Between Two Manhoods: Notes on Somali Boys in America

The Old Country Version

In Somalia—or at least in the Somalia my parents describe, the one preserved in memory like fruit in sugar—a man was defined by three things: his clan, his word, and his ability to endure. You could lose your livestock, your home, your country. But if you kept your word and your composure, you were still a man.

My father crossed an ocean with this definition intact. He arrived in Columbus, Ohio in 1999 with six English words, four children, and an unshakable belief that a man does not complain. A man does not show weakness. A man carries the family forward, even when forward is a direction he can't see.

This served him. For a long time, it served him well. It got him through the resettlement process, through minimum-wage jobs, through the daily humiliations of being foreign in a place that did not want to understand him. Endurance was a technology, and it worked.

The New Country Version

Now meet his grandson. My nephew, Abdi. Fifteen. Born in Columbus. American passport, Somali face, accent from the Midwest. He plays soccer, watches anime, and code-switches between English and Somali so fast it sounds like a third language.

Abdi is caught between two blueprints for manhood, and neither one fits him completely.

The Somali blueprint says: Be strong. Provide. Defer to elders. Do not air private matters in public. Emotions are a family matter—and even within the family, they are mostly a women's matter.

The American blueprint says: Be confident. Be successful. Express yourself. But also—if you're a Black boy in America—be careful. Don't be too loud. Don't be too present. Don't take up too much space in a room that wasn't designed for you.

Abdi is supposed to be a stoic Somali elder-in-training AND a well-adjusted American teenager AND a cautious Black boy in public spaces. Three roles. One body.

“Abdi is supposed to be a stoic Somali elder-in-training AND a well-adjusted American teenager AND a cautious Black boy in public spaces. Three roles. One body.” Click to tweet →

What I See at Work

I'm a social worker. I sit with Somali families in crisis—and "crisis," in our community, means the point at which a family can no longer handle something internally and has no choice but to involve an outsider. By the time they call me, the situation has usually been building for months. Sometimes years.

The boys I work with fall into a pattern:

Phase one: They start pulling away from the mosque, from Somali community events, from the family structure. The parents read this as disrespect. Americanization. Rebellion.

Phase two: They find a peer group. Sometimes it's fine—school friends, soccer teammates. Sometimes it's not. Columbus has corners where lost boys cluster, and the boys who feel caught between two identities are the most recruitable, because belonging is the one thing they're starving for.

Phase three: Something breaks. An arrest. A fight. A dropout. The family calls me and says, "He was a good boy. What happened?"

What happened is the gap. The space between the old-country model and the new-country reality where nobody built a bridge. The parents held onto what they knew—endurance, silence, authority. The boys needed something their parents didn't have words for in either language: permission to be confused.

The Bridge

I run a group for Somali boys, ages 13 to 18. We meet at the community center on Saturday mornings. Some weeks we have five boys, some weeks we have fifteen. I'm a woman leading a group for boys in a culture where that's unusual, and I address it directly: "I'm not here to replace your fathers or your uncles. I'm here because I see you, and I think you need a space to figure things out."

We talk. Not about feelings—that word clears a room. We talk about situations. "What would you do if..." scenarios that let them explore dilemmas without the vulnerability of first-person confession.

What would you do if your dad wanted you to work at the family store but you wanted to go to college? What would you do if your friends were doing something you knew was wrong but leaving meant being alone? What would you do if you felt sad for no reason and didn't know how to explain it?

The "what would you do" framework gives them distance. It's not therapy. It's rehearsal. They're practicing responses to problems they're already having, without having to admit they're having them.

What I Want People to Understand

The Somali boys in my city are not lost causes. They're not gang members or refugees or cultural casualties. They're kids doing the hardest thing a human can do: building an identity from mismatched parts.

They need the old-country teachings—the emphasis on family, on community, on enduring hardship without breaking. Those teachings kept their parents alive.

They also need the new-country permissions—the right to be uncertain, to name their emotions, to chart a path that doesn't look exactly like their father's.

The bridge between those two things is the work. It's Saturday mornings and "what would you do" questions and a social worker who sits with the discomfort of knowing that she can't fix the gap, only make it crossable.

Abdi came to group last week. First time. He sat in the back and didn't talk. When it was over, he said, "Same time next week?"

Same time next week.

That's how bridges get built. One Saturday at a time.