Culture Cravings

I have never been especially in tune with my Ukrainian heritage - as a child detesting Saturday morning Ukrainian school, resenting learning the language, pleased that my features are more "American" than Slavic - but I've noticed that, at random times, I experience what I can only call culture cravings. 

Growing up, at school or in the community, I never associated myself with "the Russians" (as all Slavics were lumped under one label) because they were an embarrassment. They dressed funny, talked funny, almost always had a poor reputation of being shady, judgmental, and haughty. They looked down at Americans, refusing to accept the fact that by immigration, or for many even by birth, they themselves were Americans. They disgusted me and I didn't want to be associated with them but in rejecting these specific people and their specific flaws, I rejected the entire culture. 

But now that I'm so far removed from it, I miss it. I didn't fully realize it for a while, but I would find myself actually speaking Ukrainian to my parents when they called (as opposed to English, how I usually conversate with them) or listening intently to the documentaries in history class when they interviewed Russians or Poles, wanting to catch just snippets of a familiar dialect. When Angela came to visit in the fall, it was so refreshing to watch Everything is Illuminated and laugh at the jokes, to flow between languages in a conversation (because sometimes you just need a good "аж ну" or "ти шо, з дуба впав?"), and yes, I'll admit, to actually cook vareniki. It just felt nice. It felt nice to be near something that is so familiar, something that I never would have imagined that I would find myself missing.

I call these feelings "culture cravings" because I don't know what else to label them. I'm surrounded by a predominantly white American student body, in which the average person knows a single language, and sometimes, it just gets tiring. My tongue randomly gets tied up and I want to blurt out a Ukrainian phrase but no one would understand, or I find some Slavic joke or comparison amusing but no one would get the reference. I find myself craving culture - my culture, the culture that I spent so many years rebelling against and rejecting. 

I guess this is what is called growing up.