Not Quite Narwhal - The Story of Us
Like most kids ,
Mine are true, full-fledged members of the unicorn-obsession-club...
I cannot blame them, My generation has done a good job at passing down our love for My Little Pony
which, if you ask me, has evolved into something bigger than we could every had imagined!
Anyway, so we love unicorns,
And in my constant search for books, I found this one...
Not Quite Narwhal by Jessie Sima.
I remember as a child being fascinated by these large whales with one gigantic tooth that stuck out like a horn...
Could they have been at the bottom of the unicorn myth...?
I spent many hours thinking about such things...
So I ordered this book on a whim...
The story did not disappoint...
To an overthinking story lover like me, the book became interwoven with our everyday experiences.
Kelp (our main - not- quite-narwhal-character) is us
He is a third culture kid
He is the story of adoption
The story of acceptance
Of having two homes
Not fitting in perfectly
Being loved and missing those who love you, constantly
Kelp is born in the sea... and from the beginning; he notices that he cannot do all the stuff that the other cool whales can do,
But no one says anything.
They seem to love him, just the way he is,
So he accepts his limitations and carry’s on with life...
Until that fortunate/unfortunate day where he is swept by a current and catches a glimpse of something/someone who looks quite like him.
Intrigued he adventures out to find out more.
Going beyond the boundaries known to him,
Kelp pushes through and finds... land narwhals!!
They promptly inform him that they are not narwhals , they are unicorns...and clearly, he is one too...
Kelp has a grand time with his new tribe but soon misses his old one...ready to go back,
he says his goodbyes and heads home.
He braces himself to tell the narwhals the news about his identity, and shocker!!
They already knew that he was a unicorn,
They did not mind... all is well...
At this point, I was thinking... why did no one tell him???
Imagine the pressure of wondering how you will be accepted by your family,
This shadow of doubt around their love for you,
Why did they let him internalize his failures, thinking it was him...
Why couldn’t they accept his differences and acknowledge them openly, so he could understand them too!
(told you I was an over-thinker)
In our terms, I think the narwhals are ‘colour blind’
It reminded me of when I was teaching in a rather homogeneous class, with just one or two little brown kids...
The other teacher in our class was very much from the I-don’t-see-colour clan
And I am clearly not...
It got to the point where I finally addressed it in front of the kids one day...
I put some raisins up on a high shelf... and told the kids they were free to go get some...
The tall kids got theirs and were done in a second
The kind of tall kids were on tiptoes but managed to get theirs,
My short kids started to cry...
At this point, I got everyone raisins and we sat in a circle to talk about it...
My kids who are smart as can be, all agreed the shorter kids needed a bench to stand on, or a teachers help.
the fact that everyone could have the raisins was not enough, they had to actually be able to reach them..
If not, it just would not be fair...
It is time we grownups also start thinking like our kids...
We need to see people and recognize their abilities and limitations instead of hiding behind the mask of equal treatment for all.
I grew up in a society of Kelps...
We were all unique; there was no way you could pretend to not see difference...
Difference was the norm...
I remember moving to university and wondering why there were all black societies... Like the afro-Caribbean society...
I could not understand why people would want to join...
I mean yes, if everyone joined to learn more about afro-Caribbean culture... rather than just afro-Caribbean people being in the group...
I joined the Japanese club but quickly realized it was the same, there were only Japanese people.. and me.
I learnt about the importance of having those kind of spaces much later once I moved to Sweden.
Those spaces provide networks, comfort, less judgement... familiarity...a space to breath out especially when the world outside is homogeneous and unwelcoming. The combination of the two can be suffocating.
What about Kelp,
Well, he ends up not being happy in the sea either...
And in the end we see him with both of his families, on the beach, together...
This book captures the feelings that many, many multicultural people might have around having dual identities,
Multiple homes,
The concept of not quite fitting in anywhere.
It was a great story for my kids... who have four places they call home,
Who never feel like they have all their family together because someone is always far away..and it has unicorns!
they loved it..
We talked about how Kelp could skype his unicorn cousins when they had to go back home..and that seemed just fine.
I still wish Kelp had been told why he wasn’t a good swimmer
Why he didn’t like the food like everyone else,
Because these 'failures' can be internalized so fast.. and affect ones self esteem and confidence
We can acknowledge without judgement, Can’t we? isn’t that the beauty of difference..
The beauty of diversity
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