Living in Australia is all I know.

I don’t remember the last time or the first time I was asked ‘Where are you from?’, but I know when someone asks me this question, I feel conflicted and like a fraud. I know as a Person Of Colour (PoC) I should be annoyed, tired of constantly feeling like I don’t belong and angry about having to explain that I’ve spent 18 of my 21 years living in Australia, that my mum is Australian. Living in Australia is all I know.

Don’t get me wrong, I do get annoyed. When the question leaves their mouths these feelings and thoughts arise promptly. Yet somehow when I’m asked the question it also makes me feel seen, and more connected to my African American side. I don’t know if it was because I was raised solely by a white mother, in a town where I was one of the only PoC, thus causing me to feel a lack of connection to my African American heritage and family, and which in turn causes me to feel lost. Because although yes, I am half Australian, I’m not white passing. So when I was younger, being able to respond and say that I was born in the U.S., that I’m half African American, gave me a sense of belonging. Even though it came with the price of feeling like an outsider within the community, I was living in.

Admitting this makes me feel like I’m not only letting myself down, but also other people who are constantly asked this question. At its core asking someone ‘Where are you from?’ is a microaggression. It’s someone attempting to say you don’t belong.

It was a confusing experience finally becoming aware of what microaggressions are. Pairing the newfound understanding with my experiences and educating myself on the effect of questions like ‘Where are you from?’.

Growing up my experience with the question was when my mum quite regularly asked about someone’s background or where they are from. Her intentions were always out of pure interest and just generally wanting to know more so I never thought twice about the impact. That was until I became older. After being asked consistently, I felt out of place, like I am a problem people are trying to decipher.

As people of colour, we are faced with racism and microaggressions daily and although questions like ‘Where are you from?’ may seem innocent, I can’t recall a single time I left the conversation feeling positive or eager to be asked again.

A question with impact

I'm 22 and in the middle of a busy lane in the main market of Hobart. My partner is holding my bag as I bend down to fix my shoe. I hear an older stranger's voice directed down towards me, 'Hi! Where are you from?' I briefly look up and deflect, 'Oh, The Mainland.' They think they're being more clear, 'No, where are you really from?' I bark at them, 'l'm from Victoria!' They hurry away, startled.

My partner saw my tired expression once again, they knew I despised this question. But feeling like an imposter in my home country because of another ignorant Boomer's curiosity as to why I'm not white, is something that I've just learnt to deal with.

I've been working through so much of the internalised racism built into me growing up in a country town in Victoria and I've learnt that this question had more of an impact on me than I realised. "Where are you from?" greatly contributed to me not wanting to identify with my Papua New Guinean heritage growing up.

But now at thirty, that side of me is the proudest part of my identity. Having compassion and the understanding that some people will never be fully capable of knowing the weight and hurt this question carries, has allowed me to heal and to move through this world with more peace for others and myself.

Now I answer that question with "I was born in Victoria and my dad is Papua New Guinean."

It took me a while, but I'm here now and that's what matters.

Where do you come from?

That question has many meanings to me. It reminds me of being so uncomfortable at school, when classmates or teachers would ask. I never really knew what to say, because I felt Australian, but I also did not. The feeling is much like that lyric, ‘too black for the white kids, too white for the black kids’.

I remember the first time I realised I was Asian and that I was different. I was 6 years old.

That day my teacher asked us to name an orange food. As the excited child I was, I eagerly put my hand up and said, ‘Tom Yum!’. The entire class broke out into laughter; some of the kids asking, ‘What is that?’. Then the teacher responded, ‘Are you sure that's a food?’.

As an adult I can laugh at these memories, but as a child it was rough not to feel a sense of belonging.

Now that question no longer affects me; I embrace it. It gives me an opportunity to share my cultural heritage. I know it’s definitely more than just a question, but I seem to have gotten used to it...

Taking pride in my Ethiopian heritage, on my terms.

It’s such a simple question, yet loaded with so many connotations and assumptions.

It’s a question for other people. It puts people of colour into the category of ‘foreigner’ and questions their belonging.

