I don’t know if you’ve ever sat alongside a parent or a guardian to fill in an official form but there’s always a still moment in this process for my family: the selection of our ethnic group. Asian, other. That’s what I am. That is the category that my sisters, parents, and grandmother are labelled as. It’s a tickbox question that never asks us to specify where we are from. According to the form, all that is necessary to understand is that we are from somewhere, an irrelevant speck situated somewhere in around 45 million square kilometres worth of space- unfit for further attention.

As the first child of a Sri Lankan family who no longer live at ‘home’, my experiences with race and belonging have fluctuated throughout my life. Growing up and attending a primary school which had a majority white student population completely contrasted with my close-knit Sri Lankan community. At school, I was singled out as the student who ‘spoke well for a brown girl’. Amongst my Sri Lankan community, I was labelled a ‘coconut’, a crude, mocking nickname given to someone who, like me, couldn’t speak their mother’s mother tongue. 

Sadly, this is the case for most first-generation Brits. I like to use the example of a marionette. Different strings attached to the puppet represent my different experiences. My Sri Lankan side is one string. What tugs my limbs to one side is the foundation of my history, the lives of my ancestors and the memories of my parent's childhoods that I live vicariously through. On the other hand, my British side is another string, which yanks me in the opposite direction. All my own quintessentially British experiences (choosing pyramid tea bags over loose-leaf chai and the strawberry summers but also the microaggressions and the constant feeling that you don’t belong) tried to pry me free from my Sri Lankan roots. Guided by two taut strings, the marionette was teetering one way one second and the other the next— a sardonic game of ping pong between my two identities.

A common reason why many people migrate and settle down in the UK is the belief that everything is bigger and better in the West. Whilst these beliefs stem from imperialist ideologies imposed by the British Empire, which is a whole other article, the romanticisation of the ‘Western dream’ is something that is entangled in ethnic communities even now. Many people, including my father, for his degree, and my mother, for my future, believed that ‘everything was better in England.’ My mum often tells me the story of her first night in England. She was sitting in the passenger seat of my father’s car, twenty-one, newly married and hopeful for the future. She watched neat, parallel rows of red and white car lights illuminate the cold September sky, her entire future packed neatly into the suitcases locked away in the boot. To me, someone who has lived their entire life in the UK, lines of red and white on the motorway are hardly romantic. All they mean to me is that it'll take me longer to arrive home to the comfort of my bed. To think that something I find so trivial could act like a beacon of hope for another often incites guilt; am I so oblivious to what I’ve been given that everything is burdensome?

Another string is added to the marionette. A mother’s dream. A daughter’s guilt.

However, whilst acceptance takes time and a great deal of confidence, it is a result in everyone's life. At one point, everything stops. The taut strings fall loose. The marionette lays limp for a moment, free from the control of the strings and the curtain of the puppet theatre falls. After years of being rocked side to side by many external factors, it takes time to break down a mindset you’ve fed yourself for years. But there is a calm constant between your two independent selves and funnily enough, the union of two forces you always believed were rivals is what brings you solace in the end. The story of the first generation is not a tragedy. Yes, it has its lows, but more than anything, it’s a tale of power. A tale of growth, of celebration and the strength that comes with wholly embracing your identity, regardless of external opinions.