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Coming to America: They Couldn’t Find a Box That Fit Me. And I Couldn’t Fit Into the Box They Shoved Me In

Coming to America: They Couldn’t Find a Box That Fit Me. And I Couldn’t Fit Into the Box They Shoved Me In

In my early twenties
two suitcases, seventy pounds each
I arrived in America.

Where are you from?
A question 
that haunted me
growing up in India
Aap kahaan se hain? 
Where are you from?

I didn’t fit the bill
My mother didn’t fit the bill
I didn’t have a “mother tongue”
I didn’t have just one mother tongue.

None of it made sense
I didn’t make sense
They couldn’t find a box
that fit me
And I couldn’t fit
into the box 
they shoved me in.

At home 
I spoke 
more than one language 
My food
looked different 
My sandwiches
meticulously prepared
by a loving, tired, working mom
were on “brown” bread.

“Kaali bread” they taunted
“You eat Kaali Bread” 
No wonder you’re BLACK!
Because you eat black bread.
In college
conversations convulsed 
into constant coughing
when I walked in.
“She comes from a broken home”
they said.

None of it made sense
I didn’t make sense
They couldn’t find a box
that fit me
And I couldn’t fit
into the box 
they shoved me in.

When the giant steel bird
spewed its guts 
onto the jetway in America
I became at once a foreign student.
A statistic my school used 
to entice other foreign students
I was Indian
Just Indian
My mother tongue 
or lack thereof
didn’t matter
I was Indian
I made sense
I had a box
they said it would fit me.

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They put me in the box
assigned me an “Indian accent”
and packed me off to unpack
my boxes
seventy pounds each
of dreams and memories.

My roommates
of whom there were three
from parts of the world
very far away from my corner 
the corner that had colored me black
because of the bread I ate
welcomed me 
with no judgement 
no malice
no disrespect
I had ridden in
silently in my box.

“So where are your parents?”
I asked.
My parents are divorced, said she
Mine are divorced, too, said she
Oh, and mine, too, said she.

“And what about you?” they asked 
“Mine, too,” I exhaled
as they opened the door
and let me in
right into their box.


Niharika Chibber Joe is a United States civil servant, working on U.S.-Japan relations. She is also a prize-winning published poet and short story writer. Most recently, her work has been published in Millennium Poesy (2021), Earth, Fire, Water, Wind (2021), Lockdown Prayers (2021), Paradise on Earth: An International Anthology (2021), The Body of Memories: A Collection of Memoirs and Personal Essays (2021), The Silk Road Anthology (2021), In All the Spaces: Diverse Voices in Global Women’s Poetry (2020), the Setu Online Literary Journal, and in Different Truths – a global participatory social justice platform. Niharika serves on the boards of YUVATI (Youth Under Voluntary Action for Transformation India), and the DC South Asian Arts Council, where she is a regular panel moderator.  She holds an M.A. in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., as well as an M.A. and B.A. in Japanese Language and Literature from the Jawaharlal Nehru University in India.

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