When people become curious about where I’m from, my identity becomes a guessing game. People have guessed Pacific Islander, Indonesian, South American and so on. And it still baffles me why people feel the need to guess in general. Do they just want the satisfaction of guessing correctly? Do they want to seem culturally aware, or something?

It merely feels like a plot to fetishise my cultural identity. I feel like I’m some exotic treasure, not a person. It doesn’t let me take pride in my Ethiopian heritage, on my terms. I just don’t want people to see my skin colour and use it as an excuse to other me, especially when Blak people own this land, and have done so for thousands of years. Don’t look at my hair like it’s an exotic animal, it’s not there for you to gawk at. It’s crazy how many people ask to touch my hair like it’s their right. And this is the thing, people feel like they have a right to know my ‘true’ identity. But I’m not obligated to tell anyone anything.

Growing up as an Ethiopian-Australian kid in Australia was confusing. We live in a society that views white culture as superior, and that meant that I almost forgot about my Ethiopian heritage because I was rewarded for being white. Succeeding seems synonymous with being white - that’s privilege. But I have a connection with Ethiopia, which is so special. I feel it through the music, I taste it in the Injera. I can still hear those prayer calls that woke me up to go to school. I’ve come to a place of peace with my mixed identity, and I’m so proud to call Ethiopia my true home.

I love talking to people about the place I come from, when it’s genuine.

I wish this question would lead me to amazing conversations with people about my culture; my sense of belonging and my connections with my home country. Unfortunately, most of the time this question takes me into awkward situations. It makes me feel uncomfortable, disrespected and not welcome.

I was born and raised in Brazil, and since 2015 I've been living in Australia. When I say I am an Australian resident people ask questions about how I got my visa and how long I'll stay in Australia. I'm allowed to stay forever since this is now also my home.

When I say that I'm from Brazil, (usually straight) men think that gives them permission to be invasive, disrespectful and to harass Latin women. I used to work in a bar and often had to hear male clients making sexist jokes.

Once a man came to the bar, and without even asking he assumed that I was a ‘Latina immigrant without a decent visa.’ He tried an: ‘Hola’, and told me if I wanted to get an ‘Australian visa’, I should marry him. I said to him I already have my PR and pretty soon would get my citizenship and I didn't need to marry anyone. He didn't believe it and asked, ironically, how I got the residency working as a waitress in a bar. I changed the subject. I didn't want to start an argument. It's exhausting and confronting to educate people every fucking time.

I sincerely love talking to people about the place I come from, when I feel like I'm going to have a genuine conversation with someone who is interested in getting to know the different Latin cultures or exchanging our experiences. Unfortunately in most cases if you are from a ‘Third world country’, people just want to stereotype you and perpetuate racism, sexism and prejudice.

The last time that I was asked ‘Where are you from?’, was late at night at a party. I found it to be more of an inquisitive question, given that the person who asked me was a person of colour. It didn’t feel intrusive.

We spoke about our upbringing with ethnic parents, while comparing our experiences of being raised and educated in predominantly white suburbs and schools.

I remember that the question bothered me much more in my youth, as I only ever wanted to blend in with those around me.

Being singled out due to my ethnicity was very common in my early years of high school, and as time passed these experiences were diluted with the real friendships I made and my skin thickening.

These days when I’m asked this question, ‘Melbourne’ is my immediate answer - not for any reason other than this is the most accurate. I am rarely probed further when I give that answer, however, I do believe being a man allows me this misguided advantage.

I now feel pride in my roots and how I look.

It has such a range of meanings, depending on whoʼs asking.

If another black person asks me, then I'm more than happy to chop it up with them at length. It can be a really beautiful opportunity for connection in a massively white society where it can be challenging to meet other people who look like you or have a similar cultural background. But obviously, that same question can be incredibly invasive; essentially a socially acceptable way of asking, ‘why arenʼt you white?’

Growing up mixed race in London - with a Nigerian dad and white-French mum - it was relatively rare to be asked that, and much less - to feel that sense of exclusion it can bring. Over there I was nothing special. It wasnʼt until I lived in this part of the world (Aotearoa and then so-called Australia), that it became routine.

