

01:11:21.200 --> 01:11:24.000
it is like death by a thousand papercuts.

01:11:25.200 --> 01:11:28.600
Only a kind of feels self-inflicted because I chose this

01:11:28.600 --> 01:11:29.000
place.

01:11:29.800 --> 01:11:33.200
So I become a zombie who

01:11:32.200 --> 01:11:36.000
lives in her head because the outside environment

01:11:35.300 --> 01:11:39.100
is just too painful and

01:11:38.100 --> 01:11:41.900
I eat until it hurts

01:11:41.900 --> 01:11:44.700
and then I starve and then

01:11:44.700 --> 01:11:45.400
I start over.

01:11:46.700 --> 01:11:48.200
And there's one ray of light.

01:11:49.500 --> 01:11:50.000
theater

01:11:51.300 --> 01:11:54.600
I'm a Zombie by day. And then I come alive for auditions

01:11:54.600 --> 01:11:58.100
and rehearsals and performances I

01:11:57.100 --> 01:12:00.800
get cast in leading roles

01:12:00.800 --> 01:12:02.200
and I make friends.

01:12:03.700 --> 01:12:04.100
hopefully

01:12:05.300 --> 01:12:05.900
because in the theater

01:12:07.500 --> 01:12:08.500
everybody's weird

01:12:11.700 --> 01:12:15.100
we use our imaginations to create

01:12:14.100 --> 01:12:15.700
a world.

01:12:16.500 --> 01:12:19.100
That we step into together.

01:12:22.400 --> 01:12:25.100
kind of like being dropped into one that you have to

01:12:26.400 --> 01:12:27.200
adapt to

01:12:35.200 --> 01:12:38.600
After college, I moved to Los Angeles and pursue

01:12:38.600 --> 01:12:39.400
an acting career.

01:12:40.500 --> 01:12:43.800
And I get cast in an equity Union show

01:12:43.800 --> 01:12:45.200
in a small town.

01:12:46.200 --> 01:12:48.000
That's pretty homogenously white.

01:12:49.200 --> 01:12:51.100
And I am in this all Asian cast.

01:12:52.100 --> 01:12:55.700
It is on the posters with and all

01:12:55.700 --> 01:12:57.200
Asian cast.

01:13:00.800 --> 01:13:03.500
after a performance the local drama professor

01:13:05.500 --> 01:13:07.000
So I'm curious.

01:13:08.600 --> 01:13:11.600
This is supposed to be an all Asian cast.

01:13:12.900 --> 01:13:14.800
Just wondering what your feelings are.

01:13:15.700 --> 01:13:16.800
about that since

01:13:18.200 --> 01:13:18.900
You're obviously.

01:13:20.700 --> 01:13:21.900
Not Asian.

01:13:34.200 --> 01:13:35.500
I'm speechless.

01:13:36.700 --> 01:13:40.000
And I don't know who to talk to about

01:13:39.100 --> 01:13:42.000
not being.

01:13:43.100 --> 01:13:45.100
seen and I still

01:13:47.100 --> 01:13:49.300
don't have the words.

01:13:55.100 --> 01:13:56.200
It's 2001.

01:13:57.600 --> 01:14:00.900
I'm at my family's third funeral in guate this

01:14:00.900 --> 01:14:01.200
year.

01:14:02.400 --> 01:14:03.900
This one's for my great-uncle.

01:14:04.600 --> 01:14:05.600
the patriarch of the family

01:14:06.500 --> 01:14:08.900
one of the two who used to rush me at Christmas time.

01:14:10.600 --> 01:14:13.000
Made me feel so loved and safe.

01:14:14.300 --> 01:14:17.100
the coffins been slid into the family crypt

01:14:18.400 --> 01:14:19.500
and my family and I watch

01:14:20.900 --> 01:14:22.400
each other's hearts

01:14:23.700 --> 01:14:24.200
break

01:14:27.400 --> 01:14:29.900
four pillars of my Guatemalan family die

01:14:30.900 --> 01:14:31.700
in nine months

01:14:35.300 --> 01:14:36.600
and they were my country.

