Issue 12: Musings on Identity
In which I think through how stories present identity, what we can learn from them in how we navigate identity in real life.
Hello you,
In today’s letter, I muse about two stories I recently read, drawing parallels between the way the characters in the stories navigate identity and what we can learn from them and apply to daily life:
“Fatima, the Biloquist: A Transformation Story” by Nafissa Thompson
“Roy Spivey” by Miranda July
Identity cannot be compartmentalised. You can’t divide it up into halves or thirds or any other separate segments. I haven’t got several identities: I’ve got just one, made up of many components combined together in a mixture that is unique to every individual.
Amin Maalouf
We are so many things and just one thing at once. I drew on this after reading “Fatima, the Biloquist: A Transformation Story” by Nafissa Thompson. Fatima from the story is biracial. She goes to a (white) private school and does not have many black friends until she meets Violet who wants her to conform and fit into the socially accepted standard of blackness.
Who gets to define how we must fit in? If I belong to a certain culture and do not speak the language, does this mean I do not fully belong? This is a question that has plagued me even long before that time when I was an undergraduate and my sub dean refused to acknowledge that I was Yoruba simply because to her, I looked Igbo, could not speak Yoruba (well enough) and finally for the reason I think the strangest: she had never heard of my village.
Humans are complex and Nafissa Thompson’s story is a testament to this. Our complexities make us who we are. In the story, Fatima and Violet’s friendship blossoms and Fatima’s identity transforms until the point where it begins to evolve and she begins to form her own thoughts about identity. It is at this point that I begin to see Fatima. Agency is important; once she has this, she stops being a (or conforming to a) stereotype (even if she does a few politically questionable things). From this point, Fatima would have been ostracized if she belonged to a community of black people. She had to avoid Violet and subtly look to her parents for disapproval, even though it wasn’t forthcoming It was an interesting arc to see in a character.
From a storytelling perspective, I’m a bit wary about writing characters that fit neatly into character tropes and archetypes. We all have quirks and flaws that make us different people. Miranda July’s Roy Spivey does this elegantly: woman meets celebrity on the plane, they fall in love or something like that? (read the story here — such an amazing story if you ask me). The experience would have been normal — average at best — but Miranda manages to make it intriguing by fixating on details that might otherwise seem ordinary or unusual: the narrator’s height, smelly armpits, etc.
My gender and the law class on stereotypes was my first real validation on not fitting in. All my semi-adult life, I had been worried about who would marry me if I didn’t know how to cook or do all the fancy things that women in their mid to early 20s knew how to do. As a teen, I worried about the same thing because I thought I was too tall and no one would want to marry someone who was simply too tall — tall man, short (petite) woman was the trope I grew up with no thanks to fairytales and Hollywood. Fatima too worried about never having a boyfriend because she went to private school and had been accused of whiteness and race traitorism. I’m no longer bothered about marriage and frivolous things like cooking. But what happens to Fatima when she defies blackness. Does she eventually find a boyfriend? The story doesn’t exactly answer this. However, it raises the question and reminds me that like humans, like identity, life is complex.
So that this doesn’t become a long winding essay, I’ll stop here. Have a great weekend.
This newsletter is listening Madonna’s Holiday.
I loved this very much Ope. Especially as Identity (more specifically, Nigerian Identities) has been a fixation of mine for a while now. In fact, it's one of the reasons I took on my current job - it's one of our core themes.
Additionally, I'm currently planning a National Story Exchange on Identity as well as a mini documentary.
Thanks for this. Related plenty. Now will go read the books.