I am a Tree

posted by Molly

In my last professional incarnation, when I was working as a high school educator, I had an activity that I liked to do. I would start by asking one of the young people “XX, who are you?” They would answer, and then ask someone else in the group “XX, who are you?” And so on. The only catch was that categories could not be repeated, so if one person said their name, then no one else could. 

Something powerful works within the naming process. In naming ourselves, we take ownership of pieces of ourselves, telling both our inside selves and the world at large that we are proud of these aspects, and perhaps we identify with them more than those parts of us that we leave unnamed.

Inversely, something powerful works when other people define our identities for us. When someone tells a light skinned Latina that she should pass for white, or tells a bisexual man that if he has an opposite sex partner he’s really straight, or when a black woman is told that she’s “acting too white”, we are in effect being told that we don’t know ourselves as well as these strangers do.

And that’s bullshit. I speak for myself, at the very least, when I say that I know myself better than those (sometimes well meaning) jerks. I don’t need to fit into typical or stereotypical roles to be defined by my race, gender, educational background, whatever. I define those roles by the very virtue of inhabiting them.

As we near the publication date for our Identity Issue, we on staff are thinking hard about all the different facets identity can take. Do you identify yourself by nationality? Your family? Physical characteristics? The music you listen to? The places you’ve traveled? Team Edward or Team Jacob? And what do these identities say about our experiences and what we value most?