Assimilation vs. Accommodation: Confessions of a Bangladeshi living in the West
I recently changed the “hometown” section on my Facebook profile from Queens, New York to Dhaka, Bangladesh. I should’ve made this change earlier, but I was in a fixed state of confusion for the longest time, contemplating the ambiguity of the word “hometown”. Google defines it as “the town where one was born or grew up in”, which led to more perplexity: what if the place where one was born isn’t synonymous to the place one grew up in?
The struggle of dealing with a dual identity, the urge to resolve the ongoing identity crisis, isn’t new to children of immigrants or those who have recently moved to the States. It is tempting to stick to one identity and be free of the mental burden.
I was born in Queens — the most populous Bangladeshi diaspora in New York. At the age of five, my family and I moved to Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. So at 18, when I moved back to the States to enroll in college, I was in culture shock, suddenly aware of my Bangladeshi identity. And I won’t lie, I’ve tried to escape my Bangladeshi identity given my longing to be accepted in what was once an unknown city — I perfected an American accent through careful observations and replaying videos on pronunciation.com in a matter of a year, let the kurtas and salwar kameez permanently reside at the very back of my closet, and distanced myself from easily identifiable Bangladeshis. Accommodation became assimilation, as I attempted to fully embrace the American culture instead of making a few adjustments to my lifestyle.
This led to what I had wanted. I finally felt a belongingness, a comfort in an unknown city that was starting to become familiar. I was no longer laughed at for pronouncing Caucasian as cow-cash-ian and not knowing what “hold down the fort” meant. I wasn’t asked “Do you even speak English?” because it was evident that my native language was English. In my junior year at college, I interned at places where I was the only Bangladeshi, and felt a sense of pride, not for being the only Bangladeshi but for succeeding in feeling American enough.
Then, one day, a conversation with a Bangladeshi acquaintance living in the US transformed my pride into guilt in a matter of seconds. I remember her saying, in a self-congratulatory tone, how everyone mistook her to be a Latina, due to her light complexion and blonde highlights. I was taken aback by the sudden realization of my facade, submerged in shame. Why was it that our successful operation of removing our Bangladeshi identity became an achievement?
It took me four years to eventually come to terms with the fact that my Bangladeshi identity was nothing to be ashamed of, and that the real shame was in trying to eliminate it. Despite being born in the US, I had spent more years in my true hometown, my “motherland” as they say. Even if I hadn’t, my Bangladeshi identity would still be something I would hold on to. Now I have more kurtas than T-shirts in my closet and cover songs of Rabindranath Tagore instead of Britney Spears. I’ve volunteered as a Bangla Translator for TED Talks and joined the Bangladesh Student Association at my college. It became a new urge to reconnect with my cultural roots, an urge that changed my life for the better. And this acceptance, the acceptance of myself, has proved to be a greater sense of comfort than the acceptance of others.
