Miu Yatsuka

At risk of sounding regretful of my background, I confess that my least favorite question when meeting someone is, “Where are you from?” My answer usually seems interesting enough to lead to many follow-ups, to the point where a side of my identity that hasn’t shaped me the same as others obscures the rest of myself. But it’s also the kind of question that it’s hard to deflect from without requiring a lie. Admittedly, I haven’t spent as much time in this new country as in others. But the depth of connection I feel to this place has outweighed the years of upbringing I lack. And yet, when meeting new people outside the confines of Bowdoin, “Where are you from?” creates familiarly predictable conversations: What could have possibly gotten me to Maine growing up in Ecuador? It’s the hyperfocus.

Perhaps it is a symptom of resentment or the lingering regret that I never made the most of my time where I grew up. Yet calling myself from a place that shaped me less feels disingenuous, but so does claiming one I have known for less than three years. So, I deflected by answering, “I go to school in Maine!” so that perhaps we could quickly move on and talk about something else instead of where I’m from. My reluctance to answer with the longer story is not merely due to a desire to talk about music or philosophy instead, but because I somehow feel I’ve been shaped more by the state of Maine than by my hometown. But no level of allegiance is enough to make me “from” that place. My lack of desire to answer where I am really from comes from a disconnect between my upbringing and the place that made me who I am.

Out of frustration of not being from the place I have come to love most, I sought for years an answer to what it means to be from the United States. How can someone become an American? There is a straightforward legal answer, but it’s reductionist—just as it is reductionist to say I am from a place that does not feel like home. I believe there is something uniquely American in principles and ideals beyond what a passport can capture.

While aware of the dissonance between ideal and practice, I value ideals for the compass they provide. I’ve not known of another place with national ideals that are so pervasively familiar they can be recited almost as second nature. The United States is unique in having made the claim “all men are created equal” foundational to its national identity since the country’s independence. Whatever the reality at any given moment, the existence of this pervasive guiding principle is special in itself because it gives us a sense of direction for where to strive to be. There is an enduring principle that has brought the American people together in the past and will continue to be a guiding compass for our future. Not all can articulate the founding principles of their nations with the same clarity that Americans can.

Equally remarkable is the opportunity to be part of a federal system that allows one to belong simultaneously to a nation with incredibly diverse interests and to a smaller unit with its own priorities. The federalist structure offers countless lessons in compromising local interests for the common good, while reserving to the states decisions close enough to stir fierce disagreements among neighbors yet distant enough to spare other states from their consequences. Federalism is almost structured so that the compass is calibrated only when local and national interests are held in balance. I’ve grown to appreciate these uniquely American principles, finding in them a compass that points in much the same direction as my own values.

This seems an unfinished thought to end on, but so is my understanding of why this place feels the way I have always imagined home should feel, even as I am reminded that I am not an American. Perhaps what has long unsettled me about the question “Where are you from?” is not the geography it demands but what the question overlooks.

Camila Eljuri is a member of the Class of 2027.