ayoamadu

To be African in America is to live in-between.
Between continents.
Between accents.
Between pride and pressure.
Between who you were raised to be and who survival here requires you to become.

You are not fully here, yet no longer fully there.
You carry home in your chest, in your food, your prayers, your proverbs, your respect for elders, your belief that community matters more than individuality.

But America speaks a different language, even when it uses the same words.
Here, strength is praised, but only if it looks familiar.
Confidence is welcomed, but only if it is not mistaken for arrogance.

Your name is beautiful, until it becomes “too hard to pronounce.”
So you learn to shorten it.
You learn to soften your accent.
You learn when to speak, and when silence is safer.

This is the quiet labor of Africans in the U.S.: the labor of constant translation.
You translate yourself at work.
You translate yourself in classrooms.
You translate yourself in churches that sing to the same God but pray with a different rhythm.

You are expected to be grateful, always grateful.
Grateful enough not to complain.
Grateful enough to endure microaggressions with a smile.
Grateful enough to forget the cost of leaving everything behind.

And yet, back home, they say:
“You are in America now. You have made it.”
But they do not see the loneliness.
The cultural whiplash.
The way success here often means emotional isolation.

They do not see how you send money home while postponing your own rest.
How you carry the dreams of an entire family on a single paycheck.
How failure is not personal—it is communal shame.

You live betwixted.
Too African to be fully American.
Too Americanized to be fully African.
You grieve traditions slipping through your fingers.
You fear your children will not know the language of their ancestors.
You wonder if assimilation is survival, or slow erasure.

And still, you rise.
You work twice as hard to be seen as half as capable.
You hold faith like an anchor, because faith crossed the ocean with you.
You build homes in foreign soil and call it destiny.

Being African in America is not weakness.
It is resilience shaped by displacement.
It is hope wearing tired shoes.
It is identity stretched, but not broken.

To be betwixted is painful, yes.
But it is also powerful.
Because those who live between worlds learn how to see clearly in both.