Uguïsse Packard
Although I was born in the United States to American parents, I knew more about Japan than the U.S. when I moved to France, after an extensive residence in Japan where I had received an international education based on the American curriculum.
Perhaps for this reason, my cultural and national identities were often questioned by the French who tended to see me more as a Japanese than an American. This caused me to be even more attentive to how people felt about nationality, ethnicity, culture, sub-culture and other defining aspects that are often responsible for inclusion, exclusion, or association of an individual to a given community.
What I found most interesting about the manner in which people from different cultures approached me as an individual between cultures was their tolerance (or intolerance) for ambiguity.
As an author, I hope to contribute to the idea that there are many different tints and shades of gray and that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
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“A botanist would have been stumped, coming across a tree like this one. Yet, if we are to judge a tree by its fruit, it was clearly an avocado. I picked the fruit, sliced it open, and tasted it to make sure. There was no doubt in my mind. If it looks like an avocado and tastes like an avocado, it has got to be an avocado. However, the tree itself had a white bark like that of a birch and its sap tasted like birch juice. Its leaves were delicate like that of a cypress, while its trunk and the root system reminded me of a baobab. Could it be that someone had grafted an avocado on to a baobab tree? And if so, why the bark so white and the leaves so, well, feathery, and delicate yet bold like a dragonfly’s wing? Why is there not another tree like it nearby? Where had the seed of this tree come from? I had no answer. So, I put the seed of the fruit in my pocket and took it home with me to see if I could make it grow.”