Double Life Brown Girl: Chapter 2 – Adjusting Culture

Being teased for not being able to speak proper English, having an accent, and people questioning that made her feel so uncomfortable. Kids could be so cruel, making fun of people for not being able to speak English and acting very dramatically when they speak a different language. Not one person of color as a teacher to help navigate, it was like she was an alien. Her parents had a rule, “Always speak Bengali at home, so you never forget your native tongue.” But she was so embarrassed by the native language, by her culture, embarrassed by her identity. She spoke only in English even though half of the time it didn’t make sense, but she continued because she got tired of being teased. It was the American view that she tried to adjust to, where she felt embarrassed by her traditional clothing, embarrassed to walk next to her mother, who dresses in traditional clothing. She was just a child, she was only eight, but it is the surrounding that made her want to change.

She was torn apart by trying to fit into this new world but also hearing her parents talk about why she no longer appreciates her culture anymore. As she goes into middle school, grades no longer mattered, she used to be the first in her class, and now scored a 22 on her science test, on the report card there is mostly one or two as a grade. Even her behavior changed, she becomes a little disrespectful towards her parents. Now in the south Asian culture, you do not disrespect the adults. You do not talk back, you do not shout, you do not slam your door. But here in America, she witnessed kids talking back to the teacher as if it is okay, kids talking about their parents and using swear words as if it’s okay. The teardrops from her mother’s eye and her father stressed out unaware of what is happening, how to help their daughter. Immigrant parents who don’t speak English, worried about their daughter’s education and her behavior. She is now 11, she takes her food and sits in her room alone instead of sitting with her parents at the dining table. She feels that because her parents are not American did not get their education here they will never be able to understand. So she feels alone.

Thomas Benke: Looking Around In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott, in the Chapter “Looking Around,” says this: Now, if you ask me, what’s going on is that we’re all up to here in it, and probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another. Otherwise we’d all just be barking away like Pekingese: “Ah! Stuck in the shit! And it’s your fault, you did this …” Writing involves seeing people suffer and, as Robert Stone once put it, finding some meaning therein. But you can’t do that if you’re not respectful. If you look at people and just see sloppy clothes or rich clothes, you’re going to get them wrong. She goes on to speak about empathy for other people and also, as an extension empathy for yourself. So, in a sense as you try to write believable, relatable characters, you will come to forgive people their trespasses—because no one believes they are the villain of their story, so you have to write “bad,” or “evil” characters from a point of view where they rationalize what they are doing in such a way that it is the right or only way they see is possible. By extrapolation, then, if you begin to forgive and withhold judgment from your less-than-desirable, or annoying characters, perhaps you can extend the same courtesy to yourself and forgive your own trespasses and sins. This, for me, starts to enter the realm of “writing as therapy,” and though I am a firm believer in that—I practice it to this very day—I think I would caution anyone who thinks that simply writing through things is going to lead you to a place of light and love. I am not saying it can’t by any means. What I am saying is I have wrote through my thoughts and my problems and my desperation and depression for decades and I still had enough baggage on my shoulders to supply an army platoon with rations for a year. In any case, when thinking about craft, it is very important to step into the shoes of all of your characters, especially those characters that you see as antagonists and villians. I believe there are very few universal maxims in writing but one thing is virtually certain: every character you write is your version of that human being. Confucius said “everywhere I go, there I am,” and that is never more true than when you are writing. So if you are writing a character that is distasteful to you, it might be effective for you to ask yourself why that is the case. I wrote a blog for Obscura last semester titled, “The Puppy Had It Coming.” The gist of the article was to pose a puzzle to writers. How can you write a scene where an adult human kicks a puppy across the room and the reader at least understands why. I am not saying there is any way to justify the action or for the readers to be on the human’s side unless they are sociopaths. I am saying you need let the reader know how dark the place is in the character’s mind that he is capable of doing that.

Double Life Brown Girl: Chapter 2 – Adjusting Culture

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