Some Kind of Girl: An African Girl Looking for America

By Caroline Kautsire

Some Kind of Girl recounts the story of Caroline, a Malawian girl, who, after facing the impossibility of following both African and Western roles and standards for women in her adolescent years, finally moves to America to escape the Malawian traditions she still struggles inwardly to understand. Upon arriving in America, Caroline discovers that the America she saw on television was not an accurate representation of the life she lives in Boston. Caroline’s process of self-discovery awakens her to different kinds of insecurities about gender, race, class, language and sexuality. As Caroline grapples with the tension between maintaining her well-cultured Malawian persona and fitting into an American society, she discovers her desire to become a film actress shifting to a professional life she never saw coming: teaching and writing. Meanwhile, Caroline must face the complexities of the American immigration system as she struggles to maintain legal status as a working student. With the guidance of mentors and, sometimes, with misdirection from wild friends, Caroline takes risks to earn money and respect in America in order to be the kind of girl who successfully seizes the American dream, abandoning her home country, Malawi.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Dec 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638295310

Caroline Kautsire

Caroline Kautsire is originally from Malawi, Africa, and currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts. She is an English literature and writing professor at Bunker Hill Community College. In 2020, she published her first memoir, What Kind of Girl? and, over the past several years, she has published numerous poems and works of flash fiction. As a stage actress and director, she was nominated for best supporting actress by the Eastern Massachusetts Association of Community Theatres for her performance as Trinculo in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Aside from her teaching and acting, Ms. Kautsire gives inspirational talks at colleges in Boston, as well as for organizations that focus on diversity, equity and inclusion.

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About the Author

Caroline Kautsire is originally from Malawi, Africa, and currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts. She is an English literature and writing professor at Bunker Hill Community College. In 2020, she published her first memoir, What Kind of Girl? and, over the past several years, she has published numerous poems and works of flash fiction. As a stage actress and director, she was nominated for best supporting actress by the Eastern Massachusetts Association of Community Theatres for her performance as Trinculo in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Aside from her teaching and acting, Ms. Kautsire gives inspirational talks at colleges in Boston, as well as for organizations that focus on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Dedication

Dedicated to the Kautsire family and to everyone who has helped me build a home in America.

Mom, this one is for you.

Copyright Information ©

Caroline Kautsire 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of creative nonfiction. The events are portrayed to the best of author’s memory. While all the stories in this book are true, some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Kautsire, Caroline

Some Kind of Girl

ISBN 9781638295297 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781638295303 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781638295310 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022918032

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

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Acknowledgment

I would like to thank my family and friends who have supported me through the composition of this memoir and all the people who have inspired these stories. I also wish to extend my gratitude to the faculty and staff of Quincy College, UMass Boston, Brown University and Emerson College, who guided me to my purpose as a teacher and writer.

Follow the Signs

Three planes—a day and a half. That’s how long the trip from Malawi took. Wheels touched the tarmac runway at Boston Logan Airport, and I was finally in the United States of America. The sun was already setting, dim, golden light spread over the bustling atmosphere. Men ran around in uniform, trucks transported luggage from one place to another. America was no longer just a moving picture on a television screen. It was now right in front of me. Tangible.

My body felt stiff. I stepped into the aisle and stretched, smiling to myself for making it across the ocean alive. My heart raced from the thought of being alone, far away from my parents—too far. Their smiling faces flashed in my mind. My mother’s eyes, glassy with tears, and my father’s, red with hidden emotions, their hands wave goodbye from the verandah at Chileka Airport, as the plane whisks me away—a huge gaping hole slowly forming in my heart. I tried to shake it off by focusing on what was ahead—college, acting, a new world, with fancy clothes, different food, new friends, hot guys. Maybe I’ll bump into a famous actor inside the airport, I thought. I could barrel through a large crowd and get photographed by paparazzi as Beyoncé signs my autograph. Daydreaming was my temporary cure for homesickness.

The airport was a maze with escalators, arrows pointing in different directions, people talking, walking while looking up at signs for flight connections and exit gates. As I dragged my suitcase through the chaos, my father’s voice echoed in my head, Follow the signs at the airport. Do not get lost. So I began to look up as well, letting the signs lead me to the immigration section where international travelers without American passports could enter the United States. It was the longest line, and the most culturally diverse—different skin colors, a commotion of various languages. I looked for Africans, specifically singling out black people, but I had no way of knowing since some were coming from places that were not in Africa. My world was larger. Being black no longer meant you were automatically from Africa, and little did I know, my black skin would mean different things in America. There were stigmas. Black skin carried a history of slavery—a history that was not mine. Black skin was covered in stereotypes that could make people skeptical of me, afraid of me or undermine me. I was yet to find out what it meant to be a minority in a different country.

