Identities

By Jan LundiusSTOCKHOLM / ROME, Mar 30 2021 (IPS)   I was born in the winter in 1990 in a country not my own i was born with my father’s eyes maybe i stole them he doesn’t look like that anymore i was born in seven countries i was born carved up by borders i was born with a graveyard of languages for teeth i was born to be a darkness in an american boy´s bed … Safia Elhillo Many years ago, when my youngest daughter was still a child, she suddenly became sick with stomach pains, vomiting and high fever. At the hospital a nice nurse, probably to find out if the feverish little girl was cognizant enough, asked her: “Where do you come from?” The girl became confused – she was visiting her sister in London, was born in Singapore and lived in Rome, her mother came from the Dominican Republic, her father from Sweden, she had lived in several countries and spoke four languages. She pondered for a while and then she answered: “I am …. I am international”. Many of us adopt an identity and judge our environment from that chosen position. We might call ourselves nationalists, women or men, black or white, belonging to one of the groups covered by the term LGBTQ, socialists or conservatives, Muslims or Christians. Some of us are even willing to die, or kill, while desperately clinging to such auto-definitions. Politics and religions have been founded upon and maintain such monolithic convictions, which in reality are just parts of what constitute the mind of a...
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Crime & Justice Education Featured Global Globalisation Headlines Health Human Rights Humanitarian Emergencies Migration & Refugees Religion TerraViva United Nations Source Type: news