People often ask me, "Where are you from?"
I tell them I'm from my hometown, in Illinois, in the USA.
But the real answer is a little more complicated.
I was born in this town. I've lived here my whole life. But my mother was born and raised in Hungary, an ocean away. I may have been born in America, but I bear a Hungarian name.
I never learned Hungarian. English is the only language I speak. And yet my accent is tinted by my mother's, my heritage shading my words with a language I do not understand. Where am I from, when I speak with the sounds of a language I never learned?
I lap up the bits of knowledge I find about Hungarian history, the bits of culture my mother shares. I feel a deep loss at the fact I do not speak the language; I make steps to learn. I have been to Hungary once, when I was nine years old; I long to visit again, to meet my aunts and cousins from so far away, to explore the place that helped shape me from afar. I feel a connection to this country I've barely been, more than to the country I've lived all my life.
I recently learned that by Hungarian law, because my mother is a Hungarian citizen, I am as well. I would simply need to file some paperwork and I would be officially verified as a citizen of the land of half my blood. Does being Hungarian mean I am from Hungary? Can I be from more than one place? Can I be from a place I've never lived?
America is often touted as a land of immigrants, a melting pot. People don't identify Americans by their surnames, as they might say someone has a German surname, or a French surname. Americans bear surnames from all over the world, regardless of where they were born. "Where are you from?" is not always a simple question. So many of us carry the history of so many places in our selves, in our voices, in our traditions.
But this is not what people want to hear when they ask me where I am from. They are saying, "I have identified you as Other. Tell me what kind of Other you are." They are saying "I do not know your name, I do not know your voice. You are not like me."
How do I know this?
Because when I say I am from my hometown - when I tell them I am from the place I was born, the place I have always lived - there is a second question.
"But where are you really from?"
