My Mom Lies During the WhatsApp Call Home
Eisha Y.
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I am like many other Americans. Born to immigrant parents- experiencing a culture that seems so unlike anyone around me- feeling so out of place. Writing is a way for me to share the world that I am growing up it. The view of a honest, innocent child who lives in an immigrant family. The clash of expectation. Of culture. This piece, My Mom Lies During The WhatsApp Call Home, is a testimony to the struggles and wants my own mother had after leaving her home country, India. She not only left her family- but entered a whole different culture. And then I was born. Kicking, screaming, and American. I spoke English, couldn’t really speak Hindi- and ate pork. And my mom became American too- with my dad and me, and after a while my brother. But there was still one thread linking her back home- WhatsApp. The familial expectations, and tender love travelled through electromagnetic waves until it hit my mom’s phone for a call- often early in the morning or late at night. And I would hear loud words- my main exposure to Bengali- where my mother talked to the family back home. The reason I wrote this is because I am one of many. Immigrant families compromise a large portion of the Bay Area- and shape our society. I they all complex struggles, often based on seemingly trivial things.but those things are real- and depict the stories of our society that makes it whole.
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Creativity to me is the ability to share a story to make change. For me, words are not definite meanings, but art forms that can be used to evoke emotions. Without creativity we would not be able to conjure these experiences- and lose the opportunity to think of new ideas.
