By Elisha Wisdom
So far, I have done 14 different interviews with people who identify as having blended cultural identities: biracial/multiracial people, American expats, 1st and 2nd generation immigrants to the US, transracial adoptees, and other people who grew up in communities different than their culture of origin. I have gotten to hear many stories of how people experience their ethnic and cultural identity: how they process belonging to “two (or more) worlds”, how they feel “other-ized” by the communities they have been a part of, and how important it is for them to feel understood and seen.
This experience has been very overwhelming! I have 10 hours of recorded interviews, have been scheduling and rescheduling left and right, and have met in person and over zoom. It has been logistically overwhelming just looking at all of the data and the many conversations yet to be had. But it has also been emotionally overwhelming. People have been pretty vulnerable about their experiences, and there have been some heavy conversations about being misunderstood or disconnected from others.
It has definitely made me process more of my own experience of my ethnic and cultural identity as well! By hearing how others process their identities, I have been better able to understand parts of my story, such as what it was like moving to the U.S. from abroad in 2019. Similarly, my understanding of American concepts of race and ethnicity has also expanded. Each conversation I have, especially with African American and Asian American-identifying interviewees, has given me a window into how Americans of many ethnic backgrounds view race.
It is too soon to say what I have learned from the interviews, as I have not had much time at all to process them, but I thought the most striking piece of everything so far has been the value in “co-constructing knowledge”.
To co-construct knowledge is to create knowledge alongside your interviewees; as I interview people, they bring thoughts and insights into the conversation that I would have never thought of on my own! I have already had “aha!” moments during interviews that have helped me develop my pre-written questions and explore topics with other guests. One example would be digging into the experience of feeling “other”, which was a term repeated by multiple interviewees unprompted. I noticed that they were using the word “other” to describe their experience of feeling outside either of the cultural groups they were a part of. Now, I try to create opportunities to ask about “otherness” or understand if that is a common theme across the board.
I have already learned so much from the community I am studying, however spread apart and diverse it may be! Below is a graphic showing the 28 people who have filled out the consent form and have either interviewed with me or are scheduled to interview with me. Each person was given a set of 8 “I” statements that applied to their experiences. Each slice of the pie chart is a different combination of one or multiple “I” statements, leading to an incredibly diverse pool of interviewees.
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