Growing up, I thought cultural identity was something you could file away inside a tidy box. A box with a neat sticker: “Nigerian” or “British” or, if you were feeling generous, “Nigerian-British.” I’d tick it on forms, wear it like a badge at family dos, and picture it as a fixed point — a star to steer by. But the longer I live, the less I believe any of that. Cultural identity, I’ve started to sense, isn’t a label handed to you at birth. It’s a conversation — a long, sometimes muddled, often beautiful one — that you hold with yourself, your history, and the world around you.
I’m Ziona Debisi, and if you’ve spent any time on this blog you’ll know I circle back to questions of belonging more than I probably should. Maybe that’s because I’ve spent my life balancing between two countries, two ways of speaking, two sets of expectations. My Nigerian family would visit London and shake their heads at how “English” I’d become, while my school friends in the UK would ask why my mum spoke with an accent. I learned early that identity wasn’t something people agreed on. It was something they negotiated, often right in front of me.
The Boxes We’re Given
Think back to the first time someone asked you to define yourself. A school form, probably, with a tidy list of ethnicities and that instruction to “tick one.” For me, it was a flush of quiet panic. Nigerian? Black British? Other? I can still see my pen hovering, my stomach tightening, the whole thing feeling way too small for the person I already was. Those boxes can’t hold a whole person. They demand you be one thing, when you’re already a blend — of languages, foods, jokes, memories, and the way your grandmother’s voice loops inside your head when you’re cooking.
Labels do useful work, of course. They help us find our people. They give us a shorthand for shared experience. But when we treat them as final, we stop asking the questions that keep culture alive. My Nigerian-ness, for instance, isn’t a monolith. It’s shaped by the Yoruba stories my father told, the pidgin English I hear in Lagos markets, and the way I’ve bent those rhythms to fit a London life. If I just said “I’m Nigerian,” I’d be trimming away the parts that don’t match the script.
Culture as a Moving River
I once came across the idea that culture is a river, not a rock. It flows, it shifts, it picks up new sediment, it sometimes changes course entirely. That image lodged itself in me. When I visit family in Nigeria, I notice how the culture there has evolved — the music, the slang, the way young people are challenging old hierarchies. And when I’m back in London, I see second-generation immigrants like me making something entirely new: jollof rice with a side of Yorkshire pudding, Afrobeats remixed with grime. That’s not dilution. That’s the conversation, loud and alive.
For me, the conversation often starts in the kitchen. I’ll be making my mother’s pepper soup, but I’ll pull back on the chili because my partner can’t take the full heat. Am I betraying something? Or am I letting my culture breathe, adapting it to the life I actually live? I lean toward the second. Culture that won’t adapt becomes a museum piece — lovely to look at, but not a place you can actually live inside.
The Weight of Expectation
One of the trickiest parts of this conversation is the weight of other people’s expectations. Family members who want you to be “properly” Nigerian. Friends who assume you’re fully assimilated because your accent sounds British. Even strangers who ask, “But where are you really from?” as if your voice is telling a lie. Each of those moments feels like an interruption — someone trying to close the conversation before you’ve had your say.
I remember a family wedding in Lagos where an auntie pulled me aside. “You’re too quiet,” she said. “A real Yoruba woman knows how to speak her mind.” I laughed it off, but inside I was thinking: I’m quiet because I’m listening. Because I’m still learning what it means to be a Yoruba woman who grew up on the outskirts of London. My quietness isn’t a missing piece of culture; it’s a response to navigating multiple cultures at once. But her comment reminded me how often we police each other’s identities, asking people to perform a certain version of themselves on cue.
Language as a Doorway
Language is where the conversation gets loudest for me. I speak English fluently, but my Yoruba is broken and shy. I understand more than I can say, which means I often occupy a strange middle ground — enough to feel the warmth of recognition, but not enough to fully join in. For years, I was embarrassed by this. I thought it made me less authentically Nigerian. But now I see it differently. My stumbling Yoruba isn’t a failure; it’s a doorway left ajar. It invites me to keep learning, to ask my father for the right word, to laugh at my mistakes.
There’s a phrase my dad uses: “Se o ti ri?” — “Have you seen?” He says it when something startles him, a kind of rhetorical question. I’ve started using it myself, though my pronunciation is still shaky. It’s a small act of belonging, a way of saying, “I’m still here, still part of this conversation.” Language, like culture, doesn’t demand perfection. It just asks you to show up.
The Beauty of Not Knowing
There’s a real vulnerability in admitting you don’t have all the answers about who you are. Our culture prizes certainty. We want people to declare themselves, to plant a flag. But I’ve found so much freedom in saying, “I’m still figuring it out.” It means I get to be curious. I get to ask my grandmother about traditions I never learned. I get to explore parts of my heritage that scare me a little — like the spiritual beliefs my family holds but rarely discusses openly.
