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It's always refreshing to see descriptions of America by people who have lived here a long time after living somewhere else long enough to be without American p
by tokenadult 11y ago
It's always refreshing to see descriptions of America by people who have lived here a long time after living somewhere else long enough to be without American presuppositions about how life works. One of the things I found most startling about coming back to the United States at age twenty-six-going-on-twenty-seven after three years of living overseas was reverse culture shock. When I first went to the other country I lived in (Taiwan), any time an experience felt strange, which was often, I would just say to myself, "Of course this is strange, this is a foreign country." But I was very taken aback when I returned to the United States and found out that many experiences feel strange here now--I know that the United States is not the center of the Universe. Now that I've lived in more than one country, it's a whole lot harder to have a standard for "normal" for many aspects of life.
The writing in this article is very interesting, and the author reports many interesting incidents. This article deserves your close reading attention, and I predict it will be good food for thought for the readers who read it from top to bottom. I look forward to a future article by the same author about what he thinks about Britain after he lives there for a while following so many years away in America.
- danjayh 11y agoCan you give any examples of experiences that felt strange when you returned? Just curious what types of things you noticed...
- wozniacki 11y agoSeconded. Three years is an awfully short time to notice things uniquely as though one were an insider. It has been my experience that cultures do not unfurl that easily for outsiders to be allowed in and wrap one's head around, all the motivations for the reasons why a society organizes itself in a certain manner much less, comprehend the complex inner dynamics of such organization. edit: HN is starting to become a strange place. Take the time to explain how your experiences abroad - even the short ones - helped you gain non-threadbare insights about that culture, which fully invalidate my disagreement above, rather than partake in purely intellectually-lazy flaming.
- DanBC 11y agoTokenAdult is talking about his perspective as an outsider. He was in the US for 26 years, left for 3 years, and then returned to the US. He says that 3 years away from the US was enough time for somethings to feel strange when he returned.
- tokenadult 11y agoThose first things are hard to remember now (that was half a lifetime ago). And I later had another long stay in Taiwan, followed by another return here to the States, so I'm especially vague now about where "home" is and what is "normal." But in general the United States idea about children being "independent" from parents and parents not actively providing for them seems quite strange to me now--even though my oldest son, still younger than I was when I first traveled to Taiwan, is arguably more genuinely self-sufficient than I ever was up to that age.
- mc32 11y agoRobert Frank's The Americans provides a great portrait of America back in the 50's. He was Swiss (now American) and made a cross country trip and documented American life in different paces. He is a great Photographer, however, I think his having been new and thus outsider, he was able to show a different facet of America from the 50s. "THe Americans" is a preeminent work of documentary photography. To this day photographers use it as a measuring stick for documentary photography. This is why many don't agree with how people tend to deride either western or asian documentary photographers who go to (necessarily poorer countries) by calling it "tourist documentary photography," exploitative, etc. An outsider has a better and sharper eye for what is askew in a place foreign to them.