Heritage: Pakistani

Both my parents migrated from the country of Pakistan before I was born. Growing up in a conservative Muslim household, I quickly had to find a balance between life at home and life at school, as many of my friends did not understand the cultural values or mores that my family subscribed to. In many ways, my elementary school years were marked by fights on the playground, suspensions, and general distaste for my own culture, being that I was one of only a few South Asian students in Central Maryland. However, upon moving to California, and subsequently, Texas, I have become impressed with the multiculturalism and diversity, and have now begun to enjoy speaking Urdu, the lingua franca and national language of Pakistan, with some of my peers, and am no longer ashamed to wear the traditional garb I had long abandoned for fashionable “Western” clothing. The subject of heritage has been a tricky one in my life, but am now open to discourse about it, and hope to share my experiences with other Asian youth struggling with the same things I have had to go through. This is my testament to adversity, and the best way I found to surmount the obstacles that lay ahead were to confront them via acceptance, a radical but profound notion, and one that has, above all, brought me a modicum of contentment.

Family Video Footage of Pakistan in the 1960s