Personal Narrative: My American Dream

“The American Dream” can be interpreted in many different ways. For some, it might mean freedom and wealth, but for others such as myself it can be defined as a quest for opportunity and a better future. Migrating to the United States from Nepal as a ten year old, I have had to overcome many hurdles such as language barriers, assimilation, and conflicts of identity. Leaving your home and integrating into a foreign country can be terrifying and it is even more terrifying when you don’t know the language. As a ten year old, I had difficulty interacting with other people, whether it be my peers or my teachers. I knew from then that I had to work as hard as I could in order to succeed. With the help of my sister who was also struggling in the same way as I was, I slowly familiarized myself with the english language and soon found myself reading books, writing literature, and even winning multiple spelling bees. This experience truly has defined me as it has taught me how much perseverance and effort can make a person.

Back in Nepal, most everybody looked like me, spoke the same language as me, and ate the same foods as me. However after coming to America, I began to notice that I was different from others around me. My family and I lived in a suburban area in Texas and it was a drastic change from my lifestyle in Nepal because the general population of this area looked nothing like me. Almost everybody in the area was white, spoke english, and ate foods I had never seen before. This experience became an extremely difficult chapter in my life as it made me question my worth. Being a skinny brown girl with broken english and smelly food, I began to hate everything I was. I despised my culture, heritage, and foods because I thought those were not what a “traditional American” should look