Of Roots Entwined
Growing up, I never questioned my cultural identity. Even though I was born and raised in America, I knew my parents both had roots in Bangladesh and that sometimes we wore different clothes and spoke in a different language than all my other school friends. These features made me BengaliAmerican, but I’d never really given much thought to what that meant. I was just me and, at the time, that was all that mattered.
I’d never felt different from anyone else until I started elementary school. There, everyone spoke in English and failed to understand my explanations of the Bengali cuisine I was accustomed to or the reasoning behind the reddishorange designs on my arm before a special holiday. Although Bengali was my first language, I had quickly mastered English, and as time went on, I became more at ease in speaking in the latter, not only at school, but at home as well. The influences around me at school led me to fall victim to a social stigma against my own language, and by extension, myself.
Looking back, I wish I’d realized at a younger age how important it is to be able to speak two languages, as well as how meaningful it is to keep in touch with my ethnicity. Being bilingual and identifying with culture and heritage provides individuals the opportunity to form rare connections to groups of people, and that’s something that should be embraced, not hidden. I’ve come to learn that having aspects of my life that distinguish me from others isn’t abnormal, but unique. These cultural characteristics aren’t my defining attributes either, but rather individual fibers that are helping me to stand up and find my own place in the world. Now that I’m older, I take the time to be appreciative of the Bengali language and culture and feel grateful to have retained the language and customs over time, as it is a part of my essence and nature.
Embracing cultural heritage and background is essential, especially here in the United States where such a large range of cultures are represented. It’s easy to want to conform to everyone else’s standards as opposed to feeling like an outcast or like you’re being judged, but until we learn to stop hiding parts of ourselves and to embrace these parts of our identity, the society around us will continue to build their own perception of normal, excluding us. Whether it be by learning about your history or reconnecting with your mother language, taking the time to support and understand culture is the only way to normalize diversity and encourage it for future generations to come. It doesn’t matter where you’ve been raised or if you’ve grown apart from your origins; trees of the same root systems will always share the same species. Although I consider myself to have grown my own roots in America, I regard them to be intermixed and
tangled with the stems from my parents. I will always be Bengali and I will always be American— a foundation grown together from two infrastructures, side by side, with roots entwined.
