Some moments don’t really end. I keep finding myself back in my grandmother’s kitchen in Lagos, watching her hands work the stone, grinding peppers with a rhythm that felt older than both of us. She was humming something slow, something her mother had hummed, and her mother before that. I was twelve, maybe thirteen, and trying to explain that at my new school in London, someone had asked where I was really from. “I told them I’m Nigerian,” I said, half proud, half lost. She stopped grinding, wiped her hands on her wrapper, and looked at me with that stillness that makes you feel completely seen. “And what did they say?” “They said I didn’t look Nigerian.” She laughed, soft, not because it was funny but because she knew the script already. “My child,” she said, “you will spend your life answering that question. Just make sure you’re the one asking it, too.”
That memory has tailed me across cities, across years, across all the selves I’ve tried on and peeled off. It’s why I’ve landed here: cultural identity isn’t something you pin down. It’s not a tag someone else can slap on you, or a badge you sew to your chest and forget about. It’s a conversation—messy, unfinished, full of questions that lead to more questions. And I suspect that’s exactly the point.
The Problem with Calling It a Label
Labels feel final. When I say “I’m Nigerian,” the word is supposed to carry a whole world inside it—the steam rising off jollof rice on a Sunday afternoon, the Yoruba proverbs slipping through my father’s teeth, the weight of a name that means “born into joy.” But for someone else, that same label might flash a news headline, a stereotype, a single story whittled down to its simplest parts. Labels shut doors. They pretend the thing they name is solid and still.
I’ve never felt solid or still. I grew up straddling two countries, two accents, two ways of seeing time. In Nigeria, time is a river that bends around people; in England, it’s a straight line you’re always late for. Which one do I scribble on the form? Which box do I tick? The truth is, I am both, and I am neither, and I am something else entirely on days when the rain smells like one home and the sun like the other.
Identity as an Ongoing Exchange
If identity is a conversation, it needs more than one voice. It needs the questions other people ask—sometimes gently, sometimes clumsily—and the questions I ask myself when the room is quiet. It needs the push and pull of being misread and then fumbling for better words. It needs silence, too, the kind that sits with you when you don’t know what to say next.
I remember a friend from university who told me she felt “too African” for her British classmates and “too British” for her relatives back home. We sat on the library steps, passing a bag of plantain chips my mom had sent, and talked for hours about that in-between space. We didn’t solve anything. But we named it, and naming it felt like finally exhaling. That’s the conversation—not a debate with a winner, but a room where you can be incomplete and still belong.
The Questions I’m Still Asking
Some days, the conversation is barely a whisper. I’ll be cooking, and the smell of fried plantains will fill my flat, and I’ll think about how my grandmother’s hands knew that smell before I was born. Other days, it’s loud. Someone says something careless, or I read a comment online that flattens a whole culture into a single adjective, and I feel the old itch to defend, explain, prove. But proving yourself is exhausting, and I’m learning that the goal isn’t to win. The goal is to stay curious about your own story.
Here are the questions I’m holding right now: What parts of my culture did I inherit without choosing? What parts am I actively choosing every day? And what parts have I been taught to hide, and why? These aren’t questions with quick answers. They shift depending on where I am and who I’m with. But asking them keeps the conversation breathing.
What I’ve Learned from Listening to Others
I’ve noticed that the people who seem most at ease with their identity aren’t the ones who have it all figured out. They’re the ones who’ve learned to hold it loosely. A mentor once told me that culture is like a language—you don’t master it; you just keep practicing. Some days you’re fluent. Other days you trip over the simplest words. Both belong.
I think about my cousin who moved to Canada and started making Nigerian soups with maple syrup because she couldn’t find palm oil. At first, it felt like a betrayal. Then it felt like a bridge. She was speaking her culture in a new accent, and it was still hers. I think about my friend who married into a different culture and is raising children with three languages and four grandmothers. Their identity won’t be a single note; it will be a chorus.
The Danger of a Single Story
There’s a line I return to, from the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.” When we treat cultural identity as a label, we risk telling a single story about ourselves and about others. We risk shrinking something huge into something that fits on a name tag.
I’ve done this, too. I’ve caught myself assuming I know someone’s story because of where their name sounds like it’s from. But every time I sit with someone long enough to hear the details—the specific village, the specific migration, the specific hurt or hope—the label crumbles. What’s left is a person, complicated and contradictory, just like me.
Making Room for the Unfinished Self
There’s a freedom in treating identity as a conversation: it means you’re allowed to change. You can outgrow certain traditions and reclaim others. You can love parts of your culture and criticize other parts without feeling like a traitor. You can not know how to answer when someone asks, “What are you?”
I’m still learning this freedom. Some mornings, I wake up feeling deeply Nigerian, rooted in a specific soil. Other mornings, I feel like a visitor everywhere, belonging nowhere fully. Both are true. Both are part of the conversation. I don’t need to tie them up in a neat bow. I just need to keep showing up, keep listening, keep asking the next question.
How I’m Practicing This in Daily Life
In practice, this looks like small things. When I meet someone new, I try not to ask “Where are you from?” too quickly. Instead, I might ask, “What’s a place that feels like home to you?” The answer is always more interesting. When I feel the pressure to represent my entire culture in a single interaction, I remind myself: I’m not a spokesperson—I’m just one voice in a much larger conversation.
I also make space for joy. So much of the talk around cultural identity gets heavy, tangled in politics and pain. But my culture is also laughter that makes your stomach ache, and music that pulls you to your feet before you decide to dance, and stories that remind you you’re not alone. Those things count. They’re part of the conversation, too.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does it mean to see cultural identity as a conversation?
It means treating identity as something that moves and breathes rather than something fixed. Instead of seeing it as a single label you wear, you engage with it through questions, stories, and exchanges with others. It’s an ongoing process of understanding yourself in relation to your heritage, your environment, and the people around you.
How can I start a conversation about my own cultural identity?
Begin with curiosity. Ask yourself what traditions, foods, or memories feel most alive to you, and why. Talk to family members about their experiences. Notice when you feel torn between different parts of your identity and explore that tension without rushing to fix it. Writing, art, or simply sharing a meal with someone from a different background can also crack the door open.
Why do labels feel limiting when it comes to identity?
Labels often reduce complex human experiences to a single word or category. They can carry assumptions that don’t fit your personal story, and they can make you feel like you have to choose one part of yourself over another. A conversation, on the other hand, makes room for contradiction, messiness, and growth.
Can someone belong to more than one culture without feeling fragmented?
Yes, but it takes time and a dose of self-compassion. Belonging to multiple cultures can feel like living in the overlap, and that space can be rich with creativity and perspective. The key is to let go of the idea that you need to be completely one thing. Embracing the mix—the humor, the hybrid traditions, the unique way you see the world—can turn fragmentation into its own kind of wholeness.
So here I am, still in the conversation. Some days it’s with my grandmother’s memory, some days it’s with a stranger on a train, some days it’s with the reflection in the mirror. I don’t have a final answer about what my cultural identity is. But I have a growing list of better questions. And I think that’s more than enough.
