Sunday, January 24, 2016

Reader's Write Response: Immigrants

(Written for English 1010, Fall Semester.)

Some people think of their grandmothers. Others think of their parents or their friends. Some people even remember their own journeys as emigrants from their home countries. When I think of the word “Immigrant”, I think of the students I work with at my college’s English Skills Center.
They are all bright and quick to laugh, and they are all married, most of them are Mexican women with children to take care of and homes to clean. One is a married man with a job; he often has to leave early so he can go to work. A lady from Saudi Arabia attends as well; her husband is a Business student at the college. In addition to all of these people in my life right now, I also think of the little Mexican girl who lived next door to me when I was four. All we could do together was count, and say hola and adios. 
            To Jodie in the November 2008 issue of SUN Magazine’s Readers Write, Immigrant meant a colleague, Maria, who worked hard and gave back to everyone around her, but wasn’t allowed the same opportunities as many other people because she was living as an undocumented immigrant. Maria spoke Spanish and translated for visitors to a nonprofit associated with AmeriCorps, where Jodi was volunteering. Among the credentials given by Jodie, Maria also worked as a waitress while attending college full time and helping out with her siblings. Maria, had lived in the US for ten years, but she wasn’t a recorded citizen. Because of this, it was challenging to get her on a plane for a convention, but they eventually decided to show Maria’s student ID, and say that she hadn’t gotten her driver’s license yet. The plan worked, and Maria was able to attend and speak at the convention. After Maria graduated from university, she continued working at the same restaurant, getting paid under the table. Because Maria was undocumented, she wasn’t able to move on to Medical School.
            Judy Chow wrote about her experience growing up in Philadelphia after emigrating from Hong Kong with her family. She was two years old at the time, so her identity hadn’t been cemented as Chinese. After becoming accustomed to being surrounded by white people on her block and at school she would forget she was Asian as a child until she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. People would ask where she was from, and she would have to explain to them that she “was originally from China”. After moving to Virginia in her late thirties, she realized “‘Home’ may not be a place but a state of mind”.  She writes that she has begun to speak with a southern accent, and she forgets that she looks different from her Caucasian neighbors. Finally, she says, “There are days when my neighbors forget that I look “foreign, and I become just another person, colleague, friend.”
            Being an immigrant often means struggling with feeling different, possibly learning a new language, and becoming accustomed to a new culture and environment. Sometimes all of this can be very difficult, especially for school age children. Oliver French emigrated from Germany to Switzerland in 1933in the wake of the Nazi takeover of Germany and the boycott of Jewish businesses. At boarding school, Oliver didn’t speak the language, and found the other children’s customs strange. Because of the language barrier, the other children would try to get Oliver and his brother in trouble with dirty words and double entendres. In spite of the difficult period of assimilation, eventually the boys learned the language and became generally accepted by their classmates. As Oliver writes, “Some of the kids would still refer to us using slurs for Germans, but we no longer felt German. We were refugees from the Germans. We were immigrants.”

            The people who exemplify the word “immigrant” are often running away from turmoil or oppression in their home countries, like Oliver and the people involved in our modern Syrian refugee crisis. Just as often though, immigrants are moving toward something, a brighter future for their children or more opportunities than they are afforded in their home country. In doing so, they face a lot of hardship like the peril of traveling across a closed border or a wide ocean, or the difficulty of adjusting to a new culture and language. Most immigrants do their very best to make a living and a life in their new home.

Scars Are Supposed To Fade With Time

Seeing your truck three times 
In one night
Made my heart drop, deflated blue lead balloon
Straight to the bottom of my shoes, 
And then into the center of the earth.
What is left is a ghost, 
An echo of what you were to me for so long.
It's better that way.
Please stop reminding me that you're real.