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I left my hometown of London for a fresh start in America what feels like a lifetime ago for a plethora of reasons. The most obvious culprits were my unhealthy childhood obsession with Judy Garland and the impulsive nature of youth, with the addition of a recent raw break-up. But, in truth, if I were to dig a little deeper, it was because I never felt British enough to call the city where I was raised home.
I grew up with a French African-Caribbean mother in a home where we primarily spoke French, I went to French schools where all my friends were hybrid French bilinguals like me, and I ate croissants and baguettes with saucissons instead of scones and sausage rolls. Poor me, I know. And, more poignantly, I’ve only ever had a French passport, never feeling the need to apply for a British one (oh, hello Brexit . . . ).
It wasn’t until I was an actual foreigner in a foreign country that my Britishness crept up on me. I suddenly felt compelled to instil ritualistic habits into my routine that I hadn’t realised had long been encoded in my DNA. Toast and Marmite in the morning, tea in the afternoon, BBC radio in the evenings, full English on a Saturday and a roast on a Sunday. Had I been a secret Brit the whole time? It felt like a Trojan horse full of stereotypical Britishness had been lying in wait inside me, ready to unleash Del Boy impressions and random second world war trivia.
My Britishness permeated every facet of my new life. My accent even became posher. No longer did I shy away from pronouncing Ts, apart from in the word “1999”, which at this point is just a showcase of various ways to pronounce the letter “n”.
When I moved in with my American partner he innocently bought two throw pillows, one with a Union Jack on it, the other with the Stars and Stripes, to commemorate our union in cohabitation. He couldn’t have known the identity crisis this would awaken in me. I had never been with anyone who had seen me as simply British before, but there it was emblazoned on a decorative cushion.
A novel sense of national pride came over me and I felt an urge to display my newfound love for my place of birth around our home. I hung a replica Shepherd’s Bush Tube station plaque on the wall, I framed a holographic postcard of the Queen and hung it in our bathroom, I placed a miniature Big Ben souvenir on our book shelf. None of these items held any sentimental value, but they represented a sense of superficial cultural identity that I needed in order to define myself in this new country I’d found myself in. I didn’t quite understand what being British was, but I could masquerade as if I did in the US.
I have become more comfortable with the duality of my heritage, a bit like a maturing toddler realising they have the emotional capacity to love more than one parent at a time. I began to think of my mother and grandmother, who both chose to move countries, like me. My grandmother, the Frenchest person I’ve ever known, had only lived in France for 22 of her 91 years and yet she still made sure her nationality was proudly on display in her home in Stockholm. She had a large map of France hanging in her hallway that described each region by the food and drink it produces, paintings of the French countryside in her living room and only French cookware in her kitchen.
My mother, the second-Frenchest person I’ve ever known, has barely lived in France and spent most of her youth in Sweden battling her own identity crisis, being French and mixed race in a Swedish suburb in the 1960s. In her home in London she displays African art and items as a way to honour her African-Caribbean heritage.
I now have French art on my walls interspersed among the British artefacts, as well as a portrait of a regal African-Caribbean lady my mother painted. It’s how I commemorate all the parts of myself I don’t fully comprehend but somehow make me who I am. I’ve preferred being foreign in a country I’m not from, rather than feeling out of place where I’m supposed to belong.
I like being British in America. And besides, there’s no one more British than a British person abroad.
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