Emma

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.