Subtle Nuances

The idea of difference in displacement is one that is hard to ignore. In a new place the first thing I pick up on is the small nuances that make it unique—different from “home.” My first real encounter with this was during my semester abroad in Montpellier, France in the spring of 2007. As my first journey abroad, everything was new and exciting. Noticing all the differences between American and French culture, I realized the relationship between the two to be “grayer” than expected—that is, differences were subtle, not so stark as black and white... I found my feelings of displacement from home were in the smallest of details. For instance, the French don’t readily hand out bags at the grocery check out, and when I asked for some, I received puzzled looks. Likewise, when I folded my hands in my lap at the dinner table, instead of keeping my forearms on the table, it wasn’t seen as proper etiquette, rather, I looked as if I was hiding something from my fellow diners. In each of these scenarios and countless others, I was labeling myself as a foreigner, a non-French, and possibly an American. But equally important in these scenarios, as my actions labeled me as “different,” I too labeled the French as distinctly different from me.

Labels become an important point in displacement, like imprints that write a certain script on your language and body without your knowledge or your intent. It’s hard to see these differences while in the mix of people you associate with “home,” but once you find yourself in the midst of displacement, these nuances become glaring differences. As a camouflage mechanism, I tried to disguise my “otherness,” but in the end, I couldn’t. I had already been imprinted with a mix of southern Californian and North Carolinian. Though I attempted to live a French life, I had inevitably taken some “home” with me abroad. And equally unavoidable, as I packed my bags six months later to leave, I was leaving behind a part of my new definition of home, one that now stretches across the Atlantic.

—Melissa Cormier, Art history student, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill