Shirin Akhter,
Philadelphia, PA.
When I tell other that I am Asian, they don’t believe me because they think my skin color is a little dark or my eye shape or the way I talk. I am west asian, i am from the west side of asia. All asians don’t look alike, we don’t have the same eye shape or we all don’t talk the same way. I speak fluent english because I grew up in the United states. I never had an ancient, and if i did have an ancient it couldn’t be a chinese or korean ancient, it would be an Indian ancient because most people from west Asia sound like Indians, and Indians are asians too. My brother doesn’t have an ancient, neither does my sister. Lets just say because we moved to the US when we were kids, we were born in bangladesh but i knew more english then bangla. I speak english all the time so I got use to english, so when i try to speak bangla with my parents, I don’t remember some words. I still have a difficult time speaking bangla with my parents so they told me to speak bengali at home and speak english outside, so that I can learn both languages. In the other hand, my parents know amazing bangla but they don’t know english that much. Maybe it’s because at a time they need to know english and they didn’t have anyone to teach them. I couldn’t teach them because I didn’t even know it that time.
When someone gets to know me and they also know that I’m asian, things get tough. One day a guy asked me “ shirin, if your asain, why aren’t you quite like the other asians”. I just looked at him and walked away. I knew what my answer was, and I still know what my answer is to this question, i just didn’t say anything because of how ridiculous he sounded. But my answer will always be “ I am not like everybody, i’m not like other asians, everybody is different in their own way, and if I was quite, I would be lying to myself and other people, and i’m sure no one wants that. Everybody has a different personality, and everybody has their different way of showing who they really are.” I would actually say all that to that guy and maybe a little more. I wasn’t mad that he asked this, I was confused because I know that he is smart and for him to ask me that, it was ridiculous.
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