Zachary Zerngast

Anthony Warnke
English 101
November 30, 2022

Autoethnography

Most Americans live their lives more or less at home. In 2021 it was estimated that only
one third of American citizens hold an unexpired passport. It is rare that we travel much farther
than the distance between our homes and work, or to a neighboring city. This phenomenon is
not new. In fact, it is how people have lived since the advent of farming and domesticated
livestock permitted permanent settlements to be established. Of course, there are exceptions to
every generalization. The romantic vision of pinpoints of light from Bedouin campfires scattered
across the Sahara Desert at night from above invokes mental images of nomadic tribes of the
north African desert. They are not the only nomadic people still in existence today. The Sami of
Scandinavia, the Maasai of Africa, the Mongols of the border lands of China and Russia, and
the Gaddi people of India are other contemporary migratory peoples. Strangely, although they
are “well-traveled”, these are people of insular societies, not what we would categorize as global
citizens. It might be argued that an American living their life in a suburb of Seattle who takes a
trip once a year to see family in Montana and a Bedouin roaming the desert of North Africa are
similarly isolated from the international community. As Americans, it is easy to never leave our
country. The United States stretches from the West coast to the East coast of the vast continent
of North America and beyond. If one feels the need for a tropical vacation, Hawaii or Florida
provide the opportunity to visit beaches and palm trees without ever needing a passport. Family
vacations often consist of road trips to spectacular national parks, or to visit extended family in
another state. That other state is still within the borders of the United States. It uses the same
currency, people speak the same language, and the laws are basically the same. Most
Americans simply are not world travelers. I believe that this is a mistake. Starting when I was a
very small child, I had opportunity to travel to other countries. As I got older, I began to make
the effort to look outside myself to see how very different other parts of the world actually are.
Only then did I really start to understand the value of ways of life that differed from my own.
Like many, I thought of world travel as a vacation, or an indulgence. I grew up in a
suburb of Seattle. I went to school about a mile away from my house. I visited my grandparents
in another suburb of Seattle on weekends, occasionally. I didn’t have much interaction with
other places and I never considered that something might be missing. I thought my world was
perfect, right where I was. I was operating in what the linguist, James Paul Gee, would call my
“primary discourse”. Gee encourages us to “think of discourse as an “identity kit” which comes
complete with the appropriate costume and instructions on how to act and talk so as to take on
a particular role that others will recognize”. As a small child, I had taken the language, behavior,
values and beliefs that I saw around me and through acquisition, had shaped them into my own
experience. Perhaps I was beginning to develop a “secondary discourse” by branching out to
incorporate the culture of elementary school into my life experience. Gee states that
“discourses beyond the primary discourse are developed in association with and by having
access to and practice with these secondary institutions”. This is where my knowledge stopped.
It never occurred to me to change what I was doing or look outside my comfortable life to see
anything different. Without encountering anything different than my own discourses, I did not
question why I did what I did, and I did not have curiosity about anything more. I was like a
toddler who had been given applesauce and thought that it was the best thing in the world.
Without having an inkling that other foods like pizza or brussels sprouts or chocolate cake were
out there, a child would never wish for anything more than applesauce, nor would they wonder if
there was anything other than applesauce out there.
Soon after I started school, my parents began to take me with them when they traveled
on longer vacations. At first, we went camping. I saw forests of trees and stars shining brightly
in the night sky, unobscured by the lights of the city. I learned that people lived on islands and
traveled by ferry. Everyone did not live as I did, in a neighborhood with many houses. My first
experience with international travel was to the Caribbean. I was surprised to find out that
people spoke with different accents and different languages and looked and dressed differently
than me. I went to a kid’s camp where the camp leader was a college student from France. He
and the others all helped us play games and enjoy our vacation….in French. I was fascinated.
I can still remember him shouting “alle alle alle Zacharie!” when he wanted me to run after the
others. Is this what other people did? Did everyone outside the United States speak French?
Did they speak other languages? What else did they do? I started to see the world differently. I
realized that I had been living in a bubble, not by design, but just because I never thought to
look beyond my own primary discourse.
As I got older, my parents took me to visit other countries. They wanted me to learn, first
