so tell me...

a little bit about yourself. your family background. if/how your culture has shaped who you are. i thought this would be a good first assignment for any anthropology class. wrong. perhaps in the united states, but not so much in kuwait. in the united states most people are just waiting for the opportunity to talk about themselves. they might act like they aren't, but all you have to do is ask and the floodgates open. it's different in kuwait. it's not about the individual at all. it's about community. family. to ask a student to talk about themselves is literally a foreign concept. to ask them about their family, their heritage, is an honor.

i know very little about my cultural heritage. the part i do know, the jewish part, i spent much of my life denying. in kuwait your cultural heritage is something you are proud of. one beautiful thing about kuwait is the sheer diversity. while the majority of people living here are arab, most are not kuwaiti citizens (which is a story for another time.) they may be from saudi arabia, lebanon, palestine, jordan. so, even within this small country there is so much diversity. and we all know that makes me happy.

i think the autoethnography helped me more than the students. most seem to have a firm grasp on who they are, where they came from, and why that matters. i am only beginning to learn.