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GANADOR / AWARD WINNER

(Narrativa / Narrative)

Tristan Franz

When I sat down at my friend’s dinner party, the six or so guests were in the middle of a lively conversation in Spanish. Slowly, as my presence sank into the room, the chatter quieted and polite introductions were extended to me in English. It was that moment when a group of people — who seemed to be having a great time until now — reluctantly smile and assess the newcomer, deciding whether we are worth the interruption. Here, in a room of Hispanic New Yorkers, I couldn’t help but feel that it was my closed-mouthed, monotone English that put a damper on things. “¡Tristan habla español!,” touts my friend, breaking the silence. “¿Ah, sí? ¿Y por qué no lo hablas?” someone asks me. “No sé, puedo si quieres. Hablamos español entonces.” At this, I receive the usual combination of raised eyebrows, smiles, and a few cynical scoffs.

My Spanish, while certainly not native, sometimes sounds close enough that native speakers do a double take when they first meet me; it seems there is a truly disturbing incongruence between my freckled face and rolled r’s. And while my penchant for the language has earned me respect and friendships in some quarters, it draws a silent criticism from others, particularly at home in New York. If I am not admired, I am viewed as a culture vulture of sorts, appropriating a language and way of being that I, an Anglo-American, do

not fully understand. I no longer bother mentioning my Latin street cred (the years abroad, the master’s in Latin American studies) because this only perpetuates my vulturism. Why don’t I just accept my own culture instead of obsessing over another?

I, like many, feel less and less rooted in anything resembling an ethnic or national culture. I am white, but I have no real connection to anyone or anything explicitly European. I am American, but I could not describe to you what that means other than a basic commitment to democracy and freedom of speech. I am a New Yorker, a cosmopolitan refugee without — thanks to gentrification — even a neighborhood to call my own. I am thus left to construct my identity with a vague blueprint of Western culture, which, for all its historical richness, feels in its postmodern form less like a substantive identity and more like a constant critique of itself. There is an emptiness and it is palpable.

Sadly, to the extent that a culture does exist, it is increasingly defined by the highly individualist, transaction-based lifestyle typical of urban centers in the U.S., a trend which necessarily leads away from human flourishing. This pseudo-culture I grew up in — the one that millions of young Americans are growing up in now — no longer performs culture’s original function of creating meaning and satisfying our desires as humans. Indeed, it can be painful to go out into the world as a young adult, as I did, and feel that your fellow citizens are simply not interested in building relationships for the sake of human connection, for the sake of community, for the sake of contributing to a sustainable culture. In rejecting these and other norms, however, one is left in cultural limbo, searching for a place to safely land and root an identity.

I could have landed anywhere, but I landed in Lima. It was 2009 and I had just graduated from college, quit my job, and gotten on a plane to the place least resembling corporate America that I could think of. Immediately, the sense of culture took on a new meaning. I saw in Peruvians a sense

of basic comradery that I had never experienced. For me, it wasn’t the distinct traditions or foods or music that defined the culture — it was the underlying unity among people that I perceived as most central to their identity; people prioritized relationships. Classism and racism were prevalent, yes, but a collectivist spirit seemed to permeate daily life for all people, and this served as the ultimate counterpoint to the individualism I was trying to escape. I could live here, I thought, and indeed I did, in Peru, in Mexico, and then in Colombia.

Twelve years and one Colombian wife later, I have, in many ways, escaped. The time I had the privilege of spending across Latin America left me with more than an awkwardly native Spanish fluency — it ingrained a new, hybrid epistemology that balances out the more intense side of my Anglo/ American/Western self (much of which was responsible for bouts of anxiety and depression I dealt with in my twenties). I found a counterpoint to my Emersonian self-reliance in an open-armed collectivist spirit, I replaced a constant sense of urgency with a more relaxed, cyclical view of time, and at times I take on a more animated personality rooted in the rhythmic, embodied expression of a Romance language. I am back “home” in New York, struggling at times with the same emptiness, with a society that only knows how to want, with close friends who never get all that close. Part of me lives somewhere else, somewhere that is far from utopia but even further from emptiness, and this feels better than limbo.

I latched onto Latin American culture(s) as a lifeboat — the first I could find — when I felt lost at sea. Is it culturally inappropriate for me to adopt aspects of this identity, as the scoffs at the dinner party would have me believe? Am I exoticizing or romanticizing, ignoring the complex histories of Latin American countries and their relationship with the US — with people who look like me? Am I really a culture vulture, a neocolonizer trying to consume what is not rightly mine?

If the answer to any of these is yes, then it seems our identities are fixed; we

are stuck in our respective ethnic and national cultures, whether we like the histories that come with them or not. In our melting, globalized, crisisridden world, this seems like a dangerously stubborn way to exist. A more important question to ponder at the next dinner party might be how can we all adapt to a new definition of community? And are they serving tapas?