When I asked Ahnaf how he felt about the words home, America/American, and Asian American, his response to Asian American caught my attention, as he does not feel the term represents him as a whole since it includes American. Even though the word Asian is paired with American, he does not feel American, despite having received his U.S. citizenship two years ago. This shows that holding the title of citizenship, the same one as people born in the United States, does not necessarily translate into feeling American.

Instead, Ahnaf feels more connected to terms such as Bengali, Bangladeshi, and South Asian, as he was born in Bangladesh and continued to surround himself with others from similar backgrounds while living in Jamaica, Queens. This experience differs from Tahmid’s and my own, as we were more often surrounded by people from a wider range of backgrounds. As a result, our sense of identity tends to shift more fluidly. Some days we feel more Bengali, and on other days more American, depending on who we are around and the social environments we are navigating. In contrast, Ahnaf’s sense of identity remains more constant across different settings. This feeling of identifying primarily as Bangladeshi or Bengali is similar to what my mother experienced when she first arrived in the United States since it took her many years to begin considering herself American, more specifically Asian or Bangladeshi American, after learning how to navigate in the country and adopting American cultures into her lifestyle.

The feeling of loss after coming to a new country is shared by both Ahnaf and my mother. This is also a common experience among many Bangladeshi migrants, especially those from earlier generations who migrated on their own rather than with their families and had limited means of communication with loved ones back home. At the time, phones were not widely used or affordable among poor migrants, making it difficult to stay connected across borders. When Ahnaf mentions losing his connections to family, it reminded me of how my mother mentioned being unable to speak with her family for months at a time. Instead, she relied on sending tape recordings by mail to Bangladesh and waiting for a response to arrive the same way. This process made the distance between my mother and her family in Bangladesh feel even more real and prolonged, as contact was not made in real time. Across both older and newer generations of Bangladeshi migrants, the pain of leaving friends and family behind continues to persist, even as new relationships are formed in a new country. This is reinforced by how my mother ended her interview, bringing up that she still feels lonely living in America, yet continues to prefer living here despite that loneliness.