Laws scared me. Not that I wanted to break them, but I feared I could not keep up with every single one of them. No one is exempt from slip-ups. In line, I thought of different scenarios where I wouldn’t be allowed to enter the United States—the possibility of missing documents, writing inaccurate information on my customs claim slip, providing the wrong answers to questions (not intentionally, but because of spacing out or hesitating from fear). How embarrassing it would be if asked to step aside for further questioning, like a criminal using crooked ways to enter the United States. Upon hearing such news, my father’s blood pressure would shoot through the roof. I moved with the line, my body grew tense with each step. By the time I reached the officer at the desk, my heart rate was out of control. Clammy palms, a nervous smile and a sweaty forehead—I must have looked like a guilty person even without doing anything wrong. The officer was a white man with dark hair, a clean-shaved head, and a black police uniform. His face was expressionless. My first encounter with an American.

Where are you coming from? he asked. His eyes fixed on my face.

Malawi, I said, then I innocently pointed out that it was in the southeast of Africa, hoping my clarification of where Malawi is located on the map would show honesty, that I had nothing to hide. But it probably sounded rude. He flipped through my passport, his face still neutral, his movement—mechanical, occasionally tilting his head and squinting his eyes to look at stamps made in other countries. I stood as still as possible, with the kindest face I could manage. At times, I smiled while looking to the side just to show people that I was a good person, innocent.

What is your reason for traveling to America?

School, I said. I’m going to Quincy College for my associate’s degree.

And how long do you intend to stay in the United States?

Two years. It’s a two-year program.

Every detail that came out of my mouth had to be accurate. I had practiced answering most of the questions with my father who said he didn’t want vague responses that would raise suspicion, There will be no thugs and drug dealers in the Kautsire family, he said. I suspected that my father’s negative assumptions and paranoia with traveling stemmed from the action movies he watched late at night. The officer began stamping my documents—my passport, my visa that allowed me entry into the U.S., my school I-20 that certified my eligibility to study in the U.S. as a nonimmigrant student, and my I-94 form for the government to keep track of me. The officer reminded me of a judge banging a gavel in court. These were good stamps. Each one sounding me in the clear like a church bell. I was safe enough to live in the United States.

*

There were white faces everywhere. I became self-conscious of my dark skin, like a speck of pepper in a bowl of salt. In Malawi, the population is mostly black, and white people are the ones who stand out from crowds. The roles were now reversed. My arms grew tired from lifting and dragging suitcases. I wished our butler, Dave, were there to help me. I placed my large green suitcase and carry-on luggage on a cart—luckily, one without a bad wheel—and I pushed it toward the metallic gray double-doors that led to the welcome lounge. I looked for my brothers. Trevor, I hadn’t seen for almost five years. He would now be 29 years old. And Charles, the middle child, I hadn’t seen for three years. He would now be 24 years old.

Carol! a voice cried out from the crowd.

I looked to my left. Two brown faces. There stood my brothers, waving at me with beaming smiles and clean-shaved heads, very well lined-up. They wore long brown winter coats, which I knew I would soon need for New England weather. My brothers had already warned me about the cold. They spoke of snowstorms and how yucky it gets outside, and I thought about how beautiful snow looked on T.V. I often asked Trevor about it.

Do people eat the snow?

No, they don’t.

But it’s like ice from the fridge. Why not?

Because it’s snow, Carol, he said. No further explanation.

Well, I’m still going to eat the snow, I insisted.

My brothers gave me big hugs. They were taller than I remembered, and their faces had matured more. Charles had even grown a tiny mustache, neatly trimmed. Something I never expected to see because I thought he would always be a boy, the only way I knew him to be. But there was his mustache, a grown man. Trevor too. Because the Trevor I knew five years ago gelled his hair back and wore baggy clothes with designer labels like FUBU, Sean John, Reebok, and t-shirts with random numbers printed on the back. Now he stood in a fancy brown winter coat, looking suave like a GQ model. Who were these guys? And how was I meant to talk to them as men? Would we still joke around about silly and vulgar things like the past or would they find me foolish, inappropriate, and rude? Some Malawian customs confused me too. Would I be expected to kneel before them when I hand them things? And was it okay to call them by their first names? I knew it was inappropriate to call parents by their first names, but I had also witnessed some girls hesitate to call their brothers by their first names. Yet it was fine for men to call their sisters by their names, as if they didn’t deserve a higher level of respect like their brothers. I never liked customs that favored men while undermining women. But since Boston was not Malawi, I refrained from using the word achimwene (a formal way of saying ‘brother’) to address them, especially since I had never seen Americans do it on T.V. I imagine we would have been a strange spectacle for others. Still, having arrived in a country with different cultural norms, I had no clue what kind of respect to show my brothers who were now men, nor which Malawian customs to hold onto in my new life.

We made our way toward the parking lot. My brothers dragged my suitcases while I struggled to walk at their fast pace, my eyes darted around, eager to take in everything I saw at the airport. I never knew why we were walking so fast, but when I look back, I realize that what seemed like a fast pace was something I would experience in subways and the streets of America—large herds of fast-moving people going in different directions. And God forbid if they bump into one another. It’s as if people carry free-floating anger, and only a slight collision will trigger colorful words of rage to fly out of mouths.

When my brothers asked how my trip was, I became selective with my words and stories, hoping I