What Is a Hyphenated American?
Oxford Dictionary defines a hyphenated American as:
An American citizen who can trace their ancestry to another, specified part of the world, such as an African American or an Irish American (so called because terms like African American are often written with a hyphen).
I am an Eritrean-American and it has taken me a long time to come to terms with this description of myself for the following reasons:
First, when I was a child, I saw myself as just Eritrean. I was raised in Fort Worth, Texas to Eritrean parents with thick accents and a strong pride in their heritage. They moved to Texas just two months before I was born, so their Eritrean-ness was very much instilled in who they were and how they raised me. Our community of friends were mostly Eritreans and the traditions such as food, religion and culture the same. Therefore, when people asked me where I was from or “what are you?” they generally were saying, “I don’t think you are ‘American’, so what are you?” I would answer, “I’m Eritrean” and that was who I was. It was my identity. I was even referred to as an African booty scratcher one too many times and sometimes wished I could be less Eritrean, but I couldn’t shake the African out of me no matter how hard I tried. ‘They’ saw me as Eritrean, and frankly I saw myself as ‘Eritrean’. With that came many other traits that I believed embodied being a “good” Eritrean but that is a whole other conversation that deserves a separate blog post, so I will write more about that later. Nonetheless, I was Eritrean but born in the U.S. so a bit different than other Eritreans. I was the outsider and had something to prove.
Second, I traveled to Eritrea for the first time with my mother when I was 11 years old. There, I was engulfed with the Eritrean culture and surrounded by people who looked like me; however, I had never felt more American in my life than when I was there. I didn’t speak Tigrinya very well, asked many questions like, “Why do they do that?” and, “Mom, what am I supposed to be doing?” and so on, only to start to realize, I wasn’t as Eritrean as I thought. In fact, I was just an American girl to them and to myself, born of Eritrean parents. When I returned and throughout the years, I have started to realize that I was raised into two different cultures, that sometimes conflict and require a conscious effort to navigate.
As a woman of color, born to Eritrean parents, but born and raised in the U.S. I have a unique experience that I have come to love. I talked about it a bit in my book Cactus Fruit in my poem entitled Boxes:
Not American enough.
Not Eritrean enough.
What am I then?
The boxes do not fit me.
I’m stowed outside.
Still I try,
Climb my way up,
Slip,
Let go,
Fall in.
But it does not work.
I slither back to my spot.
Become more accustomed to the discomfort.
Alone.
I look up.
See others like me.
We are in this room together.
Tother in our aloneness.
We are all,
Enough.
I have finally come to terms with the fact that I may not fit into many boxes, but I am enough. I am an Eritrean-American mom with a unique experience that I am proud of.
I invite hyphenated American women to step into their identities with an open mind knowing that even those words, being a hyphenated American, do not define you. James Clear explained this best in his book Atomic Habits where he discusses developing identity-based habits in which you (1) decide the type of person we want to be and (2) prove it to yourself that you can become that person with small wins. I talked about this in my book Cactus Fruit in my poem entitled Identity:
My identity
My story
I am the author
I write a chapter
If I do not like it
I write another.
I’d love to work with you and help you write the next chapter of your story. Feel free to contact me here or buy my book Cactus Fruit here.
