My Missing Reflection
Young Writers Honorable Mention
By Sophia Snell
The story of how my parents met, fell in love, and got married is like the storyline of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” My mom is Chaldean, the daughter of two immigrants, and was taking classes at Oakland University, at a time when people like her were still in the minority at the college. It’s where she met my dad, who is white and had parents who didn’t know what hummus was and thought their people invented baklava. (My dad took it to a cultural lunch event when he was a kid. Needless to say, he misrepresented his culture). They eventually fell in love, got married with a very Chaldean wedding, (complete with the band, the halhole, the works) and had me, a Chaldean-American girl.
Growing up, my parents raised me in an American way, but as I started to get older, my mom introduced me to more and more parts of my culture, and I embraced it whole-heartedly. I’m proud to call myself Chaldean, and I hope that sentiment never changes. But when we all sit down at the table together with our plates filled with yellow rice, shawarma, and dolma, there’s a missing spot on our plates. It creates a hunger that can’t be quieted by home-cooked meals: My people have been starving for representation.
When I stare into the pages of a book or the bright TV screen, I don’t see my reflection staring back at me. Whenever writers create stories about Arab-Americans, they usually write about Muslims. What I need to clarify is that that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s good that Muslim-Americans are getting the representation that they’re starving for, but that doesn’t leave anything on our plates for us.
After 9/11, writers have been trying their best to extinguish the stereotype that all Arab-Americans are terrorists, but they’ve unintentionally been fueling the flames of a different stereotype: All Arabs are Muslim. Until they realize the cultural harm they are doing by only focusing on Muslim-American stories, nobody in my beautiful culture will ever get to see themselves reflected in books and TV shows.
To them, I ask: Where are our stories? Where are the stories like those of my grandparents, who lived in Iraq and had similar magical, innocent childhoods, experienced similar immigration processes and somehow met each other in this big and dream-building country they now call home?
Where are the stories like that of my great grandma, who taught herself English on her own by meticulously reading through elementary school workbooks day and night? Where are the stories like that of my mom, who grew up mispronouncing words because her parents didn’t understand certain English phrases and who took it all in stride when her friends corrected her, laughing at herself, owning her mistakes?
Where are stories like that of my own, a girl born with lighter skin than most in her family, causing her to not experience the worst of humanity because she doesn’t look like what most people think of when they think of an Arab-American girl, who’s just starving for representation for herself and for her beautiful culture that deserves to be put on a pedestal for all to see? Where are those stories?
The truth is, I already know. They are hidden inside every writer, buried under ignorance, either unintended or not. All it takes is an essay like this, reaching out, spreading the message far and wide like a wake-up call, that gives them the inspiration they need, yet always had deep down inside them. But until they hear that wake-up call, I’m not going to wait. Page by page, rewrite by rewrite, I’ll write my story, our story, for all of us to see our reflections in.
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