Week 6: Nouriyah Saleh

Nouriyah Saleh
Week 6 Blog (Make-up)

Reading Professor Valverde's "My Mother Not My Mother" and the Mother-to-Daughter Letters resonated a lot with me. While the readings and my story are completely different, I had always felt distant with my own mother and struggled to understand why she treated me the way she did. During this week's theme of motherhood, I learned that mothers are assumed to have a strong connection with their newborn and are stigmatized when they don't. This belief bleeds into the thought that everyone must have good relationships with their parents, especially their mothers. However, growing up, I was jealous of my friends who had stronger bonds with their parents. As I got older, and especially when I came to college, I realized that how I felt was pretty common amongst Asian Americans. This realization made me more sympathetic to my parents, who are specifically Cham refugees from the Vietnam war. They grew up in such a different time and culture and the priorities and privileges were so different. I became okay with the fact that the way they show love is not how I want to be loved. It's more important for me to understand where they're coming from so I can better myself and my future family.