Kosi Amuzie ‘ 24 Use Your Words

Use Your Words

In their young adult years, both of my parents took on the great challenge of immigrating from their home country of Nigeria to the United States. For as long as I can remember, they have blended Nigerian culture with the dynamics of our household, meticulously intertwining it with our everyday lives. For me, as well as my four older sisters, home life consists of learning how to prepare our cultural dishes, attending boisterous family gatherings, listening to my father scrutinize and grumble about the politics of our home country, and most importantly, attending Catholic Mass in our native language, Igbo, every first Sunday of the month.

For as long as I can remember, my relationship with Igbo Mass has been one of love and hate, war and peace, enthusiasm and aversion. The complicated part about it is that, although my sisters and I have grown up very in touch with our culture, none of us ever fully grasped the ability to speak, read, or fully understand our native tongue. It is the one pitfall of my identity as a first-generation Nigerian-American. It is the scar etched into my skin from years of my dear parents hoping to facilitate our coming of age in America, fearing that we would grow up struggling to learn English if they dared to fully pass on their mother tongue. So I’ve grown up hearing my parents speak some tangled mix of English and Igbo, their words messily stitching together my two worlds like patches on clothing. And for years, I sat through Igbo Mass content with my limited understanding of what was going on, my young mind simply concerned with playing with my church friends or getting the refreshments that were served after Mass. That feeling of unbotheredness came to a screeching halt one day in the sixth grade, when I received an email from one of the church women asking me to give the First Reading at an upcoming Mass, entirely in Igbo.

Of course, when I notified my parents of her request, they demanded that I do it. One, it would be considered rude of me to say no to her, especially considering how much West African culture values respecting the wishes of your elders, no matter the task. And, two, they saw it as an opportunity for me to tie that final knot between me

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PRISMS and my culturespeaking the language. I saw it as a chance to humiliate myself.

But, submitting to my parents’ wishes, in true Nigerian fashion, I practiced the Reading with my dad every day after school up until the day of the Mass. The minute that I placed my backpack down upon entering the house, he would make me sit at the kitchen table with him and read the provided Scripture sentence by sentence. I dreaded practicing Igbo with him. It was belittling every time I messed up, I felt like a part of me was being exposed as a fraud. Each mistake I made felt like being stripped of my Igbo identity, ripping open my wound of monolingualism. I tripped over my words, he mocked my accent, and by the end of each session, we were both frustrated. This frustration, with both myself, as a bad Nigerian child, and my strict, disciplinarian Nigerian father, drew a rift between myself and my culture. Igbo words became repetitive. I no longer wanted to cook with my mom. I didn’t want to attend family gatherings. All of this just because I didn’t see myself as “enough” to belong to such a deep, beautiful culture.

When the day of the Mass came, I was in mental shambles. Anxiety took over my body like a virus. As I dressed up in my ornate traditional attire and looked at myself in the mirror, I saw an imposter. Anxious thoughts ravaged through my mind. Look at you. It doesn’t matter how many recipes or dances you learn or how many flags you own or what your name sounds like. Without the language, you’re just a kid playing dress-up. I stood there in a trancelike state, knowing that I had come too far to go backward yet too afraid to move forward. I brushed these thoughts away and hopped in the car with a folded-up copy of the Reading in my hand. Upon arrival at the church, I nervously greeted uncles and aunts with brief Igbo greetings, a process that had never been nearly as nerve-racking as it was that day. During the introductory rites of the Mass, my eyes darted around the church, hoping for some sort of escape from what was bound to be utter humiliation in front of my parents’ friends as well as my Nigerian peers. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like anything or anyone was going to swoop in and save me from this, so when it came time for me to read, I reluctantly walked to the podium, avoiding eye contact with the audience, and placed my paper on the smooth, wooden surface.

As I tried to begin speaking, the microphone produced a dissonant feedback that echoed through the church. I grimaced. As I began reading to the congregation, my foreign words had a steady rhythm. I made eye contact with the audience occasionally to foster some sort of a connection. My heart was beating rapidly, but I spoke through it. The words, although mostly foreign to me, began to feel like my own. The eyes in the audience disappeared. The image of my father’s stern, judgemental face faded from my mind. It was just me, the microphone, and Igbo words flowing out of my mouth like a colorful array of light. When I finished, I took a silent, yet deep breath of relief. For a moment, the church was dead silent. And then there was applause.

Afterward, the church service continued as normal. I sat in the pew pleased with myself for taking on such a difficult and nerve-racking task, no matter the result. During the reception that followed the Mass, I was extolled by members of our church, young and old, familiar and unfamiliar, telling me how well I spoke Igbo. There was one particular older man that I had never seen before who approached me and said, “Your voice is the future of Nigerian American children. You have made our people proud.” His words brought tears to my eyes.

I may not be fluent in Igbo. I may not have been born in Nigeria. However, I put in the effort every single day to remain connected with my culture, despite being on the opposite side of the globe from my homeland. When I delivered that Reading, despite fear of humiliation, I made an effort to keep my culture and language alive, in the face of the pressure to assimilate into American culture all of the time. Without efforts as such, future generations of Nigerian-Americans may not get the chance to indulge in such a beautiful culture. When ethnic groups immigrate to new places, it tests whether or not the culture is strong enough to survive when moved from its birthplace. So it is in the hands of people like myself and my Nigerian peers, specifically those of us away from the Motherland, to keep our language and culture alive.

- Kosi Amuzie ‘24

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