I don’t think anything could represent me and my cultural identity more than a dhago. Growing up as a 2nd gen immigrant, I’ll never fully experience my parents’ Nepali culture no matter how much I try to immerse myself in it. I’ll always be barely American to some and barely Nepali to others. Still, I’ll never try to fit into just one. Dhagos are worn by women all over South Asia under many names and come in numerous designs. It’s braided into the hair and leaves, at the end, ornaments that dangle. Despite my effort, I often find myself being a typical coconut (brown on the outside, white on the inside).  It disturbs me to the point of trying to counteract it by expressing myself through Nepali culture. Wearing a dhago helps me feel a little bit more like all the women before me who grew up in my parents' motherland. To my momu, who has to assimilate to the place I grew up and raise me around that culture, she finds it odd that I try to embrace a culture she essentially left behind for my sake. She tells me not to wear bangles and jhumkas, and she especially doesn't like me wearing a dhago. “Dhagos are for married women, what do you gain by wearing it?” she tells me. What she fails to understand is that the meaning of wearing the dhago changes for me when I, an American-Nepali, wear it. Her doing Nepali things in Nepal is different from me doing Nepali things here. Wearing ethnic accessories and embracing as much of my culture as I can, helps both the Nepali and American side of me because people like me and people like my parents help build a beautiful-diverse America.

– AB

Relationship:  Child of im/migrant Child of im/migrant