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A Confession: On coming of age and interracial dating
by Sarika Singh
July 1, 2005
I'd like to make a confession. In a church. Somewhere where I could tell it like it is and not be persecuted. But I am not a Christian. I'd like to tell what it's like to be an Indian-American woman, but there's never anyone who listens. Actually, I'd like to shout it from the rooftops. Is that too theatrical?
Ha! I'm not going to be theatrical. I'm not even going to write this in an uppity European style – not going to try to imitate Dickens or Jane Austen – though I most definitely can. I used to write like that in my English classes, mostly because I was oh so self-conscious. I was afraid the teachers thought that I didn't "speak good English," so I was always proving myself, always using correct grammar, always crossing my T's and dotting my I's.
So busy proving myself that I never had time to be me. Never had time to figure out who I was. I was too busy being afraid of what they thought I was.
I learned early on that Americans believed in stereotypes and took them for granted. They took it for granted that they were a world power; to them, it seemed right that they were appointed by God to rule the earth and spread their message of freedom to every nation. They never questioned this right. It may as well have been carved in stone.
