In America, in Burma: The Context of Culture
It was such a powerful conversation we had last month with Thet Su Tin for the subject of the Artists Against Tyranny auction in New York City. As an advocate supporting the democracy movement in Myanmar who is living in the United States, there was much to unpack in this discussion concerning her identity, values, and culture… and Thet Su Tin carried forward with raw honesty in taking these topics head-on. In the following excerpt, she shares how she has charted her own unique path through these different cultural contexts.
“There are a lot of things that we learned from colonization, that taught us that we need to hide who we are.”
Host: You are clearly based in the United States, and at the same time, you've also got a strong focus on the Myanmar context. How is that for you? Having both that US context and that Myanmar context? How do you personally relate to that? And how was your identity shaped around that? So what I'm asking for is, how do you personally see yourself? How American do you see yourself, how Burmese do you see yourself? And is that ever in conflict with the way that the people around you perceive you?
Thet Su Tin: Yes, it's constantly in conflict. I see myself as Burmese, born in Yangon. I also see myself as a Burmese person who has traveled the world, and who lived in the US, but also lived in different parts of the world. So I have a different context. The more you travel, the more you immerse yourself with other peoples’ cultures, the more you can really understand another's perspective and the world, and you can reevaluate your context that you come from.
I know that when I lived in Yangon, when I was a child, I had a very different context. There's things that I value still till this day, and there's things that I see as like, narrow minded, and now I see as different things once I'm a little bit more educated.
I think that there's things inside Burmese culture that are highly homophobic, highly sexist, racist. There's levels of colorism. A lot of it is the context of colonialism and the grappling of trying to keep your own identity and also trying to not be lesser. So if you see someone that colonized you, you kind of have a very demented idealization of that person. And so there's that context.
So when I encounter a lot of Burmese people, or Myanmar people, and they say something sexist, homophobic or racist, and I see a different view, they say it's because I'm Americanized. But I don't think so, because it's just knowing the cultural context of things. The more I hung out with Native Americans here, the more I understood, okay, Myanmar is also tribal.
There's also a lot of things that we learned from colonization, that taught us that we need to hide who we are. If you go to a Burmese restaurant in America, you use a knife and a fork, but that's not how we eat, we eat with our hands! And I have no problem reclaiming that as our own and not being ashamed.
When I go to any Ethiopian place, or an Ethiopian household, they eat with their hands, and they have no shame inside of themselves, because they were not colonized.
And so it's just trying to understand the context of things.
Also, as someone who lives in America, I'm always ‘Other’ because I look different, I think differently, I sound different. And so if I want to take care of my elderly grandmother, that's within my culture that's within our culture, to take care of and have this responsibility. And a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, why don't you just take her to the old folks home?’
That's something that I could never do, because that's a duty that I have. And that's very Burmese of me, something that I would like to keep, and I would like to continue teaching. So there's a mix of things that I keep, that I think are not toxic or colonial from our culture. There's things that I bring to other people so that they would know, this is who we are as a people, this is who I am as a person, to people that don't really understand Burmese culture or Burmese people.