01:14:38.400 --> 01:14:39.300
I'm not from a place.

01:14:40.500 --> 01:14:41.400
I'm from people.

01:14:43.400 --> 01:14:45.600
My parents and my brother are my home.

01:14:47.200 --> 01:14:48.700
My elders in what day?

01:14:49.700 --> 01:14:50.500
Were my country?

01:14:54.100 --> 01:14:55.300
And then a few months later.

01:14:56.100 --> 01:14:59.000
My mom loses her older sister to cancer.

01:14:59.900 --> 01:15:01.100
And it's all.

01:15:03.700 --> 01:15:03.700
lost

01:15:07.600 --> 01:15:10.200
and I just keep going. I just keep

01:15:10.200 --> 01:15:13.800
acting in plays and acting on TV Erika Stevenson

01:15:13.800 --> 01:15:16.500
wgftv and working my day

01:15:16.500 --> 01:15:19.300
jobs. And if a friend ever hurts my

01:15:19.300 --> 01:15:20.000
feelings, I

01:15:21.400 --> 01:15:22.100
belittling

01:15:22.900 --> 01:15:23.800
to a******

01:15:26.200 --> 01:15:26.700
I'm idling.

01:15:27.800 --> 01:15:29.100
in my Ford Escort

01:15:30.300 --> 01:15:33.400
trying to get into the right hand lane, which is stopped when an

01:15:33.400 --> 01:15:35.200
SUV rear ends me.

01:15:36.200 --> 01:15:37.700
even though he could

01:15:38.200 --> 01:15:40.300
see for too long blocks.

01:15:41.100 --> 01:15:45.200
And after he rear ends me the

01:15:44.200 --> 01:15:45.500
driver.

01:15:49.500 --> 01:15:53.000
Everything goes into slow motion is

01:15:52.400 --> 01:15:55.100
a realize I'm gonna do something.

01:15:56.200 --> 01:15:59.500
Never done. There's a take off my seat

01:15:59.500 --> 01:16:02.500
belt throw open my door and throw

01:16:02.500 --> 01:16:05.100
myself at his passenger door screaming.

01:16:09.100 --> 01:16:12.400
And I'm afraid he might have a gun or

01:16:12.400 --> 01:16:15.400
he might call the police, but my Fury is greater than my fear

01:16:15.400 --> 01:16:17.700
because I am not a thing.

01:16:21.600 --> 01:16:24.200
This is my space.

01:16:29.600 --> 01:16:30.400
He peels off.

01:16:33.300 --> 01:16:34.200
I guess I scared him.

01:16:37.800 --> 01:16:39.000
So I go to therapy.

01:16:44.600 --> 01:16:46.200
She's good therapist. Very good.

01:16:47.100 --> 01:16:47.400
and then

01:16:48.500 --> 01:16:49.900
I star

01:16:50.600 --> 01:16:53.600
As a multi-ethnic Masha.

01:16:55.200 --> 01:16:56.000
in Three Sisters

01:16:57.600 --> 01:17:01.000
checkoff's play about displacement

01:17:02.300 --> 01:17:03.800
I co-host a podcast.

01:17:04.800 --> 01:17:07.900
That celebrates the mixed Heritage

01:17:07.900 --> 01:17:10.900
and tck experiences. Hi,

01:17:10.900 --> 01:17:13.900
welcome back to oh happy

01:17:13.900 --> 01:17:14.200
hour.

01:17:15.600 --> 01:17:18.500
And I marry the best man.

01:17:20.200 --> 01:17:21.100
and human being

01:17:22.200 --> 01:17:23.300
I have ever known.

01:17:26.800 --> 01:17:27.600
and now he

01:17:28.900 --> 01:17:29.900
is my home

01:17:32.800 --> 01:17:36.300
And then out of the blue my

01:17:35.300 --> 01:17:36.600
brother.

