আমার সোনার বাংলা, আমার সোনার মেয়ে | My golden Bangla, my golden daughter.

Life of an American-Bengali Girl. 

Through photography, I wanted to explore my Bengali heritage by photographing my local restaurants and supermarkets. Upon arriving to take photos, I was challenged by the dim lights and more importantly the unwelcoming nature of the busy stores and restaurants. I stood there like a buzzing mosquito, awaiting to be shooed away, my presence an incessant nuisance amidst the store owners hustling to make ends meet. They are the working class heroes, the hard workers that hold up the Bangladeshi American economy in the corner of the universe in Kensington. Although I couldn’t share their story through photography for the reasons mentioned above, I pivoted to share the untold story of a Bangladeshi American girl. 

I want to note that I feel honored and privileged to be able to craft and narrate such a personal, vulnerable, and inspiring story with words and a collection of my photography. So here it goes: 

As a Bangladeshi American girl, a daughter of immigrant parents, I live a dual life. 

If the life my parents wished for me to live were narrated in a movie, it would be a cycle of repetition spun like an eternal carousel, looping endlessly without any deviation or escape. 

I would eat, sleep, study, look pretty, and repeat. They think they’re protecting me from the world. In return, I select to show them the side of me they wish to see: complacent, youthful, and innocent. 

On rare occasions, without any pleading, I am allowed to go to the grocery store on my own when they need me to. I am tasked to find কচি নারকেল, young coconuts, for the coconut shrimp that my mother will make for our guests.I was told to look out for any পাকা কাঁঠাল, ripen jackfruit. Our national fruit. 

I stare at the fruits in confusion. Isn’t it ironic that I am expected to stay home all the time aside from school or work, yet I am expected to have the wit to know the difference between the ripe from the unripe, and the pure from the impure? I try to read the signs, holding up my finger, and tracing the Bengali alphabet letter by letter. Have they forgotten that I last learned to read Bangla when I was seven? Have they forgotten my father was overseas and my mom was working twelve-hour shifts while I stayed at home watching movies, alone, satiating my desire to know the world beyond me? 

So I take it upon myself to explore the forbidden. You can’t recognize me anymore, but I recognize me. I recognized the part of me that yearned to be witnessed but remained hidden beneath the veil out of fear but also out of love and devotion. 

College was my temporary refuge. I am graduating from college now. Afraid, even petrified of returning to my former life. 

I hope you enjoyed the narration of my photos accompanied by the story of a Bangladeshi American girl. I want the sweats, tears, and hard work of a Bangladeshi American girl to be not forgotten. Graduation is exciting but it’s also a scary moment. As we prepare to return home, we bear the responsibility to transform our family’s lives. The moment we get out the diploma, we have to learn how to buy a house for them, how to take out a loan, and how to teach them to live a little, all while we’re seen as little girls who can’t take care of themselves and soon need to be married off. It’s as if a lifetime of translating for our parents, paying bills for our families, and advocating in front of the American medical system to treat our parents as responsible citizens and respectable individuals were not enough to be deemed responsible adults.