I learned a new word while listening to a segment on NPR a while ago.  They were airing a story about people who gather information from people’s cell phones about their locations, how long they’re there, where they go next.  These companies analyze this data for retailers to see where people stop and browse and what they pass over.  The NPR interviewer asked the researcher how they protect the privacy of the cell phone owners.  The researcher responded that they don’t have the names or any identifying information about the cell phone owner, that the data is “anonymized” so that individuals could not be identified.

I’d never heard that word before: “anonymize”, which means “to make anonymous” or “to carry out in such a way that anonymity is maintained.”   This is such an interesting concept because the value of anonymity depends upon the reasons for identification.  Lately, of course, there has been so much talk about privacy, the invasion of privacy, protecting our privacy, the ability and the right to keep to ourselves what we want to keep to ourselves.  Maybe we, as individuals who value our individuality, are offended by being reduced to data points that help corporations and government agencies to either profit even more from us or monitor us as if we were wayward teenage rebels about to misbehave.  The information flow is unbalanced; the researchers, corporations, and agencies doing the monitoring want to maintain their anonymity while we are data-mined for every nuance of our likes, dislikes, intentions, needs, and spending habits.

Unwarranted curiosity about ourselves is easily deemed offensive when the perpetrator is an unknown, faceless corporation or agency.  But what about when the unbridled curiosity comes from a real person, eager to seek information about you—just because?   What if you just want to live, to go about searching for meaning and purpose for yourself as most people do, and are brought up short by someone else’s need to “place” you?

I was having lunch with two friends, both Asian women, a while ago when our conversation turned to questions that were difficult to answer.  The trickiest question is “Where are you from?”  When I was growing up in Kansas and people asked me that question, I’d respond, “Wichita,” because that was the truth.  That’s where I lived, that’s where my family lived.  But the questioner would often become irritated and shake his head, as if I were being purposefully obtuse or unbelievably dumb, and ask where I was from.    And then comment how good my English was, how I didn’t even have an accent.

These interrogations are based on two equally tiresome assumptions.  One is that, because I am “ethnic”, I must be a recent immigrant.  Of course, there have been Asians in the United States for years.  According to the Office of the Historian of the State Department, Chinese immigrants first arrived in the US in the 1850s to work in gold mines, factories, and farms.  And, according to the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program, Korean immigrants first arrived as farm laborers in Honolulu in 1903.  According to the Library of Congress, the first Japanese laborers were brought illegally to Honolulu in 1868 by the then Hawaiian consul general.  However, beginning in the 1880s, many more Japanese immigrants followed legally.  Filipino immigrants to the US also were quite numerous by the 1890s, after the Phillipines became a US territory, according to Asian-Nation.org.

The second assumption behind the question of my origin is that my personal history is not mine to keep but should be surrendered on demand.  And that by knowing exactly which country and race my eyes and bone structure originated from somehow equalled knowing me.

Curiosity is a wonderful trait, as we all know.  But we’ve all been on the receiving end of questions that cross the line into invasive probing.  Like the time when I called a clothing company to order something from their catalog (back in the days before online ordering), and the order-taker on the other end of the line asked me, “Oh, what’s it like to be an Asian from Kansas?”  These various attempts to figure out who I am, ironically, just make me feel more anonymous, as if I am nothing more than bits of information for others to digest.

The stories we have to tell are, to me, like loaves of challah bread: twisty and circuitous, benefitting from taking the time to rise to the occasion and then to settle into a comfortable place, after having first been kneaded and massaged.  And, like breaking bread, telling one’s stories are best when shared with friends we’ve taken the time to court and cultivate, people who appreciate the trust implicit in the act of storytelling and the beauty of slow revelations.