01:17:39.200 --> 01:17:42.100
There's a call for essays about growing up

01:17:42.100 --> 01:17:42.700
in different countries.

01:17:43.600 --> 01:17:46.600
For an anthology. I'm gonna write something you should

01:17:46.600 --> 01:17:46.900
too.

01:17:49.100 --> 01:17:50.200
So I write an essay.

01:17:54.800 --> 01:18:01.300
Oh.

01:18:02.900 --> 01:18:03.600
And then I read the book.

01:18:08.700 --> 01:18:08.800
Oh my God.

01:18:11.500 --> 01:18:13.000
Oh my God.

01:18:15.400 --> 01:18:19.000
Oh my God, every freaky weird alien

01:18:18.500 --> 01:18:21.100
strange. Why am I this way? No one else.

01:18:21.100 --> 01:18:22.200
Is this way thing about me?

01:18:23.900 --> 01:18:25.500
Is boringly predictable?

01:18:27.300 --> 01:18:30.200
I may be weird outside the

01:18:30.200 --> 01:18:32.900
world of tcks and Global nomads.

01:18:33.600 --> 01:18:37.000
but inside that world, I'm deeply

01:18:38.400 --> 01:18:42.300
not special and it's

01:18:43.900 --> 01:18:44.400
wonderful

01:18:47.900 --> 01:18:49.800
irrational fear of conflict

01:18:54.500 --> 01:18:57.300
lost my identity when I lost my

01:18:57.300 --> 01:18:57.700
language.

01:19:02.400 --> 01:19:03.300
stopped down all

01:19:04.300 --> 01:19:06.300
pain sadness fear with food

01:19:07.100 --> 01:19:07.600
process

01:19:07.900 --> 01:19:08.300
the feelings

01:19:08.900 --> 01:19:09.700
20 years later

01:19:11.900 --> 01:19:14.400
I'm one of countless kids who's highest

01:19:14.400 --> 01:19:18.000
priority was to let our parents think we

01:19:17.100 --> 01:19:18.500
were fine.

01:19:19.800 --> 01:19:22.300
Because we were scared they would send us

01:19:22.300 --> 01:19:22.700
away.

01:19:23.600 --> 01:19:25.200
Or somehow we would lose them.

01:19:26.100 --> 01:19:27.600
the only constants

01:19:28.500 --> 01:19:29.200
in our lives

01:19:31.900 --> 01:19:33.500
I see while reading this book that

01:19:34.700 --> 01:19:35.800
the things that were hard

01:19:37.200 --> 01:19:39.700
like the verbal abuse from strangers on the sidewalk.

01:19:41.600 --> 01:19:43.100
They were a sliver of my life.

01:19:44.700 --> 01:19:46.100
My life wasn't spent on the sidewalk.

01:19:47.100 --> 01:19:49.100
My life was spent at school.

01:19:50.500 --> 01:19:51.300
in rehearsal

01:19:52.800 --> 01:19:53.400
with friends

01:19:55.400 --> 01:19:55.700
at home

01:19:58.400 --> 01:19:59.600
But those slivers.

01:20:01.500 --> 01:20:03.700
Are like shards of glass?

01:20:05.600 --> 01:20:07.000
That got lodged.

01:20:10.300 --> 01:20:12.800
Because they were never acknowledged.

01:20:14.600 --> 01:20:17.400
And I didn't have the words for how they felt when I was growing up.

01:20:19.400 --> 01:20:19.700
I

01:20:21.900 --> 01:20:24.200
But now reading the book I know

01:20:24.200 --> 01:20:27.600
what I wanted to say as a kid.

01:20:33.200 --> 01:20:34.000
I mean if I'd like

01:20:34.600 --> 01:20:35.600
if you grab me.

01:20:46.600 --> 01:20:47.800
Oh I can.

01:20:54.700 --> 01:20:55.400
brame

01:21:04.900 --> 01:21:05.700
por favor

01:21:17.600 --> 01:21:19.600
Will you please not hurt me anymore?

01:21:21.100 --> 01:21:22.300
I want to like it here.

