#karjalaini

[huamu-talks]

i'm kinda alive and kinda back

but now my blog is most active on fediverse: [@]huamu[@]est.social (direct link)

karelian+ resources here

i will probably be here still, to interact with other Karelians, but without too personal own posts? will see. i already moved from 2 (two) old blogs due to different reasons lol

i will follow you from my main account, but please interact with this one (for privacy and anxiety reasons).

i block tankies and those who identify as "russian".

[languagesperkele]

linkki twiittiin

Jos täälä vaa ketää on, joka tätä ei jo ole nähnyt.

[languagesperkele]

Sometimes I feel like we are fighting for nothing because other people won't value us and our language and culture enough to care. Because we aren't this or that or enough. Because no one is willing to recognise us as us rather than following the Finnish propaganda. Because no one ever seems to even recognise our existence when talking about minorities in Europe.

[languagesperkele]

[languagesperkele]

Joku: en oo ehtiny koko päivään syyvvä/jäi lompakko kotiin, niin en voinu ostaa lounasta : (

Minä, karjalainen: -kaivaa laukusta ja taskuista liudan erinäisiä eväitä- MITÄ SAIS OLLA?

[languagesperkele]

I feel like there’s a certain kind of pride vs humbleness thing in my culture. It’s not just any kind of pride or any kind of humbleness but a very specific kind of pride that’s seen as a bad thing. I also feel like this concept forms a pretty solid base on the worldview and also on how I think of things. I know some people would consider it a bad thing about my culture because a lot of people I’ve met online seem to think of idealising any kind of humbleness as a way to keep people from rising up against those who wrong them, but it isn’t at all about that. It’s extremely hard to put into words. I’ve tried. I’ve talked with people who share this experience. I still can’t really define it or put it into words. It’s always been there, the concept has been passed down to me by the people I grew up with, but it hasn’t come with words to define it. Even so it’s this is a very important thing to me. I feel like it’s somewhere in my core when I think about it more. It’s weird because it doesn’t feel logical to me that something like this would feel warm but it does.

[languagesperkele]

There's something scary about publicly refusing the identity the majority culture/people try to implement on you. To say that no, I am not who you think I should be. I am this other thing instead. Sometimes it's weird to think I can't just be myself because just being myself comes with extras I didn't ask for and because just being myself also requires combating decades of inter-generational assimilation efforts.

[languagesperkele]

So I'm kinda planning some Karelian children's books that may or may not be a thing someday (knowing me they won't be but) and the hardest part about planning the characters/setting is that I really want to draw from my own experiences but writing from the pov of someone in my generation wouldn't be too relatable to those born now. I'm in the parent generation now and the kids who would be reading (or rather hearing, I want to make books for very young children) these books are in a different "place" than my generation is considering the post-WWII era as a continuum if that makes sense. My grandparents were born before the war so my connection to the evacuations and struggles of the first few decades after WWII than that of my kids will be. My kids' grandparents won't be retired farmers living in the countryside and my kids won't have any of the experiences related to that. My heart tells me to build the sorts of settings I didn't see as a kid but that's not topical anymore for the kids of this time.