Cultural Identity as a Safe Passage
- Mayte M.G.
- Oct 16
- 2 min read
I often think of Ithaca — the island from Homer’s Odyssey, and later the poem by Constantine Cavafy that turned it into a symbol of the inner journey. While I’m still discovering who I am, I know that reaching Ithaca remains my destination — though its coordinates keep shifting.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about identity. We all change it like a set of clothes: within family gatherings, with our closest friends, in quiet moments with our partners, or in coffee breaks at work. When you live in another country, it becomes even more fluid — sometimes to the point of not recognising yourself.
A few days ago, another mother at my son’s school mentioned a famous German comedian from the 1980s. “Our childhood,” she said cheerfully. I smiled, but of course, I had no idea who he was. For a second, I wished I could share that common nostalgia. But I had a different childhood, one that still accompanies me.
Identity, in all its forms, is what will lead us back to Ithaca.
At twenty-five, I boarded a plane to London. It was meant to be a short trip, yet it changed everything.I still remember the cold, the night I arrived in Cheltenham, the weight of the air. It felt like pieces of my identity — the ones I’d built and the ones I’d inherited — were quietly falling to the ground. Later I moved to Germany. The compass shifted again, and the language around me began to reshape my sense of self. How does our cultural identity transform when we start living — and feeling — in another language?
The Spanish writer Fernando Aramburu, who has lived for decades in Hannover, once said in an interview with Mara Torres (El Faro, Cadena SER) that writing has been his way of keeping hold of his identity — a private space to express himself in depth while living in a foreign tongue.That struck me deeply. We need those padded spaces where our thoughts can land softly — in the language that still feels like home.
Over time, that space expands. I now understand my belonging here differently. Having children abroad multiplies the cultural references — new layers of identity that coexist with the old ones, enriching both.
Because identity isn’t only what defines us — it’s also what remains identical within us. What repeats, what endures.And with that thought, I close the circle.
From the Sun of Ithaca.
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