hand, that there were different cultures besides my own, and each one was valuable in a
different way. Each time we went to a new place, I would watch a movie set in that country, or
read a book about it, or even learn about the animals and plants that were common there. I was
able to meet people and learn about their viewpoints on things. I learned about Mexico and the
food there, which is delicious and simple. I learned a few words of the language while I was
there, and when I returned, I took classes in Spanish at school to learn more. I saw the
incredible beauty of the country juxtaposed against Federales with guns guarding important
places. I visited Costa Rica and learned about the rainforest ecosystem and many animals and
plants that I had never seen outside of the pages of a book. In Indonesia I saw the beautiful
water temples and elephant gods everywhere, with graceful stone architecture unlike anything I
had seen in the United States. I learned about the Khmer Rouge before I visited Cambodia,
and saw efforts at recovery from the genocide there, not so long ago. I visited the temples of
Angkor Wat and even saw the jungle temple where they filmed the movie, Tomb Raider. I met
people who lived in floating villages on a lake and used shallow boats with long propellers to get
around, kind of like a giant stick blender. In the city it was common to see an entire family riding
on one moped. They might stop to buy a 2L bottle filled with gasoline at a streetside vendor,
and speed off, without a single helmet amongst them. I saw huge trees full of fruit bats
chittering at night. To them, this was commonplace. As I got older, I had the chance to travel to
Egypt and to England, Ireland, and France. Each time I saw new things. I saw camels pulling
carts in the city streets of Cairo alongside regular car traffic. I saw Stonehenge outside of
London. I rode the Metro in Paris and viewed the city from the observation deck of the Eiffel
tower. I ate snails with garlic butter. Each time I went somewhere new I learned that my
experience was simply my experience, it was not the only experience, and in fact, it was not
even the most common experience. I learned that some aspects of life are universal, but many
aspects are not. I started to become a global citizen.
By the time I was in middle school, I began to understand better why my parents thought
it was so important for me to see that ours was just one way of living. There are countless other
ways of living and all of them have their own merits. Travel was not just an indulgence, it was a
living learning lab for culture, ecology, economics, language, and political science. In big
European cities I learned about civil engineering. People actually use public transportation in
London and Paris. And it is great. People walk a few blocks, go down a flight of stairs, use their
phone to electronically pay to ride the metro or the tube, and in about 10 or 15 minutes they
emerge in another part of the city. People everywhere walk along the streets or lunch at cafes,
and the city is vital and beautiful. I wonder why our cities in the United States cannot be like
these cities. Maybe they should be. We could all take a lesson from these cities about efficient,
economical, safe public transportation. I had begun to question why we did the things we did in
the United States. I had begun to realize that our way was not always the best way.
I love my country and I love my city. I am proud that my identity has become that of a
global citizen. I never want to be closed minded and think that there is nothing more out there.
Nothing different. There is. I promise you. It is amazing and full of variety and ingenuity and
beauty and sometimes poverty and crime. I believe that we should all travel outside our own
country and be open to learning from other cultures when we do so. I intend to continue to learn
more about other countries, and never go back to thinking that my primary discourse is the only
one that exists. There is a concept called the “single story” proposed by Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie, a Nigerian author and speaker. She cautions that if we hear only one description of a
people or culture, we risk a critical misunderstanding of that people or culture. She gives the
example of her American roommate who made assumptions based on the fact that she was
from Africa such that “there was no possibility of a connections as human equals”. This
resonates with me, and I want to see the world, meet the people who live in it, and see them for
who they are, not who I assume them to be based on preconceived notions.

Revision Note:

I have revised my autoethnography to incorporate the feedback from my peer reviewers and the
teacher. I have added more descriptive and personal dialogue and removed the elements that
made my draft read like an argumentative essay. I have added specific quotes from Gee and
Adichie and elaborated on the analysis that I started in my draft. I have also added a works
cited section at the end.
Works Cited
Gee, James. Canvas Login,
https://egator.greenriver.edu/courses/2252361/files/207311307?module_item_id=6898212
7.

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, director. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Danger of a

Single Story | TED Talk,
https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story/tran
script. Accessed 30 Nov. 2022.