Apparently this identity is a bit of a mindfuck for people over here. But at the same time, Iʼve kind of grown to enjoy seeing the confusion in peopleʼs eyes and telling them the somewhat

meandering story of my heritage, because I'm incredibly proud of it. At times, in those moments, I've felt even more fortunate to have this mashup of histories and identities in my veins.

Our perception of reality is immersed in cultural violence.

By many, I am perceived as an outsider. I am not a stranger to these oceans. I am at home in this part of the world. But I often have to justify why.

As a society, we live by story arcs on which all aspects of existence are structured. Often, my story does not match the narrative that is projected in the landscape of collective thought. Sometimes my story is deemed suspicious and illegitimate, or strange and mythical.

Where are you from? If I mention my obscure place of birth, I will have to justify why I was born there looking the way I do, why I have a Kiwi accent, why I am here in so-called Australia. It does not match up with the answer that was expected⸺

Oh. But your parents are from India.

No.

Okay. Your grandparents are from India.

No.

The story of why I have ended up in these oceans is a story of human trafficking that began one hundred and forty-two years ago, and this story is not very well known, even though it has everything to do with Australia. Colonisation has a way of hiding these things in plain sight. With just over 100,000 Indo-Fijians living in exile outside of Fiji, there just aren’t very many of us around. Our stories are not immersed in the arcs of the dominant psyche, not shown in films, television and books, and therefore, often dismissed, hidden, and tucked away in another reality.

Geographically, we are so isolated from the rest of the world. People in many countries overseas have never heard of Fiji. It was in India that I experienced the most explicit erasure of my being⸺

What is your caste?

I don’t have one.

Where in India is Fiji?

It is far away from India, in the Pacific Ocean.

People thought I was lying. They became suspicious. It was also problematic that I was an unmarried woman in an interracial relationship. I was embodying too many anomalies, too many discrepancies.

How can she look Indian, have an Indian name, but say she’s from an imaginary country called Fiji, hold a New Zealand passport, but be living in Australia?

I am everywhere. I am nowhere.

In Bali, all throughout Vietnam, and other parts of South East Asia, I was asked about my birthplace with such curiosity, and the answer I gave was met with warmth. Once I was telling a Balinese taxi driver what Fiji is like, and he just lit up and said⸺

We are the same. Same skin. Same weather. Same fruit.

Same skin. Same weather. Same fruit. These beautiful words make me realise how much of my life I spend in a state of unbelonging and detachment, because these moments of understanding and acceptance are so rare that I can count them on one hand.

At this point in time, I have lived equal amounts of my life in Fiji, Aotearoa and Australia. I embrace my pan-Pacific way of being. I understand that it is my responsibility to tell the story of the exile of my community, so that cultural story arcs can change, so our perception of reality can be inclusive of all stories, and so that we will not be forgotten in history.

People who know better say things they shouldn’t.

I am in a DiDi. I am in a DiDi because I am boycotting Uber, and I am boycotting Uber because of where I am from.

I do not mind the question at all, just the follow-ups. I am in a DiDi and the follow up is, ‘so what are your views on the whole Palestine thing?’ and I say back, ‘oh man well I mean that’s a big question’. Big answer.

Being Palestinian means being a historian, correspondent, spokesperson. The knowledge I have isn’t inherited. It’s learned. It’s laboured over. It’s expected of Palestinians so we read, listen, talk and teach, when someone asks.

People who know better say things they shouldn’t. I am tired of being the inner-North art scene’s correspondent on Palestine. Talking to my housemate about being tired I say, ‘it feels like that schoolyard clapping game, like patty cake, like a sailor went to sea’. ‘I have to go slow and simple so no one gets lost along the way.’ I say, ‘and then I spend time with other Palestinians and it’s like double dutch, but with four ropes going at once and we’re jumping like it’s nothing’. A naff metaphor, but I am too tired to come up with something better at the time.

A blessing, a surprise: I say ‘Palestine’ at a picnic, and the person asking keeps the conversation going. We talk about the March of Return, Australia’s fickle campus movement, my right to aggression, the rotting in my core.

