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By Rhoda Nazanin

My parents remind me from time to time, "Don’t forget where you came from." I was born in Iran, and 90 percent of my relatives still live in the Middle East. My parents left when I was eight and my older brother was 14.

They left because we’re born-again Christians, and there was a lot of anti-Christian violence around the time we left. Pastors were being killed, and my father is a pastor. He'd been put in jail before, and we worried it might happen again. When we received an invitation from First Assembly of God to go to America, we accepted the invitation.

Faith and culture are very important in our family, and the most important part of Middle Eastern culture is staying connected with your family. That’s very important to me too. And a lot of the goals my parents have for me are the same goals I have for myself: succeed in school, try to get accepted to good universities, and not do drugs.

But I’m also very independent. I like to get out in the world and try new things. Sometimes I wish I could go out with friends as much as other girls do. I wanted to take a job at the mall last year but my family thought it wasn’t safe. If it were up to me, I’d want to move out next year when I graduate from high school, but I know they don’t want that.

It’s hard. Sometimes when my parents say, "Don’t forget where you came from," it just reminds me of all the differences between where I came from and where I am now. They don’t want me to lose my culture, but I’ve realized that I need to find my own ways to connect to that culture.

So I’ve started looking into my family’s history. I found some very old photographs of my grandfather — my mother’s father — who died a few months after I was born. I asked my mother about him and she told me, “He was a quiet one, just like you.”

After that, I got more and more interested in my ancestry. I started looking up information on the Internet and I found out things about my great grandfather on my father’s side that neither of my parents ever knew.

It’s strange, but by going further back in the past, I feel closer to my parents, and I’m glad about that. I don’t want to feel far away from them because I know that even after I do leave, one day I’ll want to go back and ask for their help.

I’m Rhoda Nazanin.

BACK ANNOUNCE: Rhoda Nazanin comes to us from Youth Radio LA, a collaboration between LACAAW, KCRW FM, and Youth Radio.