Whether we were going out or playing in the park, we understood some of the same things when it came down to curfew like, “Alright I’m out. It’s a pure representation of where we’re from in New York and specifically Queens being as diverse as it is. Growing up most of my friends were of different races. I’m from here but the Filipino culture is what I grew up with. My mom is from the Philippines and I don’t know my biological father, but I grew up with my step father who’s actually from Israel. And then an officer called my name, flipped through my file, and reminded me with his eyes that I’d been born in the wrong country. For a second, I felt happy and proud and hopeful. There was a portrait of President Obama on the wall, the first official one I’d seen. I often think back, too, to one of the moments that grounded my relationship with America as an adult: it was 2009, and I was sitting in a building at the U.S.-Canadian border at Buffalo, waiting to process a student visa. I often think of that when I see American flags flying out of cars and buildings and businesses. embassy at the crack of dawn, present our Sudanese passports and fingerprints and bank statements, and beg permission to visit a country that hadn’t had to ask for permission when it entered our homes via television and music and a never-ending political theater that played out on CNN. I knew what America was.Īnd yet to be granted entry, my family - or someone we’d hired specifically for the task - would have to line up in front of the U.S. It was in the history textbooks from which I learned about the Redcoats and Bluecoats before I learned about my own history it was in the referential sitcoms I watched dubbed in French on local Ivorian television it was in the pop-punk songs that taught me about suburban teen angst before I’d ever set eyes on a Hot Topic or in a shiny cul-de-sac. After all, even though I’d grown up thousands of miles away, America was everywhere. It was cultural déjà vu: the criss-crossing highways, the ubiquity of cargo shorts and socks-and-sandals, the cartoonishly huge bowl of ice cream a pimply-faced teenager handed me after I’d ordered a small serving. Before I’d visited the States for the first time - as a teenager on a trip to California with my mom and brother - it already felt oddly familiar. And it was the first time I'd feel something I still get every time I go Stateside: homesick. It wasn't the first time I'd heard that word, but certainly the first time an adult had used it on me. I was balancing a tray, being careful not to spill a very full carton of fries, and probably not watching where I was going when a grown ass white woman decided to call me a Paki. That suburb felt a lot like the ones I'd spent time with back home in Canada - the kids rode bikes and played out front and watched neighbors gawking at the endless stream of well-wishers - and so there was no real sense that I was 'in America' until after the wedding was over, and dad took me and my little brother to the Houston Space Center. It was for a wedding, and so we spent almost all of our time traveling between a hotel and a suburban enclave for a series of pre-wedding festivities common in Indian families. I know that my family had previously visited the U.S., but my first memory of America is a trip to Houston when I was 8. I feel American because when I leave the country I am considered American not just because I have an American passport, but because I have an American accent and American style, and I grew up in America, and old Liberian people consider me American. In the beginning I was a little ashamed to talk about being African, people were always asking me my nationality and quick to say I didn’t “look African” because I had long hair. The Dominicans and Puerto Ricans were always proud of their heritage they had huge festivals and streets named after their political figures. By high school it became more normal for the black kids to start talking about their backgrounds. In middle school people were still making jokes like “African booty scratcher” so it wasn’t really cool to admit where you were from. People didn’t really start repping their nationalities until high school. I grew up with a lot of Dominicans, Ghanaians, Nigerians, other Liberians, Venezuelans, and Guatemalans. My family fled the country at the start of what would be a 13-year civil war, so if I do have any memories, they may be suppressed. I don’t remember anything about living in Liberia. My first memories in America were actually my first memories of life. My dad was in Rhode Island with his brother, and my oldest sister was in Atlanta. My older sister and I lived in Brooklyn with my mom, who was pregnant with my little brother. My family was split up when we moved to America - I was four and a half.
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