So I am in a DiDi and stumped by how to answer, because I don’t know how much this guy knows already, so I say, ‘big question, big answer’ and then a phone starts ringing: Mona’s phone is in my bag. We drive back the way we came to get it back to her and he lets the question go.

All of those things and much more.

I can usually sense when I'm about to be asked 'Where are you from?'. In those few seconds before I'm discerning if what they actually mean to ask is where I live, where I was born, or what my ethnic background is?

The answers to all three of those questions are different. It can be quite anxiety-inducing trying to determine the true intention behind people's curiosity and which answer I should give. Plus, it's tedious and boring having to explain my existence, as I have done it a million times before.

Despite that the answers to those questions make up a part of who I am, they don't make up every part of me. I am all of those things and much more, but who said it was your business?

A struggle to find my space without losing my identity.

I was usually never asked this question, because I grew up in Mumbai. When I moved here four years ago, and people started asking me this, it began to create anxiety in me. I felt a kind of panic because of a few encounters I'd had, especially with white men. They would say things like ‘you're pretty for an Indian chick’, or ‘wow you sound really curry’.

These were all follow up responses to the question ‘Where are you from?’.

So of course this question is stressful. My accent was quite thick as well, and I'd have to repeat myself a lot. The longer I live here the more I can hear the way I speak change. Initially I was very determined not to lose my accent, but eventually I had to let it go a little, to make my conversations here easier.

Now that my accent has changed, I thought I could change my response to saying: ‘I'm from Melbourne’. This is home to me now too. Whenever I'm out of the city or interstate and someone asks me where I'm from, I’ve tried saying Melbourne a few times, but every time they're like ‘nah, but where are you really from?’

In those moments I don't know what to say. I feel like it's a way of being told I couldn't be from there, because that's not where I look like I belong? But on the other hand, more than once I have been told something or other about how I'm ‘not like other Indians’, or how my ‘English is really good for an Indian’... it's like I have to pick between: ‘Why aren't you white?’ or ‘Why aren't you more exotic?’

It’s a struggle trying to find my space here without losing my identity. It's so strange that such a simple question can make you feel so completely displaced.

I’m in a constant struggle between politeness, and doing what feels right.

As a Singaporean-Australian female - who grew up in Australia, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t feel like I’m different, or that I don’t belong. By my existence I’m positioned with one foot in two cultural camps; not belonging to either. I’m caught between two worlds and I know I’m not alone in feeling that way.

Reflecting on past experiences it’s comical to me that most of the people who have told me to accept the question ‘Where are you from?’ are white. The question usually emerges unprovoked from strangers, early in an encounter. The notion that I should take this as harmless is comical because, let’s be honest - if someone was speaking to me on the phone they wouldn’t be asking that question.

Worse still, is the further persistence and probing: ‘No, no - originally! Where are your parents from?’.

While I don’t doubt many people would genuinely be interested in me, my heritage and my history, I fail to understand why it matters for them to know. Does it make it easier for you to put me into the context of your life and your experience? Does it make you feel like a nuanced person for noticing I don’t look like you? Whatever the reason, it's a narcissistic and repetitive statement that informs me that I don’t and will never ‘belong’ in the society and culture I grew up in.

As a woman I must be careful how I react as it might invoke a defiant or violent response. As a woman of colour (WoC) I must be careful how I react so as not to offend, lest I prevent others from delving into an empathic exploration of different realities to theirs. How else will we grow together as a society? But I’m also starkly aware of how WoC, and BIWoC (Black or Indigenous women of colour) are fetishised and pigeonholed for the sake of other people’s comfort and convenience.

My rule of thumb is to never ask the question, Where are you from?, unless the person I am engaging with offers up information to indicate otherwise.

Not every WoC or BIWOC person will agree with me; but then again, many will. If you meet me out somewhere, get to know me as a person and as your equal. Take a genuine interest - there are a million questions you can ask to show your interest in and empathy for a person, before needing to know their ethnic background.

A Real Sarawakian

My reaction to this question has changed over the years, along with my feelings about my identity. At first I was hurt, and for a while there I was pissed. I felt like an imposter for years, but now I’m glad there’s a little part of my heritage shining out of me.

