Abstract

A written language and literacy narrative is about reflecting on the reading, writing and language experience that have shaped us to who we are today. It is thinking about a moment in your life where you have evolved and used your language and literacy to overcome an obstacle in your life. It might have created a tremendous impact on your life and caused you to change.

A Wall Of Words

As I was growing up, I had to find an identity for myself. A sense of pride in my nationality. My parents immigrated from Bangladesh and decided to settle here for the same old cliché reason, better opportunities.Growing up in the US meant that I was being raised like an American. I didn’t know much about my roots and how I could exercise them in my daily life. I lived in a mildly populated Bengali neighborhood where every day I saw little kids riding their scooters up and down the block, where the smell of curry was so pungent that I can taste it through my window. My parents always teased me about not knowing how to speak Bangla correctly or not knowing the culture. They said I was too “westernized,”, and I couldnever connect with my roots. I told them “tumi amake na shikaile, ami kemne shikbo” if you never teach me how will I ever learn? She replied with “bangladesh ar ekhane ek na, tumi kono bujbana” it’s just not the same, the ground doesn’t look anywhere close to Bangladesh, you won’t even get the feeling.Noted that, the environment in Bangladesh is not the same but what about the culture and traditions, that can always be passed along. I wasn’t going to let the soil in Bangladesh stop me from knowing who I was. Holidays like “Shohid Dibosh” (National Mother Language Day), “Boishakhi”(Bengali New Year) and “Shadhi Nota Dibosh” (Bangladesh Independence Day) were events that I would participate in. I was always intuitive of knowing what customs were being followed and how it would be like to be in their element. I wanted to be someone who knew the ins and outs of a celebration and not be labeled as the lost girl who wore Bengali clothes and didn’t know what she was doing. I started grasping for my own identity during my teenage years, learning complex words and phrases through friends, who knew better Bangla than me. My friends talked to me in Bangla continuously when we meet so I would be able to pick up on phrases that I have never heard before. Knowing my native language allowed me to have a sense of belonging to the people surrounding me. It meant being able to communicate with my family and friends in the way they find best, whether it be Bangla or English. There was this one time where, I was sitting in the living room, listening to my parent’s conversations and questioning “what does that mean” or “how do you pronounce this” made me feel out of place. I felt that I had to prioritize learning new phrases so I would be able to hold a conversation. The Bengali language itself, allowed me to fit in not only in my household but also at school. Being able to connect with Bengali American kids with similar stories allowed me to connect with them on a different level. It was as if we were in our own world, only we knew what jokes we were making and what gossip we were spreading. It was important for me to fit in because being singled out and not being able to understand what people were saying, would’ve put me at a disadvantage and create the language barrier, that I was trying to break. It was not something that I was going to stay quiet about but rather get to the bottom of it.As the years passed, I got a taste of Bangladesh through Bengali street fairs, taking in all the thunderous music that was chiming through my ears and admiring all the vibrant dresses that were surrounding me, it was like a dream come true. I’ve never seen a community so small grow so big. This many Bengali people coming together from different neighborhoods, traveling hours to celebrate themselves, it was beautiful. Gradually, I started being more fluent in Bangla, so I guess my friends really helped me out. I was able to articulate bigger words and I also gained a sense of recognition between my family and importance in the Bengali community. Every time I went to a Bengali function, I connected with my roots on another level and that’s the best experience that I can have that will bring me back to Bangladesh.My mission to learn Bangla was encompassed around a few ideas. I wanted to be able to communicate effectively and not be restricted because of my unfamiliarity with the language. I wanted to learn because I needed to be familiar with a language that was spoken in my house 24/7. Frankly, it sounds embarrassing. Imagine being in a room full of people who speak the same language as you, but you can’t speak it because you weren’t educated properly, that would suck. Language is a big part of a person’s life and I didn’t want to live life being conflicted by the people around me. I didn’t want to have feelings of isolation and be left out of conversations, so I decided that I needed to take the measures in order to make sure I didn’t feel that way.In an ideal world, people know everything about the language they speak but language can always be perfected, there is always room for improvement. Since my parents didn’t educate me more about Bangla, I had to dive in deeper on my own. Going back to the idea of prioritizing, I didn’t want to leave my culture behind, it’s part of my identity and who I am and who I make myself out to be. I didn’t let the fact that I wasn’t able to comprehend Bangla properly to end in my parents’ generation, I thought it was important to continue and bring it to the next generation. I wanted to solidify my Bengali background even though I was a US citizen and didn’t get to experience my Bangladeshi roots as I would’ve liked. Everyone has their own language and way of connecting to their roots. Some are fine with not knowing where they come from or they are fine with the knowledge that they have. For me, knowing my language gives me power and the ability to do so much more with communication and the world that is encompassed around me. In different locations of the world, comes different languages and that’s what makes everyone unique, so it is important to know what makes you, you.

