The Say Wallahi Generation: A Narrative Study of Bicultural Identity for Somali American Emerging Adults

Abstract

This qualitative study used narrative inquiry to examine how five Midwestern Somali American emerging adults negotiated their Somali culture and their American culture into a coherent sense of self. Participants were primarily women (n = 4) and students (three undergraduate and one graduate). Merging or hybridizing cultural identities was one way participants found integration. Shifting or alternating identities was another. In general, dominant and conflicting cultural narratives presented challenges to integration and connected to themes of acculturative dissonance, exclusion, and contested American identity. Yet, robust competing narratives were transformative, undergirding the themes of Integrated and Owning It and Shifting Identities. Unlike conflicting narratives which existed in negative tension with dominant narratives, competing narratives existed in positive tension and provided a basis for frame-switching which empowered participants to shift identities with ease even as they contended with multiple master narratives.