01:21:23.300 --> 01:21:26.700
I know you didn't invite me, but I also didn't attack.

01:21:28.300 --> 01:21:29.000
I see you.

01:21:30.800 --> 01:21:32.900
Will you please see me?

01:21:34.600 --> 01:21:37.200
You keep hurting me and it's breaking

01:21:37.200 --> 01:21:37.500
my heart.

01:21:39.400 --> 01:21:40.500
I'm doing the best I can.

01:21:49.500 --> 01:21:54.100
And now having found and spoken

01:21:52.100 --> 01:21:55.300
the words.

01:21:57.200 --> 01:21:57.600
I can see.

01:21:58.500 --> 01:21:59.900
What my life has been.

01:22:01.500 --> 01:22:05.000
When you give yourself permission to speak of the pain, you

01:22:04.300 --> 01:22:07.300
can be so much more grateful.

01:22:08.200 --> 01:22:09.800
for writing horseback

01:22:10.500 --> 01:22:12.000
next to kiosks

01:22:12.700 --> 01:22:15.400
the Great Pyramid of Giza

01:22:17.200 --> 01:22:19.000
being greeted by the Moroccan maitre d

01:22:20.400 --> 01:22:21.400
at the church of Club

01:22:22.800 --> 01:22:25.200
watching the fish called the Spanish dancer.

01:22:25.800 --> 01:22:27.900
It's Finn swirling like a flamingo dress

01:22:28.500 --> 01:22:30.600
60 feet under the surface of the Red Sea

01:22:31.600 --> 01:22:34.400
hearing music and laughter from your neighbor's house is all

01:22:34.400 --> 01:22:37.400
night during Ramadan and then seeing your Muslim classmates at

01:22:37.400 --> 01:22:40.500
school the next day looking exhausted because they haven't slept

01:22:40.500 --> 01:22:43.800
all night getting to swim in the Pacific in

01:22:43.800 --> 01:22:46.600
Panama all the time and the

01:22:46.600 --> 01:22:49.200
Atlantic and Connecticut and the Mediterranean in Egypt

01:22:49.200 --> 01:22:52.900
and you learn how to win Surf and Morocco and you sucked

01:22:52.900 --> 01:22:55.500
at it, but still you were with surfing and

01:22:55.500 --> 01:22:59.300
Morocco where the sky at night was congested

01:22:58.300 --> 01:23:01.400
with diamonds and you

01:23:01.400 --> 01:23:04.400
love seeing the snow and Fairfield County and when

01:23:04.400 --> 01:23:07.700
you were so lonely there at five and you wrote the Burton

01:23:07.100 --> 01:23:10.500
Ernie, it's Sesame Street and they wrote back.

01:23:12.600 --> 01:23:15.200
And you always slept like a baby in the

01:23:15.200 --> 01:23:18.200
pitch black bedroom of your grandmother's house

01:23:18.200 --> 01:23:21.500
in guate, and she rested her hand on your

01:23:21.500 --> 01:23:21.600
head.

01:23:22.500 --> 01:23:25.400
And you felt her love poor through

01:23:25.400 --> 01:23:28.200
you and you can speak in Spanish to your family

01:23:28.200 --> 01:23:31.800
and what then now because your parents put you in the Spanish School

01:23:31.800 --> 01:23:33.300
in Morocco.

01:23:35.600 --> 01:23:36.400
And you think of your brother?

01:23:37.200 --> 01:23:40.700
Who was so cheerful through all the years that you believe him

01:23:40.700 --> 01:23:41.600
as a kid?

01:23:46.300 --> 01:23:48.000
Because he has always been.

01:23:50.400 --> 01:23:51.800
more forgiving

01:23:52.900 --> 01:23:53.200
Than you.

01:23:54.700 --> 01:23:57.300
And you remember how your dad protected you as a car

01:23:57.300 --> 01:24:00.900
is fun on the ice in Fairfield

01:24:00.900 --> 01:24:01.000
County?