This not-knowing is a kind of respect, I think. It says that culture is bigger than any one person’s experience of it. There’s always more to discover, more to question. When I stopped treating my identity as a finished product, I started seeing it as a landscape I could wander through. Some days I’m in the valley of British reserve; other days I’m on the hilltop of Nigerian exuberance. Both are me, and neither tells the whole story.
Conversations Across Generations
The people who’ve taught me most about this are my parents. They left Nigeria in their twenties, carrying suitcases full of hope and pressure. For them, identity was a project of preservation — making sure their children knew where they came from. But preservation can feel like a demand, especially when you’re a teenager trying to fit in. I pushed back. I wanted to be like my British friends. I didn’t want to eat egusi soup on a school night. I didn’t want to explain my name for the hundredth time.
Now, as an adult, I’m having a different conversation with them. I ask my mum about her childhood in Ibadan, and she tells me stories I’ve never heard. I ask my dad about the proverbs he uses, and he lights up explaining their meanings. These moments are fragile and precious. They remind me that cultural identity isn’t just about me — it’s about the connections I choose to nurture. The conversation didn’t start with my generation, and it won’t end with me. I’m just one voice in a long line of voices, trying to make sense of where we’ve been and where we’re going.
When the World Wants You to Choose
There are times when the world forces the issue. A political moment. A racist comment. A news headline that makes your dual identity feel like a contradiction. I’ve had people tell me, with a kind of lazy confidence, that I can’t be both British and Nigerian — that I have to pick a side. But why? Why would I amputate part of myself to make someone else comfortable? Those demands come from a fear of complexity. They want a clean story, a simple character. But the truth is that most of us are complicated, and our complications are what make us interesting.
When those moments come, I try to remember that identity isn’t a debate to be won. It’s a story to be told. And stories can hold contradictions. They can hold the fact that I love the quiet of a British library and the noise of a Nigerian party. They can hold the way I code-switch without thinking, my voice rising and falling depending on who I’m talking to. That’s not inauthentic. It’s adaptive, creative, alive.
A Practice, Not a Performance
So what does it look like, day to day, to treat cultural identity as a conversation? For me, it’s a practice. It’s choosing to cook the dishes my mother taught me, even when I’m tired. It’s reading books by Nigerian authors and letting their perspectives challenge mine. It’s having hard conversations with friends who don’t understand why I don’t feel fully at home anywhere. It’s also giving myself permission to step away sometimes — to not be the ambassador for my culture, to just be a person who’s tired and wants to watch bad TV.
This practice has changed how I see other people, too. I’m less quick to judge someone’s “authenticity.” If a friend with Indian heritage doesn’t speak Hindi, I don’t see that as a lack. I see it as a different kind of relationship to their roots — one shaped by migration, loss, survival, or choice. We’re all just trying to find our footing on shifting ground.
FAQ: Living the Conversation
How do I start rethinking my own cultural identity as a conversation?
Begin by asking yourself what parts of your culture feel alive to you right now, and what parts feel distant or difficult. Notice the stories you tell about yourself — to others and in your own head. Instead of trying to fix a label, let yourself be curious. Talk to family members. Write down memories. Pay attention to the moments when you feel most “at home” and ask why. It’s less about finding an answer and more about staying open to the question.
What if my family’s expectations clash with how I see myself?
This is so common, and I feel it deeply. Family often wants to hold onto a version of culture that feels safe and recognizable. When you deviate from that, it can feel like a betrayal to them. But your identity isn’t owned by anyone else. You can honor your family’s story while also writing your own chapter. It might take time for them to understand, and sometimes you have to accept that they won’t fully. The conversation, in that case, becomes an internal one — and that’s okay too.
Can I be part of a culture if I don’t speak the language?
Absolutely. Language is a beautiful, deep connection, but it’s not the only one. Culture lives in food, music, gesture, humor, values, and the way you see the world. If you don’t speak the language, you might feel a gap, and that gap is real. But it doesn’t erase your belonging. It might even become a spur to learn, if that’s something you want. What matters is the intentionality you bring — the willingness to keep showing up, even when you feel like an outsider.
Letting the Conversation Continue
I don’t think I’ll ever arrive at a final answer about my cultural identity. And honestly, I don’t want to. The searching itself has become a kind of home. It’s where I meet the different versions of myself — the child who felt torn, the teenager who felt ashamed, the adult who’s learning to hold it all with tenderness. This blog, in many ways, is an extension of that conversation. Every post is a way of saying: Here’s where I am today. Where are you?
If any of this resonates, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Not because I have answers, but because I think the best conversations are the ones we have together. Cultural identity isn’t a problem to solve. It’s a question to live inside, a story to keep telling, a river that carries us forward even when we don’t know the destination.
