The Good Immigrant_ Edited by NIKESH SHUKLA

The Good Immigrant_ Edited by NIKESH SHUKLA

 

인터넷으로 책을 시키는 것도 편리하지만 서점에서 어슬렁거리다 책을 발견하는 재미만은 못하다. 우연히 새로운 작가를 만나기도 하고, 좋아하던 작가들의 신간을 보고 집어들기도 하고. 영문서적을 파는 Smith&Son이나 셰익스피어앤컴패니의 근처에 갈일이 있으면 꼭 잠깐 들린다. 관광객들이 다시 많아진 요즘은 셰익스피어에 가면 입구에 기다리는 줄이 길지만 빠르게 관광지로써만 서점을 구경하는 사람들이 많아서 항상 금방 들어갈 수 있었다. 옆에 붙어있는 카페는 자리잡기가 영 쉽지 않아서 한번도 커피를 마셔본 적은 없는데 파리가 아니라 영국이나 호주에 온 것 같은 영어권 특유의 캐주얼하고 유쾌한 분위기가 온 몸으로 느껴지는 곳이다. Good immigrant는 이 서점에서 만난 책이다. 요즘은 특히 젠더나 이민자 관련된 이슈을 다룬 책들이 많이 나오기에 섹션이 따로 나눠져 있다. 영미권은 특히 흑인이 목소리를 낸 책들의 에세이가 잘 나갔다. 어떤 새로운 논지 없이 비슷한 종류의 경험의 나열에 가까워서 흥미가 떨어지니 아직 다 못 읽고 책장에 꽂아놓은 책도 있다.   

반면에 이 책은 여러 작가들의 짧은 글들을 콜라쥬 해서 만든 에세이집이다. 각자의 에피소드가 이어진다. 다양한 인종들의 다양한 경험들과 시선들. 예상했다는 듯이 여기에도 Where are you really from이라는 질문이 나온다. 다국적 기업에서 일하는 내친구인 폴은 겉모습은 베트남 사람인 프랑스사람이다. 아부다비에서 다양한 외국인을 만난다. 예를 들면 인도인이 국적을 물어서 내 친구가 프랑스인이라고 대답을 하면 네가 어떻게 프랑스사람인데? 라는 밑도 끝도 없는 질문이 나온다. 백인들이 질문을 하는 것과는 또 다른 차원의 피곤함이 아닐 수 없다. 서양의 미디어에는 북한에 대한 보도가 많이 나오기 때문에 내가 코리아라는 단어만 꺼내도 North or South? 같은 말대답이 항상 돌아오는데 내 옆에서 이 말을 듣는 피에르마저도 이제는 도저히 지겨워서 못참을 지경이 되었다. 

문화와 언어에 관련되어 이 책에 나온 일화 중에서는 여러가지 언어 사용자인 본인과 엄마는 백인들과 사용하는 영어의 목소리, 가족들과 나누는 모국어의 목소리가 다르다고 이야기 했다. 나도 마찬가지로 그런 목소리들을 가지고 있는게 아닐까 싶다. 내 인생의 약 4분의 1정도를 해외에서 체류하면서 모국어를 사용하는 빈도가 거의 없어졌으니까. 프랑스어를 하는 목소리 자체는 한국어와 거의 비슷하지 않을까. 두 쪽다 상황에 따라 시끄럽게 수다를 떨거나 예의를 갖추어야 하는 장소이거나에 따라 다르지만. 영어는 항상 더 음이 높고 갑자기 다른 사람의 목소리를 내는 것 같다는 기분에 사로잡힐 때도 있다. 한국어보다 더 편하게 할 말을 할 수 있는 것 같다가도 연기를 하는 것처럼 전혀 다른사람이 되는 그런 언어다.      

짧은 단편 에세이들이지만 자신이 겪은 이야기들을 무덤덤하고 솔직하게 남겨서 더 그들이 한 쪽에 뿌리를 둔 이방인으로 살아온 여정이 느껴졌다. 특히 어린시절에 피부색으로 인해 받은 상처들을 이제는 씁쓸하게 나눌 때. 

 

For them, language is the great battle to fight, and for many it’s a war you always feel like you’re losing. 

그들에게 언어라는 것은 커다란 전쟁터다. 그리고 많은 이들에게는 항상 질 것이 분명한 게임이다. 