01:24:02.100 --> 01:24:05.400
And how your mom used to let you skip school and Morocco and

01:24:05.400 --> 01:24:08.500
read plays allowed with her because she could see.

01:24:11.200 --> 01:24:12.700
how overwhelmed

01:24:13.900 --> 01:24:14.900
you were

01:24:17.900 --> 01:24:22.000
And it is you at 15 who

01:24:21.400 --> 01:24:24.800
gets to walk to the outdoor lounge of

01:24:24.800 --> 01:24:25.500
a hotel.

01:24:26.400 --> 01:24:28.500
in the Maasai Mara

01:24:30.500 --> 01:24:31.000
Kenya

01:24:31.900 --> 01:24:33.000
on spring break

01:24:34.300 --> 01:24:34.800
with your mom

01:24:36.700 --> 01:24:37.400
And your pop?

01:24:38.600 --> 01:24:42.200
And see the huge herd of Impala grazing

01:24:41.200 --> 01:24:44.100
and drinking from the salt lick.

01:24:44.800 --> 01:24:47.000
And then the largest dough barks twice.

01:24:48.500 --> 01:24:51.700
Burst of white birds swoops and lightning strikes

01:24:51.700 --> 01:24:54.300
and thunder claps and all the hurt is

01:24:54.300 --> 01:24:56.200
looking that way so you look that way and see.

01:24:57.500 --> 01:24:58.400
a lioness

01:24:59.600 --> 01:25:00.100
drinking from the salt lick

01:25:00.900 --> 01:25:01.700
50 feet away

01:25:02.400 --> 01:25:03.000
and you look back.

01:25:04.500 --> 01:25:06.900
And all the all the fawns are gone.

01:25:08.300 --> 01:25:09.200
And you look at the lioness.

01:25:09.900 --> 01:25:11.400
Drinking and you look back.

01:25:13.200 --> 01:25:15.300
And 2/3 of the herd is gone.

01:25:16.900 --> 01:25:18.100
And you look at the lioness.

01:25:18.700 --> 01:25:19.700
She's still drinking.

01:25:20.500 --> 01:25:22.000
And you look back and they're all.

01:25:24.400 --> 01:25:25.600
save three dolls

01:25:26.400 --> 01:25:28.700
two bucks one stag

01:25:30.500 --> 01:25:31.800
and the females

01:25:33.900 --> 01:25:34.900
are in front.

01:25:36.400 --> 01:25:36.900
watching

01:25:38.100 --> 01:25:38.700
watching

01:25:39.900 --> 01:25:40.500
watching

01:25:42.500 --> 01:25:42.900
and then

01:25:43.800 --> 01:25:45.700
before your very eyes

01:25:48.400 --> 01:25:49.500
They disappear.

01:25:54.600 --> 01:25:54.800
like

01:26:04.600 --> 01:26:05.400
what am I?

01:26:07.900 --> 01:26:10.500
I'm one of the luckiest.

01:26:12.200 --> 01:26:12.600
people

01:26:14.800 --> 01:26:15.400
on earth

01:26:51.100 --> 01:26:54.500
I can remember the first time I repatriated to the United States. I

01:26:54.500 --> 01:26:56.500
was 13 after having lived in Japan.

01:26:57.400 --> 01:27:00.300
I had was having a really hard time transitioning to

01:27:00.300 --> 01:27:02.900
the American schools into the American culture.

01:27:03.700 --> 01:27:06.200
And and yet and I was being bullied at school

01:27:06.200 --> 01:27:09.400
and I was having a hard time figuring out what parts

01:27:09.400 --> 01:27:12.200
of my identity were. Okay in this new culture.

01:27:13.200 --> 01:27:16.400
And yet I would come home from school when we first moved

01:27:16.400 --> 01:27:19.000
back and tell my parents that I had a great

01:27:19.000 --> 01:27:19.300
day.

