The accent I brought home

Text: an original contemporary personal-essay-style practice extract.

When I came home after my first year away, my cousin asked me to say a particular word. I said it, and the table laughed. Not unkindly, I thought. They wanted to hear the small alteration in my vowels, like people inspecting a new haircut. I repeated the word in my old voice. That pleased them and made me feel strangely like a visitor performing an imitation of myself.

At university, someone had once asked where my original accent came from. I had answered and then listened to myself for the rest of the conversation. At home, I listened for the opposite reason. Neither place had ordered me to change. Each had made one version of my voice more noticeable than another. By the end of dinner, I was choosing words partly because they would pass without being examined.

The next morning, my cousin and I talked while carrying bags to the car. We discussed an ordinary broken zip and forgot to notice my pronunciation. I sounded different from last year, and I was still someone who knew which cupboard held the spare bags. That practical familiarity offered a quieter kind of welcome than getting the vowels right.

In this extract, the writer tries to show that belonging can be complicated by expectations about how someone should speak.

Evaluate how successfully this is achieved. Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.