Between Two Selves: Reuniting Dual Cultural Identity Through Life Writing (2015)

Undergraduate: Anuradha Bhowmik

Faculty Advisor: Jane Danielewicz
Department: Women's and Gender Studies

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Racism makes it difficult for ethnic minorities to reconcile their dual cultural identities. I¿¿¿m American, but I was born Bangladeshi. I felt American while growing up, but I was treated as a foreigner for being brown in a white, suburban New Jersey town after 9/11. Hyphenated-Americans like me are pressured to negate their ethnic identities in order to avoid ridicule and stereotypes; this erases personal cultural history. I¿¿¿ve created a collection of poetry and memoir work to study how life writing can document my efforts to reconcile two conflicting cultural identities. Caught in a cultural collision, I feared rejection and struggled for acceptance in both American and Bangladeshi worlds. I narrate my experiences in post-9/11 America and my first time traveling in Bangladesh this summer. I reflect on how my desire to learn about my cultural history in Bangladesh made me realize that I couldn¿¿¿t claim either country as home. While traveling in four regions in Bangladesh, I visited cultural institutions and engaged with locals and family. However, across both cultures, skin color is used to discriminate and determine self-worth and superiority. Assumptions about my identity, based on appearance, were still used to designate me as a foreigner. My writing portrays the raw emotional truth about racism, which erases the experiences of ethnic minorities like me. Dual cultural identities are complex; merely changing the cultural environment does not solve this conflict.