01:27:20.200 --> 01:27:23.500
partly because I wanted to protect them they were stressed with

01:27:23.500 --> 01:27:26.300
the move themselves and I didn't want to add to their burden

01:27:26.300 --> 01:27:27.600
but also because

01:27:28.700 --> 01:27:32.000
I think I was expected to adjust well to

01:27:31.200 --> 01:27:34.400
this move and so I didn't want to let them down.

01:27:35.600 --> 01:27:38.600
And that kind of coping skills has

01:27:38.600 --> 01:27:40.600
stayed with me for decades.

01:27:41.800 --> 01:27:44.300
For a long time. I had a painful longing that

01:27:44.300 --> 01:27:48.100
came from my inability to remember when my

01:27:47.100 --> 01:27:50.400
family lived in Mexico when I was an infant

01:27:50.400 --> 01:27:50.900
and toddler.

01:27:51.500 --> 01:27:55.000
And I used to say it was a time when I was Mexican believing

01:27:54.500 --> 01:27:57.300
there had been a borderline drawn across

01:27:57.300 --> 01:28:00.200
my body when we moved to the US I had

01:28:00.200 --> 01:28:03.300
mostly lost my Heritage language and I cannot speak fluently like

01:28:03.300 --> 01:28:06.000
my family and there were times that I

01:28:06.200 --> 01:28:09.400
believe that any part of me that felt Mexican or that wanted

01:28:09.400 --> 01:28:12.000
to express. My mexican-ness was an imposter.

01:28:12.800 --> 01:28:15.400
One of the cool things about growing up

01:28:15.400 --> 01:28:18.500
as the tck is that you'll get to see things that very

01:28:18.500 --> 01:28:21.500
few other people get to see now on the flip side of that is

01:28:21.500 --> 01:28:24.400
that there's going to be things that are just really really hard to process.

01:28:25.300 --> 01:28:28.300
And it's just one of those things where you got to be aware of what you're thinking

01:28:28.300 --> 01:28:31.200
and maybe you'll realize okay. Yeah, I'm getting

01:28:31.200 --> 01:28:31.800
scared now.

01:28:32.700 --> 01:28:35.800
I know why I'm getting scared. It's not just because it's scary.

01:28:35.800 --> 01:28:38.200
It's at once once again, you know, I mean

01:28:38.200 --> 01:28:41.100
this situation where I'm in an unfamiliar place and I

01:28:41.100 --> 01:28:44.900
just don't know how to deal with it. And if you can recognize that that's

01:28:44.900 --> 01:28:45.800
half the battle right there.

01:28:47.300 --> 01:28:50.600
Like from Argentina was I from Pakistan was I from New Zealand was

01:28:50.600 --> 01:28:53.100
I from the Philippines my country of origin or was I from

01:28:53.100 --> 01:28:56.000
the US where I'd spent the most time eventually I had to

01:28:56.200 --> 01:28:59.400
just decide. Okay. I'm American and I'm gonna

01:28:59.400 --> 01:29:02.500
make this my home and become more

01:29:02.500 --> 01:29:06.200
American so I can feel like I belong somewhere, you know,

01:29:06.200 --> 01:29:09.500
it's in some ways. It's a privilege to get to choose which culture

01:29:09.500 --> 01:29:14.000
you want to belong to but it also can be very confusing. So

01:29:13.300 --> 01:29:16.400
it's one of those mixed blessings of being a

01:29:16.400 --> 01:29:16.900
tck.

01:29:18.900 --> 01:29:21.800
Now I entwined my memories homes

01:29:21.800 --> 01:29:24.900
and identities into creative projects and I

01:29:24.900 --> 01:29:27.300
sew them together with what I thought was

01:29:27.300 --> 01:29:29.100
lost but was only buried.

01:29:29.800 --> 01:29:32.600
And this method of uncovering is my

01:29:32.600 --> 01:29:35.500
way to remember and to feel whole.

01:29:58.100 --> 01:29:59.500
your long limbs

01:30:01.900 --> 01:30:04.200
I'm nine and I am Joe and Little

01:30:04.200 --> 01:30:04.300
Women.