I once found myself looking squarely into the face of an enraged rhino. And yet, the fear I felt then would later pale in comparison to how afraid I was the first time I landed in Arlington, Virginia.
Today, Arlington is my home—a town where I and countless other immigrants from around the world feel a sense of belonging. But when I first arrived here as a 6-year-old in 1987, I felt extraordinarily out of place. I spoke English, but my tongue couldn’t do the gymnastics required to sound American. My peers didn’t understand me, or my accent.
Born in India in 1981, I spent my early years zigzagging across a handful of towns, courtesy of my father’s work for the Indian civil service. My family seldom spent more than a year in one place before moving on.
One sojourn in a remote, northeastern part of the country, Tezpur, had us living near protected forests. It’s the image of India Rudyard Kipling wanted to convey—tigers, elephants and yes, rhinos. Oh my.
One afternoon, my mother—then in her late 20s—decided to take my sister and me for a joyride. As we barreled down a dirt road, Ammi (Mom) in her oversized Jackie O sunglasses and knotted silk scarf, my sister and me bouncing and squealing in the back seat, we came to an abrupt halt in front of a female rhinoceros who (as confirmed later by a park ranger) had lost her calf. Desperate and agitated, she hoofed the ground and charged aggressively at our car.
“In the years that followed, whenever I was confronted by challenges or sadness, I told myself: If that rhino didn’t get you, you’ll be all right now, too.”
I remember dust flying as my mother gunned the accelerator and hightailed it out of there, intent on protecting her own offspring. My eyes stayed glued to the rhino, who chased us until she could no longer keep up.
In the years that followed, whenever I was confronted by challenges or sadness, I told myself: If that rhino didn’t get you, you’ll be all right now, too.
In 1987 my father was awarded a prestigious fellowship, which brought us to Virginia. I spent the next two years training myself in the arts of Americana and began to feel a bit more at home.
When my father’s fellowship came to an end, we backtracked to India where, as irony would have it, I felt like an outsider once again.
Second grade in India was a cold plunge to the system. Though I looked and sounded Indian, I had grown accustomed to student life at Barcroft Elementary in Arlington—making dried pasta necklaces, learning my vowels through song, and feeling very, very special every day. Now I was confronted with a rigorous math curriculum, zero pasta necklaces and strict teachers who seemed to have little tolerance for creativity. The place I’d missed so sorely while we were in Arlington no longer felt like home.
That chapter was short-lived, and soon we were shuttled back to Virginia in 1992 where, at age 10, I began to form my layered identity as an Indian American. I became a bit of this, and a bit of that—my accented English still too Indian, my distressed jeans too American.
There’s a saying in my native tongue of Urdu that tells of a traveling laundress who visits homes to collect people’s wash and takes their clothes down to the river to launder them. The nomadic nature of her work confuses her pet dog. He belongs neither to the homes they frequent, nor to the riverbanks.
Speakers of Urdu and Hindi across the South Asian subcontinent understand this tale to convey a sense of being neither here nor there. I understand it, too.
Children of immigrants often feel like they are walking a tightrope between two worlds, and I was no different. I had Coolio in my headphones, but turmeric in my lunch box. And I was a child of the ’90s—an era that had yet to see South Asian representation in American pop culture. Aside from a few heavily accented caricatures on TV, kids like me didn’t see ourselves reflected in the media we consumed (Apu on The Simpsons didn’t help).
“Children of immigrants often feel like they are walking a tightrope between two worlds, and I was no different. I had Coolio in my headphones, but turmeric in my lunch box.”
Where I did find a total sense of belonging was in books. For years, I almost entirely read South Asian authors whose protagonists were Indians in the motherland, or Indian Americans like me. I met characters in these books who walked the same tightrope, their humanity reflected to me in a way totally unlike those caricatures on TV.
Books remained my passion through childhood, through my college years at Virginia Tech, through travels and into adulthood. I read when I felt happy or low. I read to fill the time. I reread the stories I loved and filled my home with so many books that I began stacking them in piles.
When I became a mother in 2012, I wanted my children to find the same joy and affirmation in literature. I brought home books filled with children of all colors, backgrounds and cultures. One day, I decided to write a book I’d always wished I had growing up. It was a children’s book about Diwali, the Indian “Festival of Lights.”
Though my immigrant family embraced Christmas (what’s not to love about presents and school holidays?), I had also grown up celebrating Diwali, an Indian festival symbolizing the victory of right over injustice, of knowledge over ignorance. Like Christmas, Diwali is a season of merriment, with packed shopping malls and extra helpings of dessert. For children like me, it was also an excuse to stay up extra late—not to catch Santa coming down the chimney, but to revel in the fireworks displays that lit up the night sky.
Arlington isn’t the same place I encountered decades ago, back when I felt lost because I pronounced words differently and had no clue that NKOTB was an acronym for a boy band. Today, Arlington Public Schools observes holidays from around the world, including Diwali. Each of these celebrations presents an opportunity to commemorate and learn about other cultural and religious traditions.
Though it may never be perfect, I do believe children today can feel at home here, regardless of where their families come from, which languages they speak, which customs they celebrate or the contents of their lunch boxes.
I’m now in my 40s, married to an Indian man and raising two young boys who are forming their own Indian American identities. As parents, we invite them into the richness of their unique, hyphenated background through music, celebrations and books, where they can now see themselves and their peers authentically represented.
Representation matters. Mountains of research show that when young readers are exposed to characters who resemble them, with backgrounds that resonate with their own, it fosters a sense of belonging and self-acceptance. This early exposure helps shape a positive self-image and promotes empathy and understanding.
Similarly, when children encounter characters from a variety of races, cultures and experiences, they develop a broader worldview, curiosity and respect for diversity from an early age. Both are incredibly important to understanding yourself, and your broader role in a community.
I started my life in Arlington as an outsider, placating myself with the assurance that if I could survive a close call with a rhino, I could survive anything. My hope is that our children, whether they are born here or arrive by way of a winding road, wear their hyphenated identities proudly, share the richness of their cultures and celebrate the experiences of their peers.
Arlington resident Sana Hoda Sood is the author of Stories of the World: Diwali. Find her at sanahodasood.com.