Making Their Way

For Tasnim Huque, the past few months have been full of surprises. Her Muslim parents, who immigrated to New York City from India’s sprawling eastern city of Calcutta in the late 1980s, are gradually allowing the 18-year-old to show some independence. While there’s little inhibiting most seniors at Hunter Science High School in Manhattan from attending the prom— except, perhaps, the cost of limos, gowns and tuxes— Huque was certain that she’d be missing it for a different reason: her 6 p.m. curfew. But her parents recently told her that she could, in fact, attend.

“They even bought me a nice Westernized dress,” she says excitedly. And that’s not all she’s excited about. Huque is also stunned that her mother, a teacher, and her father—who works for the MTA—are allowing her to apply to colleges on her own. “My parents are highly educated, but I’d be the first to graduate from college [in the U.S.],” she says. “They might have taken this one thing from me in letting me hang out late with my friends,” a reference to the curfew. “But they give me trust. They always tell me, ‘You remember who you are and what your responsibilities are.’” The coming-of-age journey of teenage girls and young-adult women in the city’s immigrant communities— many of which are rooted in socially conservative values with prescribed gender roles—often raise deeply nuanced questions about cultural identity, self-esteem and self-determination.

“We’re getting a lot of immigrants from places where gender expectations are really, really different. For girls, they’re being trained very early in family maintenance and preserving family honor,” says Philip Kasinitz, a CUNY Graduate Center sociology professor and co-author of the 2008 book Inheriting the City, which chronicles the experiences of the second generation in New York. “But they’re hitting a society where they’re being told, ‘Follow your dreams. Do the thing that makes you successful, and to hell with your family.’ That especially places girls in a difficult spot. And the question becomes, How do you balance that?”

It’s a question that Maimouna Nbiaye, 17, finds herself grappling with. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Senegal, she’s now a student in the International High School at Prospect Heights. Nbiaye, who aspires to become a doctor, is struck by the possibilities awaiting her. “When I was [in Senegal], I did not think about how I can stand up and say, ‘Oh I can do this,’ ” she reflects. “Back in Senegal, it was just men who said, ‘I can do this.’”

But she’s also conflicted. Nbiaye isn’t sure if New York—despite all that it promises—is where she wants to settle after pursuing her studies. West African culture, she argues, isn’t valued enough here. Umu Jalloh, 18, who was born in Sierra Leone, draws a similar contrast. “Back home, older persons get more respect. Over here, you see someone cursing a person who could be their grandmother,” she says. “Respect is what my culture is about.”

But the longing for home is driven not only by cultural familiarity—City Limits interviewed about a dozen West African teenage girls who expressed similar sentiments—but also, in part, by the searing memories of what relatives and friends left behind are still enduring in the aftermath of bloody conflict. Between 1991 and 2002, Sierra Leone was torn apart by a brutal civil war. “When I used to be in my country, I went through war, and I used to cry a lot,” reflects Jalloh. “I saw people dying, poor people and sick people. I just want to be able to help them.”