 

 

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My mum had three voices. She had her white-people-phone voice, her Guj-lish talk-at-home voice and her relatives voice. I have three voices too. I talk in Guj-lish, my normal voice and white literary party. I don’t know whether my normal voice, where i feel most comfortable, most safe, even feels like me anymore. I’ve splintered into personas. This is the trick of living publicly online with increasing watch and scrutiny by others. p.5

 

Storytelling is the most powerful way to promote our understanding of the world in which we live and the vessel to tell these stories is our media. Britain is filled with people from all corners of the earth, each with a wealth of stories to tell; sometimes, race, culture ethnicity are a key part of the narratives, sometimes not. p.67

 

Here was my central concern - the great thing about joking around with your friends is that you understand each other’s intent. If you make fun of your friend, there is a pre-existing understanding of your shared values and assumptions about the world. It’s what comedians try really hard to do onstage. We try to establish our personalities and our beliefs so that the audience trusts us enough that when we do make a joke about a contentious subject, there’s a reason for it, and it’s not just crass or an expression of prejudice. p.72

 

I was the only black child in a class of 30 in suburban south London. I have memories of my little white girl classmates trying to convince me that because my skin was black, my tongue was black too. I have memories of an art teacher encouraging my class to draw our ‘beautiful bleu eyes’ whenever we got the crayons and sugar paper out. Everything around me was so starkly white that i began to believe that i would turn white sooner or later. I was quietly being written out of the narrative of humanity in my immediate surroundings. p.79

 

‘We pay our taxes, we deserve something, it’s only fair. We pay our fucking BBC licence, we deserve to see somebody on EastEnders! Surely after 30 years of East-fucking-Enders we must have had a Chinese family on it…at least once…for six months?

He’s not the only person thinking this. Everyone I spoke to for this essay voiced annoyance or puzzlement at the lack of East Asians in British media who weren’t stereotypes. From illegal immigrants in Casualty to Triad members in Sherlock, hardly anyone writing for the British screen seems capable of imagining British East Asians as British. If we’re not villains à la Fu Manchu, we’re delicate woman who need saving, usually by white men or comedy material. p.95

 

In reality, proposals like this create even more forensic side-eyes that notice when you’re speaking your mother tongue on the train to Kings Cross, or forget yourself in a quiet café and finding yourself speaking Punjabi too loudly on the phone to your cousin.

I know that language can be painful, and so too do a generation of immigrants who have arrived here through different pathways. For them, language is the great battle to fight, and for many it’s a war you always feel like you’re losing. Even when you get the language, unless you shed your accent, you’re continually reminded of your difference. For Indians, our accent has almost become a universal in-joke. -everything sounds funny with an Indian accent- is an imprint of cultural worth. French accents are sexy, intelligent; Americans cool and culturally appropriated; Indians are comedic. p.110

 

Knowing when to speak and knowing when to silently observe is a code that thousands of immigrants before me have learned to manoeuvre to their own end. For me, it will always be on the page where i find my voice most comfortably. I celebrate those who are more articulate than me, standing proud, and proclaiming their additional identities. p.116

 

Rewriting the narrative of retracing our journeys has, for me, derailed those ideas of losing our internal battles of identity and cemented a simple fact- we’ve never had anything to lose, only everything to gain. p.118

 

Ian asked, ‘Who discovered Mount Kenya?’ I said I didn’t know. ‘Kenyan textbooks will tell you that a German missionary, Johann Krapf, discovered Mount Kenya, you think not a single one of us looked up and thought That’s a very big hill, let’s go check it out. We need to reform our entire educational system and teach an Afrocentric syllabus.’ p.135

 

‘I don’t think of you as black, not really black-black..’

Not black enough. But not white enough either. You are in the playground and you keep your mouth shut as your classmates argue. ‘She’s not black, she’s brow, but she’s not black-black, not like really black..’ Your plaits are too frizzy and messed up for the Strawberry Shortcake girls, you are too loud and bright and boisterous for them. Maybe they are too girly and pink for you, anyway. They smell of Parma violets and baby powder. You smell of cocoa butter. You stay in the shade they provide, you find your own light inside, you find strength and you are taught that you are outside. p.186

 

Slavery was abolished, at a cost, with promises of land and wealth and freedom. Jamaica may have gained independence from Britain in 1962 but today we still chase those broken promises and fight for truth, justice and reparations. p.192

 

The universal job of being a writer is to write, to write with empathy, to be brave and honest, to find joy conveying a journey and in sharing your passion. Your ink is replenished by your life experiences, by taking off the mask and using your limitless imagination, by stepping out of the shade and into the light. As a woman may write in the voice of a man, I don’t see why a writer cannot imagine the voice of another shade and culture, that is what imagination is all about. Whatever shade you are, as a writer, you have just one task each day, one battle, and that is you against the black page. Every writer should have just that in mind, nothing else matters, just that one fight is more than enough to contend with, each and every morning.

You and your pen against the empty page. p.196

 

‘And you don’t speak any other languages? You should be ashamed of yourself.’

Should I? Would they be saying this to a white actor who hadn’t bothered to learn German? At no point had I claimed to speak Hindi, and nor should I, but people can presume I can, just because I look a little bit like I might come from somewhere near there. 

The wife of a terrorist. 

 

Eton taught me some vital things about people and their judgements. One was that I could not change some of my peers’ perceptions of black people merely by being as hardworking and as agreeable as possible; I became the exception that proved their rule. I realised this when having a pub meal with a friend. Out of nowhere, he launched into an astonishing rant against migrants, and, when I pointed out that my parents and I were no different from those he was denigrating, he told me that ‘I don’t see you as a migrant, Musa. I see you as a friend’. p.228