The Language that Does Not Want You Pt. I
By Nafisa Rashid
Imagine studying a language that never gives you the same light of day.
Immersing yourself for uncountable hours of your life.
Studying how to write another language’s script while you are supposed to be focusing in your 7th grade Spanish class.
Failing to learn the right way, but standing up and trying and trying again.
Creating and forging numerous connections with many others who share the same newly discovered linguistic and cultural interests.
Spending many waking hours wrapped on the bed, sitting on the stairs, bobbling on the subway,
With images of this language plastered on your walls and its food served on almost every corner of Boston.
And its words, melodically seeping through your ears through the form of songs and humorous conversations.
You chuckle, because you have spent so many years reaching a point where you’ve arrived at a language peak—
Of understanding humor.
You pass the 3, your listening is almost perfect.
But that’s all it will ever be.
BECAUSE
In the classes, there will be almost no one who looks like you.
And if there is, they don’t want to associate with you.
Despite the hours you put in, more than anyone else,
With consecutive essay awards, which no one else has achieved
And a speech that could even move a teacher to tears
But, it seems you’ll still never be good enough.
Because somehow your roommate with only 2 years is better.
And, when you are stressed out and make a small mistake
That if anyone else made,
They would be cradled like a baby
But, you are met with painful anger that doesn’t care how you feel or how it affects your mental health.
Learning feels like wasting hours, because you are just an object of fascination.
Your dark skin will make you stand out and fade away.
It will make you be treated like you belong on the periphery.
Nonetheless, you are enticed by a place where your skin has been a joke to be painted on faces.
Three times a charm right?
Wrong, your design will never be of worth for a cloth
Three time’s a charm right?
How about Five times?
Because the programs don’t think you’re worth the investment
Despite your burning interest and linguistic accolades
And covid thinks it's fun to get in your way and let you watch from the cage while others fly to places of their dreams.
So why are you still attached?
To a language that doesn’t want you?
That will not be a bridge to a new place, because all the bridges to get there have burned.
Or will be burned.
You’ve been left with the scars of hammering the language and its culture into your head,
After taking a liking to it because of the things that it has done for you, the comfort it gave you, and connections it let you make,
Which have now become discomfort and burnt or falling bridges.
But how do you become detached to something that has been with you for more than nine years?
How do you become a magnet that won’t fly back?
How do you become a moth that isn’t enticed by fire?
How do you make sense of,
How do you wrestle with,
How do you deal with
The language that does not want you?
Nafisa Rashid ‘23 would like to share that trying to study abroad and study a language in general is not an easy process, but the process that she has gone through leading up to and especially during Wellesley as a Black student have been nothing but turbulent ones. From the February 2023 issue.