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Macaulay Honors College
at Baruch, Spring 2013Professor Els de Graauw
ITF Benjamin Miller Log in
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Born and Raised to Sit Down and Keep Quiet
Beatrice, a 20-year-old Italian immigrant, speaks about individualism and having a voice in America:
Here, I feel like its less disciplined, like, in comparison to schools in Italy, here, I think people speak up more. For example, if students have a problem with the test, they will be more open to the teacher, saying like, oh, but you didn’t say this was on it….people speak up more, and they were taught that what you have to say matter, everyone has a voice. And I’ve never really been like that because I was taught to keep quiet and stay in my place. I feel like the ideology here is that you’re an individual and it’s very foreign to me that people fight back and say, ‘I’m an adult, I’m an individual, you can’t tell me what to do…’
A Colorful Culture Shock
Beatrice, a 20-year-old Italian immigrant, discusses her impressions of the American school system and issues of safety after experiencing the 2001 terrorist attacks on NYC:
Everyone was just white. In my class there were no Blacks, no Chinese. All my friends were just white. I mean I’m not prejudiced or anything, but here people integrate more. There, I mean everyone is Italian. There’s no one from England or France or anything. It was very—it’s just, I don’t know, it was a culture shock. Oh, and it was right after 9/11 too. 9/11 happened on my third day of school, and I didn’t speak any English. My mom sat next to me and had to translate everything because I didn’t know what was going on. And it was just, it was very scary, that’s all. I didn’t feel safe here, I didn’t like where I was, I didn’t like the people at school… I stuck out. Like I was just used to a different kind of life.
Missing the Homeland
Jenny, a 20-year-old woman from South Korea, speaks about why she misses home:
I want to go back to Korea. No offense but I don’t like it here. I don’t like the way everything is set up. In Korea you can go anywhere by walking. On every street there are little stores. Where I live now you have to drive a car, I’m 30 minutes from the nearest store. Also the subways are much cleaner than here. There are also glass doors. The train arrives and there are glass doors to prevent people from falling into the tracks. Here it’s so dirty, and smelly, and there are cockroaches, and rats.
To Leave, Or Not To Leave….Definitely Leave
For Lilya, leaving the Ukraine was an easy decision after 42 years of hardship:
I’m a Jew and it was not easy to be a Jew in that country because of umm anti-Semitism and a lot of discrimination to the Jews that I went through, and that’s why I always dreamed to live in some country that I feel freedom, that I wouldn’t feel discriminated to get the job, to get the education because I’m Jew, not because I don’t have enough knowledge, enough education, enough experience, but because I am a Jew and I don’t think that this is fair and I don’t want this life for myself and I don’t want this life as I told you, for my kids and grandkids and future generation.
Return to the Mother Country
Sarah, a woman in her mid-seventies from Tel Aviv immigrated to Brooklyn 21 years ago. Here, she addresses her relationship to her home country:
That I [am] missing Israel? I knew that I will eventually [be] going back. I knew that I am not stay [in America] until I die.
