Navigating the Invisible Borders: How We Rewrite the Meaning of New Spaces

Introduction: From Lanzhou to Connecticut

When I relocated from the northwest part of China to the east coast of the United States, leaving behind the busy, familiar streets of Lanzhou for the peaceful, leafy campus of UConn, I thought that my greatest obstacle would be the language. But as I made my way through this new place,  I realized that space wasn’t just a physical background. It is a communicating, confining and shaping power. 

After reading Garnette Cadogan’s Walking While Black and Sara Morgenstern’s For Kings and Country alongside the insights of my fellow travelers on this journey, I have reached a point of clarity in relation to our connection to our environment. So here’s the point of my argument: While there are external dynamics, Such as the racial prejudice outlined by Cadogan or the historical story touted by Morgenstern, that would like to determine our movements and tell us we can’t go to certain places, I’m arguing that we do have space, agency, to push back. When we bring our own artifacts, habits, and ways of speaking into new spaces, we do more than adapt; we actively rewrite the cultural definition of those environments, turning them from sites of exclusion into sites of inclusion. 

I. How Identity Affects Movement: The "Invisible Walls"

Space is never neutral. Cadogan describes in striking detail how he moved from Jamaica to the United States and how that transition changed the way he moved in "Walking While Black." His walking was freedom in Jamaica. But here in the U.S., his very identity was a shoulder. He writes about having to be "non-threatening" in order to survive–modifying his pace and manner to satisfy the doubts of others.

Although my experience is not anywhere near the level of physical danger that Cadogan’s was, his writing helped me to understand how my own identity as an international student affects my mobility. 

The "Foreigner’s Walk": When I enter a room full of people or into a store like Walmart, I tend to reduce my presence. I don’t know the words, but it’s not for not wanting to ask for help, it’s because I’m scared of “cultural pause”—that weird moment of silence when a local can’t understand my accent.

Hyper-Vigilance: As Cadogan monitors the street for the police, I monitor spaces for social signals. Is this behavior polite? Do I belong here?

That just goes to show that identity is a lens through which space is read. We are walking through a matrix of social expectations concerning what pace to keep and how much space to take up. 

II. The Echo of History: Travels in the Northeast

Sara Morgenstern in For Kings and Country contends that space is made "claimable" by "colonial narratives" accounts of those in power to determine who the land belongs to. I have felt the power of these stories sharply on journeys throughout the American Northeast.

When I visited Boston and New York, I didn’t go to walk on sidewalks—I went to walk on history.

In Boston, the buildings were too commanding. The buildings and monuments preserved slowed you down and made you religious.

In New York, at the 9/11 Memorial, the place demanded silence. The story of the space was so strong that it governed me completely.

If these are representative experiences, then space is often seeking to turn us into audiences. But, as I have learned through my work in this class, we can also defy that passivity. 

III. Dialogue with Peers: Seeing the Same Space Through Different Eyes

However, space is also relative. One of the deepest things I have learned from this class was looking at my "map" of the world alongside the maps of other students.

In our Module 2 assignment, my classmate Yuze gave an insight into his apartment. He said the space gave him a feeling of having "home belonging." He said that his room was an escape from the pressures of the outside world.

Not at all like the campus types of spaces, where you can be made to feel the “foreigner’s anxiety” or like you’re on stage, his apartment was a place of absolute power and ease. It was pure comfort.

I know that same feeling of home when I come into my apartment. As Yuze made a place for himself, I have done the same. I shut my door, and the "new space" of Connecticut is left behind; I find myself once more in a world I know, a world pegged by my routines, my breaks, and my solitude.

This shows that space is relational. Knowing this, we realize that to "adapt" oneself spatially is not to learn only the spatial layout of a place, because one is also learning about the kinds of people that live there. We're all creating invisible "homes" within the visible infrastructure. 

 

IV. Reclaiming Space: The Power of Ordinary Things

If Cadogan and Morgenstern demonstrate to us how space constrains us, then my own explorations in this module show how we might resist those limitations. My main point is that possessing things with identity and memory, seemingly everyday objects can transform an everyday space into a home. I came across compelling evidence for this in my earlier assignments:

1. The Might of Dishes (Evidence from Lightweight 1) In testing out Module 1, I contemplated the items I took along. In my apartment, I ate out of the same dishes and used the same pots and chopsticks I used at home. With them, cooking was not hard; it was a ceremony that connected me to my family and culture. The familiar chopsticks in my hands were something tangible, serving as a two-way bridge between my life in Connecticut and my origins in Lanzhou. This backs up my claim as these objects are infused with personal memory and identity, telling my identity within my new space, making the new space less foreign and more like "home".

2. The Scent of Belonging (Evidence from Module Two) In Module 2, I explored the relationship between food and collective identity. Therefore, I tried to learned and make Lanzhou Beef Noodles from my hometown, Lanzhou, in the US apartment. Although it's hard to buy these food materials, which are for restoring the taste of home. However, we have many ways to restore the taste of home. From the moment the beef began to simmer slowly, the atmosphere of the entire space changed. I can make sure this taste is similar to Lanzhou beef noodles. 

As I cut the daikon into thin rounds, the tapping of the knife on the wood of the cutting board brought me immediately to the busy morning market in my hometown. Finally, when I poured the bright red oil onto the soup and that coral swirl flowered on the soup’s surface, the steam not only steamed up my glasses but seemed to form a warm shield separating me from the icy winds in Connecticut beyond. 

In fact, this thing let me realize that I can make Chinese food even from my hometown in the American kitchen. If I want to eat some food from my hometown, like Lanzhou Beef Noodles, I need to go all the way to Boston or New York to eat it. But if I can make it by myself, I don't need to go. Especially when taste fills my apartment, it makes me feel at home.

3. Walking as Ownership (Module 3 Evidence) Finally, I followed my moving patterns in Module 3. In contrast to Cadogan’s traumatic experience of walking, I discovered that even a universal act like walking could help me build confidence. By going over the same paths several times on campus, I gradually converted the "unknown" into "known." It helps support my assertion that everyday actions have identities and derivatives and these make spaces feel like home. In time, my footsteps defined the campus as a place where I belonged. 

V. Conclusion: Why am I sharing these experiences?

Why is this important? We are travelers, after all, in at least some sense. Space alters us, it questions our sense of self and makes us change. But as I have shown in this analysis of pots, noodles and walking routines, we also transform space. When we bring our "ordinary things" into other worlds, we refuse to be exiles. We weave our narratives on the landscape, and alien terrain becomes communal space.