Becoming An Immigrant

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One of my grandmother’s favorite stories about me, which she loves to recount to everyone, happened when I was 4 or 5 years old. I was sitting with my younger brother, Luc, reading a book out loud. I wasn’t reading very quickly or fluently, so my grandmother figured I just didn’t read very well yet. However, upon closer inspection, she realized I was translating the book from English to French so that Luc would understand what I was reading. French was my first language. I never thought much about it, or about the fact that I was bilingual, until I went to elementary school and made friends. I went to my friends’ houses, and noticed their monolingualism. None of them spoke French, or any other language, at home. When they came over to my house for playdates, they noticed how alien I was from them. I spoke a different language and had a different background. …show more content…
They simply thought it was strange. However, that was enough to make my young mind self-aware and self-conscious. I became deeply embarrassed of my culture and my family. We were different, and that was not something I wanted to be. I desired nothing more than to be the same as everyone else. It was never up to me, though, so I would have to live with it. However, I did what I could to hide my differences from the rest of my peers. When spending time with my friends, I’d try to avoid being at my house so they wouldn’t see my bizarre family or hear my bizarre

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