Dress

Which clothes should I wear?

Molded

Cracks in the mold

Cars, Cars, Car, I don’t know which one to choose from. In Guyana all we had were bicycles and our feet to carry us around. This will be my first owned property all mine with all my money. Everything I have ever had before was bought by my dad or my mom and even if I did buy it and they thought it was frugal spending I wouldn’t hear the end of it. Wow, I don’t even want to know what my family would think. “It’s not safe for you to drive” “Girls don’t drive until they are married” “I didn’t have a car when I was growing up, we had things the hard way” Just be happy for me for once, I am not living in your past, it is my future and my present.

Assimilation on the horizon

My interview went well for this job. Simple questions were asked as to my education and other activities. Guyana is 3^rd world in economics but definitely not in education. We don’t go to school from 7am till 6pm to learn nothing. After I passed the education check next came the personal questions. I had introduced myself as “Aleea, pronounced phonetically and she still had trouble saying it.” So I told her, the interviewer Jane Johnson, that she could just call me Ally for short. During the interview Jane asked me how old I was and I noted I was “twenteh-five” I suppose at that point she heard my “accent” with numbers.

Aging

I have mixed feelings about my birthday now. I know in America it is not that bad to be twenty-five and single, but oh my, is it bad for my family and me. My grandma would always say “at your age, I had so and so kids already…and I knew to make roti,” I don’t want to marry just anyone they choose for me, and I don’t want to cook roti and curry alone. I like eating burgers and pizza. My co-workers could always smell my food all down the hallway when I heat it up in the microwave. It must be Aleea eating lunch at this time. But I probably am getting a bit old and do need to find someone soon. All my friends are getting married back home and don’t want them to think something is wrong with me. It might be best that I just go back home this summer and find someone. I got my residency for two years now then I could just sponsor my “future” husband to come over.

Response to Half Breed

When I noticed the title the first thing that popped into my mind was dogs. My boss at my job is in love with dogs and just recently bought a so called “pure” one. She noted though that it was really cheap so how pure could it be. This is funny because being a half-breed or of mixed culture is very hard to identify with a certain group, and even in some societies of people not worth as much if one is not pure of a certain ethnicity. This mixed breed in many cultures as a result is a minority. I believe it is looked down upon also in many cultures just because parents foreshadow the hardship their children might face when in school such as getting asked questions about what are you, or you look different. It is somewhat easier though when being raised of mix cultures in American society because it is more open.