Garlic guernica and the getting of wisdom

There's one thing I hope to tell them: learn about your history. Your parents and their friends are not the sum total of what it is to be Vietnamese, or Eritrean, or whatever. War, starvation and despotism can bring out remarkable things in people, but just as often brutalise and coarsen. An authoritarian state often clones into authoritarian families. Don't take the easy path of repudiating your roots, as I did in my teens, and so many migrant children do.

I grew up thinking that to be Spanish, being southern European, was to be stupid. Our house had few books, conversation at home was about the rudiments of survival: food, housework. It was narrow and so heavy. It was many years later I learned my parents didn't have five years of education to rub together. That lack of education can close off worlds of experience.

At the schools I went to the southern European kids were mostly lumped into the underperforming rump of the class. We didn't have to be exposed to active racism - though it was there often enough - to feel inferior. It’s a similar current to the one just beneath the surface when many people talk about Lebanese Australians.

I wish someone had been around to explain the Spanish Civil War; how a child is the sum of generations of wisdom and learning, or lack thereof; that the word “peasant” has a meaning and a history beyond being just a term of derision; that ethnicity is often not just about language, but often about class as well; and can entail a radically different way of seeing the world and relating to other people, of working, even how you see time.

You could never legislate for it - the curriculum is too crowded - but wouldn't it be a great thing if every child got the opportunity to bone up on the culture and history of their country of origin? Black armband, white armband, the whole catastrophe.

I spent three years living in Spain in my early 30s and they were a liberation. So many things about myself and my family began to make sense. The social thermostat was set at a different temperature, and I liked it, though sometimes it got too hot, and at work, especially, I craved some Anglo reserve. But not too much.

Looks like Dad had the last laugh. Shopping at the Móstoles Market in Madrid, people looked at me like some mad Brideshead Revisited freak until I learned after a few weeks to drop the pleases and thank yous.