my life ■ by Sana Hoda Sood | photo by Michael Ventura
The author with her husband, Nitin, and sons Aarish and Arhaan
My Hyphenated Self Growing up, I felt neither Indian nor American enough. Now, I’ve found the blended beauty of being both. I ONCE FOUND myself looking squarely into the face of an enraged rhino. And yet, the fear I felt then would later pale in comparison to how afraid I was the first time I landed in Arlington, Virginia. Today, Arlington is my home—a town where I and countless other immigrants from around the world feel a sense of
belonging. But when I first arrived here as a 6-year-old in 1987, I felt extraordinarily out of place. I spoke English, but my tongue couldn’t do the gymnastics required to sound American. My peers didn’t understand me, or my accent. Born in India in 1981, I spent my early years zigzagging across a handful of towns, courtesy of my father’s work
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for the Indian civil service. My family seldom spent more than a year in one place before moving on. One sojourn in a remote, northeastern part of the country, Tezpur, had us living near protected forests. It’s the image of India Rudyard Kipling wanted to convey—tigers, elephants and yes, rhinos. Oh my.
