Dear Mom,
How are you feeling nowadays? Lately, I have been noticing that you don’t really venture out of our neighborhood as much anymore.You seem to be in a bubble of what is really comfortable and familiar to you. You hang out with all of your Bengali friends, you are immersed in Bengali traditions, and the main language you speak is Bengali. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's beautiful that you are so loyal to your roots, especially when people often lose a sense of their mother country when they move to the United States. At the same time though, I know you think that learning English is unnecessary in America. There are so many different types of people in America, and you can just go to specific communities that speak your language, you say. But I truly think it would really benefit you if you learned some English. I'm not saying you must assimilate towards the American culture (or that anyone should for that matter). That would completely shatter the foundation of your Bengali identity. I'm just saying that by learning some English, you can be more independent. Maybe even happier.
In your defense, you have been living in the United States for the past 19 ½ years without speaking proper English. You managed to get out of jury duty, and you rely on your husband to go to parent teacher conferences and the social security office and whatnot. You’re getting by, but is that all you want to do? Just get by? Don’t you want to thrive? Don't you want to be self reliant and self sufficient without depending on your husband for these things? Be a strong independent woman? Show your relatives in Bangladesh that you are just as capable as any man in the family? I know I would. I just wanted to remind you about the incident that happened when you had to get an endoscopy. It wasn’t a good experience. Remember how desperate you felt? The feeling of hope for getting better immediately being snatched away from you? The light at the end of the tunnel suddenly becoming dark again? Do you remember that?
Let me start at the beginning. A couple of months back you were gradually feeling pain all over your body. It wasn’t unbearable, so you decided to ignore it in the hopes that it will go away on its own. But eventually that mild, dull pain turned into severe jolts of what you described as fire engulfing your limbs, chest and stomach. None of us knew what was causing the pain or how to get rid of it. All we knew was that you have never been in this much pain in your entire life. You finally acknowledged that this pain might not go away on its own, so with the advice from your PCP, you decided to make an appointment to get an endoscopy. Dad had to go to work on the day of your appointment, and my siblings and I were all at school, so you went to the office by yourself. Despite not speaking English well, you were able to communicate with the medical receptionist and the doctor up until your surgery. After the process was done, the doctor told you:
“Miss, fortunately the results came back and we were not able to find any ulcers or anything else out of the ordinary. You may be discharged.”
Mom, you can understand more English than you can speak, so you knew that the doctor said that there was nothing wrong, but you still weren’t able to express your concerns to him. You were still in extreme pain and on the verge of crying, but you couldn’t understand why the doctor was telling you to go home. You tried to ask the doctor for further tests, but the doctor frankly looked annoyed at that point, and he didn’t make an effort to understand you.
“Doctor....my pain...still there…..please help…” You tried pointing to the places where it hurt. Tears were threatening to come out.
“Ma’am, you are FINE. We didn’t find anything wrong with you, please go home and rest.” He was trying to be polite, but he spoke in a manner that was similar to a father being too busy or exhausted to be bothered with their child.
“No, please, doctor -”
“Ma’am, I already told you, you are fine,” he cut you off. His eyes rolled for a fraction of a second.
Now, what the doctor did was entirely unacceptable. He is an example of what is wrong with Americans sometimes, namely the discrimination and disregard for non English speakers. In fact, health care professionals should be trained specifically to appropriately communicate with patients without bias or malice. He clearly neglected his training, and for whatever reason, he took it out on you. And after a bit of a hassle, you had no choice but to call me in to communicate on your behalf. When I was able to come into the office, I was able to talk to the doctor in standard English and express your concerns.
“Hello, thank you so much for the endoscopy, and I understand that there isn't any problem with her stomach, but my mother is still in severe pain, and she and I want to ask for further testing. Can you recommend another type of evaluation we can do, or a doctor we can go to?”
That was the moment the doctor finally listened to us and recommended other doctors. Without me coming into the office and handling the situation, you would have had a difficult time there solely because you couldn’t speak adequate English to the doctor. If someone speaks broken English in America, it is so easy to get disrespected and neglected because they are thought of as inferior. This is a deep rooted problem within the psychology of certain Americans. They have racist ideations that inevitably give them a superiority complex towards other people, especially people who can't speak English. And I might not know how to tackle this issue in the broader scope of things, but I’ll do my best in my future pharmacy career to treat all patients with respect regardless if they can or cannot speak English. In fact, when I worked in the pharmacy as a technician, I always treated Spanish speaking patients with the same level of dignity as any other patients. I personally do not know how to communicate in Spanish, but I used whatever means necessary, including Google translate, calling the patient’s English speaking relative, or asking my Spanish speaking coworker to help. Once, I even had a deaf patient approach me, and whilst I didn’t know how to communicate in sign language, I did use my phone to type out the information I needed to communicate to him. If every health care professional in America just puts in a little more effort to talk to patients that cannot speak English, then they would be so much more content and feel more accepted and cared for.
With that being said, what I also know is that I want you to be equipped with the tools to help defend yourself and keep yourself protected from discrimination. As your daughter, I really don’t want you to be disrespected by anyone. I think if you tried to become more fluent in English, especially after living in America for nearly two decades, it might help you become bulletproof to these events. Is that so bad? To learn the English language because you keep getting disrespected? Or is it wrong of me to want you to learn English and inadvertently ask you to assimilate into American society? I'm not so sure...
Coincidentally, in my English class I read about a similar story that happened to a woman named Amy Tan. She really stood out to me because she and I both experienced a similar situation. Her mother once had to go to the hospital to get a CAT scan in order to check if she had a brain tumor. However, the hospital staff said that they lost her CAT scan, and they wouldn’t give her any more information about it. The mother was distressed because brain tumors ran in the family, and she was trying her best to communicate in English, but she said that the hospital staff lacked any sort of sympathy, and they didn’t even apologize to her. Not until she called her daughter, Amy Tan, who spoke perfect English, to talk to the doctor had they apologized and given reassurance. Isn’t the resemblance of their situation to ours uncanny? It just goes to show that many non-English speakers have a hard time in America because they are constantly neglected and disrespected. This problem is definitely not talked about enough.
From the bottom of my heart, I want what's best for you. I'm merely suggesting that learning English might help improve your quality of life because it can make you more independent, and it can make you less susceptible to discrimination. At the same time though, I understand if you don't want to assimilate to American culture and give certain people the satisfaction. Regardless of what you choose to do, I will continue to support you and defend you when the situation arises. You are a human being, and you deserve all of the love, compassion and respect in the world just for being one. It shouldn't matter if you are not well versed in the English language. You are so talented in 100 other things, and English doesn't have to be one of them. At the end of the day, it is your choice how you lead your life, and all I'm going to do is stand by your side and support you along the way.
Love,
Tashfia
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