Arranged marriage in the us12/11/2022 ![]() ![]() Jihana made it pretty clear that she wasn’t ready to get married. I knew enough about Jihana, and about the Bengali community, to know that she wasn’t referring to a premature wedding prompted by an unplanned pregnancy, but to the possibility of an arranged marriage. But, she added, a lot depended on whether she had to get married. She said she wanted to go to college, perhaps to study medicine, and was considering several schools. An Arranged Marriageīy the time Jihana was a senior it was natural to ask, during one of the many extra periods she spent in the journalism office, what her post-graduation plans were. Many seemed reserved and studious.Others gradually adopted the more assertive, outgoing styles of the citywise teens around them. Some,like Jihana, covered their heads with scarves in keeping with Muslim tradition. Increasingly, some of my best students each year were young Bengali women. The teaching staff, however, remained mostly white, with a limited number of African Americans and Latinos. ![]() What had once been a predominantly white, then later a primarily black and Latino student population, was now thoroughly international. ![]() Along with increasing numbers of Latin American, Caribbean, Middle Eastern,Central European, and other immigrants, these new communities had transformed theschool in the twenty years I’d been there as a teacher. Jihana was one of a growing number of Bengali students in my Paterson, New Jersey high school. Karp, what needs to be done?” I used to joke that she’d get straight A’s until the end of hersenior year when I’d have to fail her so she couldn’t graduate and leave. Jihana’s bright-eyed intelligence and can-do enthusiasm made her a teacher’s dream.Her daily greeting in our busy journalism office was, “Hi, Mr. By the time she was a senior, we had been together for three years, first in a sophomore English class and then through two years of journalism electives where students produced school publications and learned desktop publishing. ![]()
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