Growing up in a small and completely white town, the question ‘Where are you from?’ was always (to some level) racist. It just took me a while to get it. I didn’t understand the first time I said ‘Oh I’m from New Norfolk’, that that was not what they meant.

I remember being about 18, working in my first bar job, when an older man at the bar asked me straight up: ‘Where are you from?’

‘I grew up in New Norfolk’, I said.

‘No, where are you from?’, he replied. We went on like that for a while... ‘Um, New Norfolk, my mum’s from Bothwell’, I repeated.

‘NO. Where are you FROM?’, he insisted.

Then, I realised, ‘Ummmm, oh my dad’s Malaysian.’

‘See! I knew you weren’t Aussie’, he finally remarked, nodding to all his friends in agreement. By this point I was dumbfounded. What does not Aussie mean? I was born here. I grew up on a farm in a family of farmers. I eat vegemite for breakfast. I’d never been to Malaysia. Infact all I knew about Malaysia was that they’re in the Commonwealth Games. If I’m not Aussie, what am I?

At uni we had two exchange students from Malaysia in my class, I was so excited. ‘Ooh maybe they’ll be like me!’ I thought. But they weren’t. Of course they weren’t… I really started to wonder: so where do I belong then? Who are my people?

What followed was a few years of imposter syndrome. I felt like my identity was being taken away from me everytime someone asked ‘Where are you from?. It wasn’t the question that got to me so much, it was their response to my answer: ‘No you’re not’, ‘NO WAY’, ‘But you don’t look it’, ‘No, you look Islander’, ‘You even walk like an islander’, ‘No, you’re Mauri aren’t you?’, ‘You’re not a real Asian’, ‘Oh that doesn’t really count.’ And then there was the ‘Ooh I love Malaysia, have you been?’, ‘I LOVE Penang’, ‘You should really go sometime,’. And my response: You think?

When I moved to Melbourne it got somewhat worse. Now when I had these interactions, often people would start to speak to me in Malay… At that point I had to declare myself a fraud and explain WHY I didn’t speak Malay; WHY I’d never been there, and WHY I didn’t know my family. It would all get very personal and very uncomfortable quickly.

A few years later I finally got to Sarawak, in Malaysia, to meet my family and stand on the ground where my Ancestors are from. It was an incredible moment, but while I was greeted with Asian-Muslim hospitality - and welcomed into the family immediately, I was still an outsider. I didn’t speak the language, my mixed existence perplexed the locals and they considered me Orang Putih, which means white person.

Today, for the most part, I don’t mind when people ask me where I’m from. I like that they can tell I’m not from around here. Partly because I want to cling to my Malay heritage, and partly because I’m not completely proud of my Australian heritage, as an uninvited guest on stolen land. When people ask about my background to genuinely know more about me, I don’t mind. We all have stories. Just don’t come at me demanding to know where I’m from, because you and your friend have been trying to work it out. And don’t tell me I’m wrong.

When another brown person asks me where I’m from I get a little excited - maybe they see me as one of them! I’ve had some beautiful experiences with the question in that circumstance, finding other Sarawak Malays here, Third Culture Kids, and a First Nations Lore Man who insisted that our ancestors traded together. In these moments I feel like a real Sarawakian.

1995.

I don’t remember Fiji much. We migrated to Australia when I was 4. But I do remember where we first moved…

‘Where are you from bro?‘
In the nineties, in Dandenong, that question meant everything.

Where we were from brought us together. We were all here in a foreign country that we we’re trying to understand. No matter where we came from, we knew we all had the same mountains to climb.

Our parents came from nothing, they couldn’t really speak English and most of them were factory workers. They wanted to make a better life for us.

Sadly we were growing up during a heroin epidemic – many of my school friends suffered. Our teachers didn’t understand us and our families were poor.

Though we had many differences and and struggles, the one thing that brought us all together was food; every immigrant family in my community cooked often and shared what they made.

The weekends all together were amazing. My folk’s factory friends would come together to party, eat and drink. It united us, it broke down barriers, it was the best way to answer the question… ‘Where are you from?’

For me it’s a love language. It’s an honest moment. Taste where I’m from and you will understand my life.