A Trip to Belgium

Artist's Statement While most of the book was influential on how I wrote this vignette, there was one specific part that resonated with me. The part that stood out with me was how he knew so many languages to fit in with different groups of people. He explains in chapter 4 that he was a “chameleon” so he could fit into different groups by knowing their language. The reason why this is connected with my own family because they are very similar in the way that each one of them knows up to 4 or 5 languages. This also stood out to me because of my own desire to learn more languages, more than just to speak to my family. The way that Noah explored his sense of identity in his vignettes was by his stories of growing up during apartheid being a mixed child. He had a hard time figuring out where he belonged because of his skin color. “I stood there awkwardly by myself in this no-man’s-land in the middle of the playground.” (pg 44). This was an example he used on how early he had to “pick a side” to figure out where he belonged because he was mixed race. Noah’s writing style impacted me to write in a more personal and less formal way, using humor to tell my story. The way I did this was by writing as if I was talking face to face with someone. The way I incorporated humor into my vignette was by speaking in a way with sarcastic humor. I tried to get the reader to feel like they were in my place, there with me on the plane, or in Belgium, trying to talk to all my relatives while they all understood each other but not me. I did this by explaining why there was a language barrier, and what culture my family and I fit into, and trying to get to know so many new relatives at once. My vignette addresses the essential questions of this unit by explaining my self identity and learning more about my culture that I didn’t know before going to Belgium.