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Speaker conducts discussion on bicultural family lifestyle, customs |
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Tuesday, 11 September 2007 |
 | Bao Bean
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by LINDSAY TIGAR
Lifestyles Editor
For some, the start of a great morning is the perfect cup of coffee, complete with sugar, half-and-half and a stirring stick.
The same effect of different substances blending together to create something happens when a bicultural family is created.
Merriam-Webster’s Online dictionary defines bicultural as ‘relating to or including two distinct cultures.'
“A
bicultural family is two distinct cultural people grounds that are
being equally represented in a family,” sociology professor at
Appalachian State University Cinthia Pratt said. “This could mean two
languages, different religious ideologies, different customs, foods,
holidays, etcetera.”
There are many ways a family can be defined as bicultural, unlike
popular belief of biculturalism primarily consisting of two people from
different countries.
“African-American, Hispanic-American, Northerner, Southerner – they can all be bicultural families,” Pratt said.
At Appalachian State, Pratt would guess that the majority of students
that are products of bicultural families would be Hispanic American or
Asian American.
As the first presentation of the Multicultural Student Development
Speaker Series, Cathy Bao Bean will speak on her experience in creating
a bicultural family.
“A Setting for Diversity: The Chopsticks-Fork Principle” will be
presented at the Blue Ridge Ballroom of Plemmons Student Union today at
7 p.m. Admission is free.
Bao, an Asian woman, married her husband, a Caucasian artist, and has
been inspired to write books and speak about her experiences in
different cultures nationally.
“We live in the middle of nowhere New Jersey. He’s Caucasian and he
makes art,” Bao said. “One of the universal truths is that no father
ever says to his daughter, ‘I want you to marry an artist.’”
Bao, who moved from China when she was four, changed her mindset and thinking habits into English,
even though most of her earliest memories are encoded in her memory in the Chinese language.
Bao and her husband have one child, a son they have raised to appreciate both of their cultural backgrounds.
“[My husband and I] are total opposites; he’s not logical and I am,”
she said. “Our son is half and half. We wanted to raise him so that he
would be comfortable in any culture and be proficient.”
Bao attempts to add comedy to her public speaking appearance or writings.
“I don’t think you understand your culture until you understand it’s
humor,” she said. “I’m 65, I’m Asian and I’m female. I can say a lot of
stuff other people can’t say.”
For Bao, understanding cultures made her realize elements of her society that she never noticed.
“I didn’t know that some of the stuff I experienced was racist, because
that was never part of my vocabulary,” she said. “In a sense, my
parents had three daughters, so we were raised as sons, so we all have
positive attitudes. They never said ‘don’t do this’ or ‘that’s white
stuff’ or ‘this is Chinese stuff’.”
Being involved in cultures a person has not been raised in will help
them to broaden their ways of thinking and step out of their
background, Pratt said.
Bao would encourage students to study abroad or to establish friendships with students from other cultural surroundings.
“It’s not just an idea of just going from one place to another, it’s
about having fun, too,” Bao said. “You can’t have fun if you’re walking
on eggshells.”
For more information on Cathy Bao Bean, visit her Web site at www.cathybaobean.com.
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