Who am I? I speak Bengali and English. Two different languages with two different cultures, that capture the essence of my beauty. These are my roots and they make me who I am today. Throughout my narrative, I have gotten to know myself a little bit more and find the importance in the languages that I speak and how I can take that with me wherever I go. I have learned that language can be manipulated in the sense that you can perfect it however much you want or leave it as is. I know that for me, my roots are part of my identity and I don’t want to be kept in the dark about it. I was motivated to talk about this issue because I felt that I was able to relate to many people who have the same experiences as me. People who are growing up with cultural and language barriers, people who want to be able to have a voice or an opinion in society. There are probably so many people who want to relate to their roots but in the United States there’s just not enough events or ways you can really do that. Your best bet, is to physically go to the country and find yourself there but what if you can’t or you are not able to? Then what? Are you just going to wait for someone to invite you to a cultural event? That may never happen, so I took it in to my own hands and decided to submerge myself into the culture.All my life my parents have been preventing me from improving on language skills but also keeping me disconnected from my culture because in a sense, language can tie to every part of my life. I let my parents define me, they led me to believe that I was a person who didn’t know how to speak correctly or know how to interact in the Bengali community. Hence, I proved them wrong and provided a space for my confidence and enabled myself to push past the culture shock. I felt as though the people in my life and the events that led up to my teenage years made me challenge their perception of me. Phase 1 enabled me to reflect on my experience and be vulnerable enough to put it on paper. I never really thought about how this has affected my life and the way I perceive others and myself. But this was an opportunity to showcase my progression through the language barrier that I had.I was able to showcase my progression and literacy when connecting texts that we have read in class.When I was thinking about what I should write for my language and literacy piece, Amy Tan’s essay “Mother Tongue” really spoke to me. She had concealed her voice by speaking broken English to her mother, up until the point where she gave her speech. In a sense, my parents did that to me, they concealed and taught me simplified versions of Bangla and that caused difficulty in how I analyzed it. Eventually, I ended up speaking more fluently and that seemed to make an impression on how she saw me. Throughout class discussions, I was able to articulate the importance of how language is defined. To some, language is defined as whatever they want it to be and to others, language is defined as a direct correlation to their identity and how people see them. In Safwat Saleem’s Ted Talk, he talks about how normal is defined and anything outside of normal is seen as bad automatically. I agree with he was saying because I defined normal as being able to speak fluently and if I don’t have the skills and knowledge in order to do that, then I am “not good enough” in my parent’s eyes. It makes it seem like I don’t know what I am doing or saying. This discussion was also important because it helped me speak about how I was able to “analyze cultural, linguistic, and global cultural diversity, and describe an event or process from more than one point of view.” I talked about how I felt undergoing the cultural barrier and how my parents felt after seeing that I was connecting to my roots and fluently speaking to them in the way they always wanted me to. I was also able to “develop strategies for reading, drafting, revising and editing. It allowed me to catch the silly mistakes and refrain from straying away from the topic itself. I was able to elaborate on issues and events that were vague and act upon it.