Voices
It’s an all too common conversation opener at NSO: “Well, my dad’s from Singapore, my mom is French and Japanese, but I grew up in South Africa and then went to high school in New York City…”
In these situations, quite a few Georgetown students can rattle off impressive and exotic responses about their own backgrounds, very often in several languages. I’m not one of them. After the cosmopolitan Hoya has recited a laundry list of enviable places of origin, it’s my turn to declare that I hail from Michigan—more specifically, from the Detroit area. My interlocutor usually responds with something to the effect of, “Ouch,” or “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
By
Tori Jovanovski
April 26, 2012