Changing myself just for others? Why? Why not? - Niyala Brownlee

Changing just for others?

Niyala Brownlee

            “Hi my names Niyala. Nice to meet you!” That was me introducing my self to my classmates at West Philadelphia High School. I made my voice sound light and airy with a loose smile to make myself seem friendly. Though apparently friendly is not what these people are used to.

            I had gotten many scoffs in return. Some replies of,

“Suck up.”

“Teachers pet.”

And the occasional,

“ Who does she think she is?”

Finally someone chose to utter a complete sentence.

“Where are you from?”

That’s a normal ‘get to know you’ question and all, but of course they choose to add the  “ You don’t sound like your from around here” at the end of the sentence. There were and few more murmurs then I had had gotten the chance to respond.

“What do you mean? Of course I am from West Philadelphia.”

            That type of conversation, including the question ‘Where are you from?’ always had the tendency to pop up during my time spent at West Philadelphia High. At first I had thought that people just wanted to know more about me, though as it turns out, they just wanted to know where my way of speech came from. Soon it had gotten irritating. No matter how many times I had replied with West Philadelphia they would always say I was lying. They had complained that I talked too ‘Proper’ and/or too ‘Correct’ to be from West Philly. I always wanted to complain and argue the fact that my way of speaking was normal for a person living in West Philadelphia and the fact was that ‘they’ had just talked so ‘improper’. Though of course being me, I had no intention to start a fight, so I eventually just gave in to what they were saying. I had not stated that I was from somewhere else; I had adjusted my speech so that it was dulcet to their ears.

            Soon I had gotten so use to that way of speaking that it hardly seemed like I was faking it anymore. However that still does not mean that I liked their way of speech. In actuality, I was appalled with the sounds that were making their way past my lips. When greeting someone, when I would normally say;

            “Hello”

            “ How are you doing”

and

            “Nice to meet you, my name is…”

I would find myself saying something like

            “Hey”

or even,

            “What’s up”

instead. It may not sound like it in another persons ears, but to me it sounds completely rude and just plainly ‘not right’.

            Recently I had read something from a book that had made me look back on my situation. The book was called ‘Hunger of Memory’. It was about a boy coming to Ameri ca and being made to speak a language foreign to him. He was disgusted that he had to even bother speaking it. He had wondered why he could not speak his native language. He had stated:

            “An accident of geography sent me to a school where my classmates were all white.”

(pg 11. paragraph 2)

And I had thought that I had felt the same way as he had. The students may not have been white at West Philadelphia High, but they seemed completely and utterly different from me and what I was used to.

Than he had said

            “It’s not possible for a child – any child – to ever use his families language in school”

(pg 12 paragraph 2)

Reading that had made me think that it resembled my situation even more then before. Then I had realized that he’d had no choice but to change his language. He was never given a chance to speak how he had wanted. I was. I was never forced to change my language. I was never even asked to try to speak more like the people around me. I had just considered that if I acted like others around me, I could be like them. I would be liked by them. Though I found out that to be like them, I would have to be myself and if they didn’t like that , then I was be best without them. There’s no reason for me to change my voice for others. No reason to change anything and that was that.