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Hungary’s prime minister secured his position for the next four years in April, an outcome that pushes my beloved country further away from democracy and me further into an identity crisis. Who am I, if I don’t agree with the majority of my small nation’s population?
I remember when Viktor Orbán – and his party,…
I learned about it the summer after I turned 16. The fan above was blowing hot air onto my head. Miscellaneous birds made their Australiana noises outside. The room was taking on that depressing blue tint that comes right before night fully settles in. The laptop screen was brighter in the dark, and the blank…
“Where are you from?”
This is a typical way of breaking the ice among solo travellers. I get asked the question up to 10 times a day.
“From Norway.”
“From Norway? No way.”
Norwegians do ask too, but not nearly as often. Although everyone sees in colour, asking a stranger about their heritage is considered…
You know when you’re a kid and someone says to you, “I bet I can beat you to that tree!” so you break into a sprint and run like your life depends on it, just to prove them wrong? My sprint towards proving my identity started well before I could tie my shoelaces.
*
“Look…
My daughter asked me if she is white.
As her brother tried to answer the question, looking at his colouring pencils and bringing his own arm closer to hers, my mind drifted to my first Australian experience that made me ask the same question.
I took my daughter to the child nurse who commented during…
“Will you be okay on your own?” the driver asked me, pulling to a stop.
“I’ll be fine, thank you.”
I’ve been doing this for long enough.
I yanked my backpack off the back of the buggy and wandered over to the little tent that was mine for the next five nights. I’d been solo traveling for months…
“Too black for the white kids, and too white for the black.”
That’s a line from the 2013 single ‘Chum’ by African-American rapper Earl Sweatshirt. It’s also a line that has continued to plague me since I first heard it seven years ago.
The Black Lives Matter movement has quite possibly been the single most…
April 2007
In 1994 in Melbourne, Australia, my dad sat in peace. He had marched and fought, and now could return to the country he’d left, with pride and without fear. 13 years later, we were packed up and heading across the world from our life in Australia to post-Apartheid South Africa.
The anticipation…
“I used my backpack to shield a young girl from the police’s rubber bullets, because she was about to get hit and for sure she wouldn’t make it out of there if it wasn’t for me. Oh, and the pepper spray really hurt my face, especially my eyes, but I have already used dishwashing liquid…
I am part Indonesian, part German; in other words, I am Eurasian.
I grew up in Singapore, living there for most of my life. I walked the same streets every other day, met the same friends out by the park and ate the same food at hawker centres as cravings hit. I became familiar and…