a-smile-ation

I never embraced the idea of American exceptionalism. And many ways I still don’t. But living in Georgia, and thinking and writing about what's going on here as best as I can, I’ve noticed that there are, actually, some major ways in which the New World is different from the Old.

Time and again, I find myself explaining how, in spite of the fact that my father was born in Japan, I myself (born and raised in the States) am American, not Japanese. And that actually my father naturalized a few years ago, and is now American, too. (I'm not so naive as to think that no one in America would contest my American-ness, but I don't take them very seriously, and America's most optimistic view of itself is still as melting-pot/tossed salad. And so.)

But then, in spite of my painstaking and painful Georgian elucidation of this simple construct, my conversation partner, who is perhaps selling cabbages, turns to his friend and says. "See, she's Japanese. I told you so!"

For my part, I struggle to understand how people of Georgian descent who have been living in Iran for 400 years can still consider themselves Georgians. (They've been petitioning for assistance in returning to Georgia for quite some time now). The seeming aversion to—or impossibility of—cultural assimilation here is jarring. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around it. Is it even so?

That is all.