An American Girl

"She lets the cop have it, full
blast, the eyes, the smile, the blaze of being a young American."

There are a lot of things which make London unique, but one of the absolute coolest is the unmatchable diversity of people who call this city home. I was lucky to grow up in Arlington, which is a very diverse area, but even so I am blown away by the international complexity found here. It seems that almost everyone in London comes from somewhere else; the streets are packed with Australians, Kiwis, South Africans, Indians and Arabs, not to mention all the shades of European. 253 captures this well; the flurries of conversations in languages completely unknown, the rainbow of faces and the interconnected web of cultures layered on top of one another. Like the United States, England has become home to waves of the hopeful in search of wealth and opportunity (and just like the US, England is currently incensed in debate over the Illegal Immigrant Problem).

Similar to the US, but it is quite different to be looking at things from the other side of the coin, as a foreigner here myself. Obviously coming to London as a white, English speaking American is a very different experience then that of many other, braver transplants. Still, it's a new and interesting experience for me, to live as an outsider, and to be defined first and foremost by my American-ness.

"American-ness." Such an odd idea really, like 250 million people can be summed up in any one cultural category- yet people do it all the time with foreign cultures. At home, using "American" as a descriptor of a person is pretty much meaningless, like saying someone has hair. So it's a very self reflective experience to find yourself in a place where people think they know something about who you are just because they caught your accent.

Diversity, alienation and cultural identity are concepts Geoff Ryman touches on a lot in 253. This isn't surprising really, of all the London books I've read so far 253 is the only one written by someone who isn't British. Ryman was raised in Canada and London, after college he joined the fine tradition of authors who immigrate permanently to England (see Henry James, TS Eliot etc). I'm sure that he, like me, understand the constant self awareness of being slightly different, in some fundamental way.

At least, as Ryman points out, the British generally like Americans. A lot of the world thinks America is a nation of boorish war mongers. But on a personal level Ryman seems to feel (and I've found as well), that while Americans are terribly intimidated by the British, they actually like us quite a bit:

"I felt the same thing when I first arrived in Britain. I was billeted in a
medical school and bubbled with pre-emptive loathing of the very smart people in
British universities who were bound to snub me. Instead they rapidly became
friends or lovers, their response conditioned by the mask of Americaness that I
wore. They were disappointed to learn my parents were English. "So you're really
just a Brit," said one of them glumly.

All right, spit it out. A lot of Brits have a sexual kink for
Americans. They went off me very slightly when they found out I wasn't. See what
I mean about positive racism? "

(By the way I showed this quote to Andy and he merely looked at me skeptically. Similar to the incredulous look he gives me when go off on some Hugh-Grant/Colin-Firth/English-accents-are-so-hot tangent. Bias runs both ways).

So where does that leave me, apart from a renewed sense of shame over George Bush and an extreme fondness for Tom Petty's "American Girl"? I think that one of the important things about travel is that it pulls you out of the safe zone of uniformity. It's not just about exposing yourself to places where people are different, it's about putting yourself in a place where you are different from the people. It pulls the abstract question of national identity into sharp focus and forces you to examine who you actually are.