(Max Ranney • The Student Life)
In my first-year U.S. history class, we were disseminating how technology has completely upended traditional ties to culture and family.
“This is the first time in human history where you,” the professor paused for dramatic effect, looking into each of our eyes, “have more in common with your cousin who grew up in Germany than your own parents.”
At first you might think, “Well duh!” But it didn’t always used to be like this. In Jane Austen times, you would pine for eternity before receiving a letter from a lover. Traveling to Europe was a year-long endeavor for many Americans, with a months-long voyage at sea both to and fro. Needless to say, before telegraphs and cellphones, the people we would see most often were our family members.
The concept of study abroad would sound absolutely bonkers to a person in the 1800s. But alas, Facebook is here and I’m in France.
The decision to study abroad in Paris was partly due to my immediate family — I have two great uncles and a great aunt on my mother’s side living in the city. Being an Iranian-American and a part of the worldwide Iranian diaspora, I have family in the United States, Canada, France, England, Denmark and Turkey. When I was growing up in Iran, I attended a trilingual school teaching English, French and Farsi side by side. As the Middle East grows ever more unstable and Iran becomes increasingly uninhabitable, an Iranian identity becomes a manifold existence.
When my family immigrated to the United States, I started to look for the things we and Americans had in common in order to bridge the vast ocean of difference between myself and the inhabitants of an alien world — be it through a mutual love of the English language or more personal similarities. It was a response to the traumatic shift of immigration.
The general principle of studying abroad is to strand yourself in a foreign environment. Choosing to intentionally put myself in a position where I had to assimilate into a different country (AGAIN) seemed a bit masochistic. But I have family here and in the age of the Internet, truly how different can being Iranian in France as opposed to America be?
Walking down the streets of Paris, you come across the many stereotypes we’ve conjured up for the French. Parisians wearing all-black outfits with their long trench coats billowing behind them, cigarettes clutched between index and middle finger. You see baguettes in tote bags and purses and Parisians sitting at cafes with their chairs facing the street to people-watch.
Living with a host family, I witness the everyday minutiae of a French household. The host parents keep much to themselves in their colorful, Dr. Seussian apartment. The host father sits in his office on his computer and the host mother goes off to work in the day and shuffles around the apartment at night. We have dinners three days a week, during which we have conversations about music, politics and history over big helpings of French bread and cheese.
But in many ways they aren’t so different from Americans, much as they pretend to be — Parisians avoid eye contact on the street the same way Americans do and the individualistic, capitalistic way of life isn’t really that different from the United States. You’re just substituting a baguette for a bagel.
Observing my Iranian-French family, I realize the biggest cultural difference continues to be Iranians living in the diaspora. My aunt and uncles speak Farsi in their homes, keeping the language alive. They serve the same plethora of stews over rice that my mother does back in California. Still, they have made room for certain French customs in their day-to-day lives: They enjoy French gateaux and other pastries along with Iranian cuisine and their Farsi is sporadically interrupted by French words or phrases.
However, the warmth and same sense of community persists in my family — my aunts and uncles routinely call one another every day, making plans for get-togethers over the weekends. My cousin’s baby is equally raised by her grandparents as she is by her mother and father, the same way I was brought up in Iran.
They always take extreme care with me: “Tania Joon, please help yourself to more rice and don’t you dare say no!” “Tania Joon, please let me drive you home, I can’t bear the thought of having you walk home on my watch!”
We are still incredibly interdependent and emotionally anxious about one another’s thoughts and feelings in a way I’ve seldom experienced living in America.
The question becomes more complicated — it’s not just about finding what we have in common. How thoroughly can two cultures mesh? Is it possible for phantasmagoric opposites to coexist?
In a conversation with my aunt, I asked her these questions. I told her how my strategy for assimilating is to find commonalities between the different cultures and that I always strive to connect with people who I have the most in common with. But she counteracted this idea.
“It isn’t about finding people who are exactly like you in every respect,” she said. “Sometimes extreme differences are good for us because they make us see life in a different light.”
Herein lies the solution to a manifold existence: to embrace the extreme cultural and individual differences and open your mind to the beauty of a multiplicitous world.
Tania Azhang PZ ’25 is study abroad columnist currently in France.
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