cultural autobiography
Hanan Hassan
Cultural Autobiography
My name is Hanan Hassan, and I was born in September 21, 1992 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I am the eldest of nine children that consist of four girls including me and five boys. To most people I am an ordinary twenty- one year old who works and goes to school, but what most people don’t know is that I’m basically the second mother of my household. Even though my mother is alive and well, I was taught at a young age to take responsibility and to be responsible like an adult. Not only do I take care of my siblings, but I cook and clean and do everything my mother does, because I was raised to do those things easily without complain. Anyone who isn’t part of my family/friends would look at my life and think I have no freedom. But the way I was raised taught me to be an adult, yet act my age.
When I look back at the past years, I was raised in three different cultures. My whole life consists of being raised in three different cultures, but most importantly, the culture I was born into is the one that I identify with the most. I say that because that’s who I am, and I am a Somali native. Although I have a different nationally, my ethnicity is who I am.
Mostly, people nowadays cannot differentiate between the two. My nationality is where I was born in, and my ethnicity is who I am. As a child I struggled with both. I grew up in a town full of Arabs, and the only Somalians I actually interacted with were my family. In any event, if you don’t know much about your identity, you go into this crisis mode. Until I came to America, all I knew was that I was a Muslim and Somalian. There’s this need to know who you are, and where you come from, and every day you learn something new about your identity.
When I came to America, there was a huge culture shock. For instance religiously, I grew up in countries where there was a mosque in every couple of blocks, and here the opposite were churches. Everywhere I looked was a church. It was a complete
Cultural Autobiography
My name is Hanan Hassan, and I was born in September 21, 1992 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I am the eldest of nine children that consist of four girls including me and five boys. To most people I am an ordinary twenty- one year old who works and goes to school, but what most people don’t know is that I’m basically the second mother of my household. Even though my mother is alive and well, I was taught at a young age to take responsibility and to be responsible like an adult. Not only do I take care of my siblings, but I cook and clean and do everything my mother does, because I was raised to do those things easily without complain. Anyone who isn’t part of my family/friends would look at my life and think I have no freedom. But the way I was raised taught me to be an adult, yet act my age.
When I look back at the past years, I was raised in three different cultures. My whole life consists of being raised in three different cultures, but most importantly, the culture I was born into is the one that I identify with the most. I say that because that’s who I am, and I am a Somali native. Although I have a different nationally, my ethnicity is who I am.
Mostly, people nowadays cannot differentiate between the two. My nationality is where I was born in, and my ethnicity is who I am. As a child I struggled with both. I grew up in a town full of Arabs, and the only Somalians I actually interacted with were my family. In any event, if you don’t know much about your identity, you go into this crisis mode. Until I came to America, all I knew was that I was a Muslim and Somalian. There’s this need to know who you are, and where you come from, and every day you learn something new about your identity.
When I came to America, there was a huge culture shock. For instance religiously, I grew up in countries where there was a mosque in every couple of blocks, and here the opposite were churches. Everywhere I looked was a church. It was a complete