Family in Foreign Spaces: Leaving Home to Find Home

Abstract

In the spring of 2012 I participated in an experiential education course. I taught English and lived with a family in an economically poor and rural community situated in Baja California, Mexico. During this process I began to explore how people in different social realities experience place, nationalism, and identity. I was faced with my own privileges as a U.S. citizen as well as my socialized habits of individualism. This auto-ethnography combines my specific experience with larger social themes of national identity construction and the influence that stereotypes and national stories may have on social experiences.