FIRST GENERATION IMMIGRANT PARADOX THE FIRST GENERATION FIRST GENERATION IMMIGRANT

As we move to a more inclusive environment, one where diversity is showcased and celebrated, remembering the tribulations of my younger self who did everything to reject her cultural identity has only empowered me to fall back in love with it.

I’m sitting here in my paternal family home in Pakistan where my father and his siblings explored their curiosities before immigrating to Canada in 1987. I’m writing from the home where they dreamt, where they embraced, where they loved.

Growing up with a foot in the Western world and the other in my Pakistani identity juxtaposed everything I knew to be right. The communities of my people abroad used culture as a means to justify moral policing due to an innate fear of losing their backgrounds in the aftermath of diaspora. Adding to the unattainable uniformity of the Pakistani identity was the orientalism embedded in western consciousness that rendered me paralyzed in understanding my heritage.

How to look, what to wear, and how to act were constantly dictated by each circumstance and in the process of attempting to conform to each – a true sense of self seemed unattainable.

I didn’t feel like there was a place for me in the traditional atmosphere of my upbringing, I felt like the black sheep in a herd of cattle. To mitigate my lack of belonging, I thrusted myself to fit into the world outside my home.

RST ATION NT FIRST RATION ANT 44