Our Hyphenated Identities: My Story

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For all my life I have been living in a hyphen. Hyphens are used to connect words that are naturally not supposed to be together: free-for-all, mother-in-law, post-colonial. A single dash has the ultimate power of forging multiple words or compounds into one functional unit. But what happens when the words a hyphen connects juxtapose one another?

Asian-American, Pakistani-American, Muslim-American. These are my hyphenated identities, but as my experiences have shown me, they really cannot function as one. Yes, I am an Asian-American, but with America’s long history of exclusionary policies towards Asians and the recent spike in Asian hate crimes in this country, I realize I do not belong. Yes, I am a Pakistani-American, but I am too westernized to be truly Pakistani, yet at the same time too cultural to be truly American. Yes, I am a Muslim-American, but because of my religion, I am seen as a threat to this country.

I am Asian-American, but I do not look like the type of Asian most people automatically think when they hear “Asian.” My parents were born in Karachi, Pakistan, but my grandparents are from Hyderabad, India. So, Pakistan only contributes to a mere quarter-century of my family history, but I couldn’t possibly call myself Indian because I have been taught that the Indian in me was shed when the Indian subcontinent partitioned into two nation-states in the summer of 1947. I’m not Muslim “enough” to wear a head-scarf, yet Muslim “enough” to be the victim of humiliating bomb jokes. And I don’t feel American because I have no cultural or historical ties to this land—I always take off my shoes when I enter someone’s home, I never understood why kids in elementary school would kiss their parents on the lips to say goodbye at drop-off, I’ve had men call me “exotic,” I eat food that reeks of spice, and I speak Urdu with my parents when we’re walking down the grocery aisle.

So, who am I? Where do I belong, and who do I belong to? What is my identity? My adolescent life has been spent attempting to answer these questions and me silently struggling with this inner identity crisis. But I’ve come to realize that we human beings as a species are so addicted to the idea of labels and categories. It wasn’t until the American and French Revolutions that nationalism and its nation-states became the modern concept it is today. Post-World War II saw the imperial powers’ insatiable need to homogenize nations based on race, ethnicity, and religion. My identity crisis exists today because of European imperialists who did not understand geographical boundaries and historical backgrounds, a group of people who wanted the world order to look and act in a way beneficial to them and them only.

Identity is a very real thing. It is wrong to invalidate it and reject it completely. I am not or will not reject these hyphens that will always be a part of me, but I will not let it limit me to certain confines of who I should be or how I should act. So, no, I have not found the solution to my identity crisis, but college has allowed me to find a way to grow from it. I’ve used my hyphen to find other students with hyphens and share our experiences in order to learn from one another. My story is just one of many stories of college students who struggle with an ongoing identity crisis. Some have found who they are, and some, like me, are still figuring out who they are. For this blog series, I will be having conversations with my fellow Commonwealth Honors College peers to understand their own identities and crises, their experiences living in a hyphen, and their overall life at UMass Amherst. Hopefully, these conversations will help readers grow and learn to be comfortable with their identities in college and the world.