Genetic Ancestry Testing & Identity in Guyanese-Americans
Background
This paper was written as my final project for Genes and Identity, which I took in my senior winter. This topic is deeply personal to me, as genetic ancestry testing was one of my inspirations for going into genetics. The question of identity and ancestry has always hung over my head, and I personally took one of these tests in high school to try to understand my familial roots, and I quickly learned I was not alone. For this paper, I conducted a small ethnographic study on a handful of my family members who immigrated from Guyana and who had taken one of these ancestry tests, trying to understand how immigration status, oral family histories, and general conceptions of identity were created and changed after taking these tests.
Reflection
The format of this study being an ethnography of my family on genetic ancestry pushed the boundaries of what I considered "science communication" before. Here, communication was not a practiced, polished presentation or speech, but instead was conducted under the guise of a semi-casual conversation between my family members and I. As the trained scientist in these conversations, I was asked about my thoughts or beliefs on the tests by the people I was interviewing. What this experience taught me is that I need to develop my skills in effectively communicating technical details in spontaneous situations, as I sometimes did not end up capturing everything that I wanted to say in my responses. Still, this was an important paper for me to write, as this topic has always been an interest of mine, and hopefully also sparks discussion in the family that I will have to serve as a scientific liaison for during a future family gathering.