Charles Lauer (Response 4 out of 5)
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World Lucette Lagnado, 2007
If you were to go around the City interviewing people who, at one point or another, immigrated to this country, one of the more common types of stories you’d find is one motivated by financial reasons.
And that shouldn’t come as a surprise.
We’re used to hearing emigration stories about how people ran away from their country of origin due to a lack of resources there and the promise of opportunities here. We’re used to hearing stories about people chasing the “American Dream”, which was, arguably, our country’s greatest selling point at the time, and why foreign families would chase this “dream”, to many, is more than understandable.
It promised a life of financial security in a (relatively) financially secure country, while also pushing the belief that regardless of who you were and where you came from, as long as you were willing to put in the work, you could accomplish anything.
In fact, for a long stretch of time, there was a certain lore concerning New York City streets. The lore? That NYC streets were paved in gold. This claim was obviously not meant to be taken at face value, but instead meant to convey a certain immigrant belief: That New York was a place where riches came easy. (or at least, easier)
I believe that this variation of the immigrant story is so engraved in our heads when we think on the topic, and “financial stability” is so often a reason we quote when trying to understand people’s motives for moving here. So with that in mind, I want to talk about the Lagnado family and how their story seems to be almost the complete opposite of everything I’ve mentioned until this point.
“The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit”, written by Lucette Lagnado about her late father Leon, recounts his early days as a successful, Carry Grant-esque, boulevardier and how he used to run his business out of the lavish Nile Hilton lobby and how he would always wear his signature sharkskin suit.
But then came Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise to power and his subsequent nationalization of the Egyptian Industry. And the once wealthy, sharkskin sporting, Leon Lagando found himself with nothing and his family bouncing between any country that would let them in.
Now, Leon’s family is far from an anomaly. Many immigrants could tell you stories about how oppression and persecution drove them out of their homelands (Hell, my family fleed from Egypt around the same time), but few can talk about walking into New York City in a more financially dire situation than the one they left at home.
The Lagnados found it hard to make out “the streets paved in gold” and found the American Dream almost ironic. Their grit and resilience kept them from mourning the past, but that didn’t change the nature of their story.
Instead of a story about opportunities found, like we so often label stories about migration into this country, the Lagnados found themselves in a story of opportunities lost.
Questions:
- Do you agree that Leon’s story serves as an inversion of the “American Dream”? Why or why not?
- What are some of the underlying assumptions we have about why people move to this country? Where did this assumptions come from? And why do we have them?
- What are some elements of the Lagnados’ story that you feel are present throughout many of the immigration stories you’ve heard in your own life? What are some that stick out to you as unique or atypical?
