Somewhere Between the Best of Both Worlds
It wasn’t until well into my 30s that I began to dissect my experience growing up in America. The best way I could describe it is like straddling two worlds. You shift almost all your weight from one side to the other, but never really seem to get solid footing. At home, you speak a version of your native tongue that was your parent’s best attempt of keeping their language alive while still integrating you into the new world so that you would not fall behind. As a result, you speak a childlike version of your parent’s native tongue, barely able to communicate your deepest thoughts to them. While in school, we were tested for ESL (English as a second language). Then, in the workplace, you make sure to annunciate your introductions to guests and clients so that it is clear to them that you’re a native English speaker. But still, you get comments from old, white men about how good your English is.
