Hyphenated America
A Meditation on Identity
Peter H. Lee
April 1, 1997
I'm sitting on a at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, trying to write an article about identity politics while waiting for my train for New York. A man sitting to my right asks me for a cigarette, which I oblige. His voice is soft, Caribbean of some sort. Quickly, almost mechanically, my mind files him: Caribbean-African-American. We converse silently in shared smoke. To my left, I notice a Bryn Mawr student talking none too quietly to a friend, "Going home is so tedious. I hate explaining to my dad that being a feminist doesn't automatically make me a lesbian." Again, another file for my mental card catalog: White-Female-Feminist-maybe-or-maybe-not-Lesbian. My eyes and ears keep roving around my surroundings: Some Latino-Americans, a Hasidic-Jewish-American, a middle-aged Asian-American selling flowers, and so many others. I close my eyes. I hear the train sometime later, sounding as tired as I feel. Standing up, I quickly finish my last cigarette, a psychological ploy to make me feel less guilty when I smoke my next last cigarette. I find my seat on the train, dumping my bag on the seat next to me and my thoughts on my lap. I'm an academic, and academia can be a sheltered life. I often gravitate toward sheltered topics, but what I'm thinking about now is much more personal for me. Questions about identity used to scare the hell out of me as a child. I was terrified that these questions would puncture me right to my core, revealing not a soft, vulnerable pulp of substance but the awful hiss of empty vacuum being invaded by air long denied it. Back then I didn't know who or what I was, and in my ignorance I thought not knowing my identity meant not having an identity. I find it ironic now that I knew so little of myself back ...
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