Dear Mom and Dad: “School is good.” This was my response when met with grandma’s usual chain of questions one evening at her house. It was then followed by a head swung back in laughter following a comment about my growth in height, a few nods, and an invitation to eat the freshly made dishes on the table. My older cousins greeted me in the hall as they too, made their way to Grandma, and struck an immediate conversation like the rekindling of fire. From the side, I stared longingly, hoping to latch onto their playful banter. They seem immersed in their conversation, which was completely spoken in Chinese and too fast for me to follow with my beginner-level vocabulary. You both were mingling with Auntie and Uncle, while I was left alone, surrounded by the perpetual noise of loud dialogue in a dialect that was unfamiliar to me. At the dinner table, Grandma made remarks about how I should have been picking up Mandarin quicker seeing as I was a young child, and then she began lecturing you both about how it was a shame that you didn’t formally teach me the language. Her voice, rising with emotion, crescendoed through her tiny apartment. I released the bursts of compressed air that collected in my lungs out of the frustration that suddenly struck me. I helplessly averted my gaze to contemplate the food getting cold on my plate, while both of you quietly submitted to the faults of your parenting by paying lip service to her rant. A look of defeat plastered your faces, almost as though all of the pride you had in raising me, was utterly shattered and torn apart. Despite Grandma’s dissatisfaction, I do not think that your failure to familiarize me with the mother tongue is a failure at all. Like an old, old record, you’ve consistently retold stories about how tremendous the task it was moving to the other side of the world, only to work 12 hours a day doing menial labor, and finally, making a stable living for your family. Working job after job exposed you to ridicule from those who opposed the “foreignness” of our food and particularly, our language. When my brother and I were born, you were determined for us to become proficient in English out of the fear that if we weren’t, we would face the same battle of alienation you both had to fiercely fight through. Growing up, I picked up a few phrases and words from your frequent late-night conversations, but even then, you spoke to me in a string of broken English peppered with words in Mandarin. When we attended family dinner parties, I had always felt like the black sheep, unable to utter a single coherent sentence in the mother tongue. I’d walk between relatives, hoping they wouldn’t decide to begin a conversation with me only to realize I couldn’t keep up with what they were saying. Am I authentic? Did they think I’m rejecting my heritage? These were thoughts I’d began to wonder. I’d felt entirely unbelonging to my heritage; an imposter who’s efforts to claim their ethnicity felt essentially futile. Both of you, sensing this, bought flashcards with Chinese characters and beginner words on them in hopes that I could suddenly converse with my relatives and validate my position in my cultural background. This method, as you both knew extremely well, did not work. With the exception of a few words, the extent of my knowledge about Mandarin had not improved. But, by being surrounded by others who also come from immigrant families for most of my life, I’ve learned that others can also resonate. Despite what Grandma had said, it was simply the result of being in a primarily english-speaking country and not having the exposure necessary to be fluent in a second language. It is the same fear of alienation that perpetuates the bias you have on the careers that are more traditionally lucrative. You like to assume that in college, I’ll be flocking to a pre-med program or enrolling in an engineering class when, in reality, I don’t know if that’ll ever happen. Your fears are translated into the desire for me to acknowledge the idea that the path to the American Dream is paved by one of the five career choices. You refuse to subject your children to a life of hardships, so you advocate these things because you know what’s “best for me”. While I appreciate your plan for me to blossom into a successful adult with a profitable future, I want you to be able to support me in whatever venture I pursue in the future. I’m asking you to free your guilt and responsibility towards my inability to speak Chinese. I’m asking you to no longer be fearful of the mentality of this country, particularly that of those who dismiss our experience. I’m asking you to not buy into the notion that the only way to be happy and successful is by limiting yourself to a bubble of options. Most of all, I’m asking you to never let the hope you’ve always instilled in me disappear inside yourselves. By: forrestsarecool '19 (BHSEC Queens)
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
ProsePersonal essays, short stories, and other prose by our Immigrant Voices contributors! Archives
March 2022
Categories |