by Jennifer A. Minotti (Cambridge, MA)
Looking back, my Ethiopian orphaned daughter acclimated fairly quickly to our life in Vermont, set amid colorful foliage and our blue-blooded friends. Surely, once she got situated, she started to protest her differences, but that was to be expected. First, she attempted to scrub off her dark skin in the bathtub, like filth. Next, she objected to her new name, one I gave her in honor of my deceased Russian grandmother, not hers. Finally, she took to imitating her older brother, perceiving him as Golden Child in biological position and genetic makeup. She was probably right. Yet over time, I don’t know how long, I think she finally accepted her fate and her dissimilarities. Adopted. Black. Girl. Later, she would come to appreciate her rightful position in our family as Daughter. Sister. Loved.
I, on the other hand, never fully reintegrated into this patrician town after the week I spent in Africa. Quail eggs and Prosecco were no longer palatable. I, too, had been forced to assimilate at an early age. Growing up, I wasn’t told to assimilate, but it was implied. We were already different in our predominantly small, Catholic town. Jewish. Divorced. Female.
“Don’t tell anyone your father left,” my Holocaust-surviving mother implored. And so I didn’t. I lied, mostly to deceive myself. I worked hard. I became Successful. Happy. Envied. I Fit In.
So I reminded my daughter, nearly every night, not to shove when she ate. “Slow down,” I would say, tasting sourness in the back of my throat. I repeated this mostly because it was simply good etiquette. But really it was because I didn’t want her to feel different. Second-rate. Dirty, which was her perception, not mine. I wanted her to Fit In. I repeated that she had to do better, be better, because she was Black. Jewish. Female. I thought, I’m giving her good advice.
Except that I hated always trying to fit in. Still do. I feel trapped by assimilation, a rigged system anyway. I feel asphyxiated by my own accomplishments because, no matter how much I achieve, people still see me as Jewish. Female. Why not claim my Jewishness, I ask myself. My Femaleness. Why struggle to Fit In to a male, Christian-dominated system that will never fully admit me anyway?
Which is why I change my mind. I decide I need to claim my differences and so does my daughter. I need to break the cycle of assimilation in our family, because it doesn’t work anyway. I now tell my daughter, Stay true to Yourself. You’re Gorgeous as you are. Love your Beautiful Black Skin. Be proud of your Multiple Identities. I tell my daughter these things, not just because it’s good parenting, but also for its truth. I repeat these things daily, because after years of conformity I, too, need to hear them.
Jennifer A. Minotti is an Artist in Residence at the Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights at Suffolk University and a PhD candidate at Lesley University. She is the Founder of the Women’s Writing Circle and is the Co-Creator of The World’s Very First Gratitude Parade. A graduate of Boston University (B.S.) and Columbia University (M.A., M.Ed), she is a descendant of the famous Soloveitchik rabbinic dynasty. She lives in Cambridge, MA with her family, where she studies Judaism weekly with her Partner in Torah.
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