The Story Archive
The Story Archive is a collection of real voices and lived experiences. Here you’ll find stories shaped by the languages people speak and the cultures they carry, each offering a small glimpse into identity, memory, and the traditions that tie us together.
"Assimilate"
I’ve always had mixed feelings about the word assimilate. Teachers used it like it was a good thing, a sign of success. She’s assimilated so well, they’d say, as if it were a compliment. But every time I heard it, it sounded like sandpaper.
When my parents came here, assimilation meant survival. Speaking perfect English, smiling at the right times, swapping spices for sauces so the kitchen wouldn’t smell “too strong.” For me, it’s been more subtle, learning to laugh at jokes I don’t really get, shortening my name until it fits in someone else’s mouth.
But sometimes I think: maybe I’ve been translating assimilation wrong. Maybe it doesn’t have to mean disappearing. Maybe it can mean carrying my culture forward, letting my mother’s words slip into English conversations, bringing my food to school unapologetically, teaching my friends how to pronounce everything correctly.
If assimilation once meant blending in, maybe it can now mean standing out without fear.
“Mother Tongue”
My mother’s tongue is sharp at the edges,
round in the middle,
sweet only when it wants to be.
It rolls over syllables
like they’re secrets I was never meant to keep.
When she speaks,
the air smells like turmeric and time.
I used to answer her in English
the language of permission slips,
of “sorry, what?”
of trying to sound less foreign.
Now I answer halfway.
A sentence in hers,
a reply in mine.
Our words meet in the middle,
and for a second,
we understand everything.