Immigration Story
Jack Kern
February 15, 2016
Rosenblum Seminar 2
My family’s immigration history
My family’s history is pretty typical for a white suburban family currently residing on Long Island. More specifically, my family is from Manhasset on Long Island. Manhasset is a town located in Nassau County about five miles from Queens, and was settled as early as 1680. My ethnic makeup consists of German, Italian, English, and Irish roots. With such a large extended family on my mother’s side and a relatively smaller family on my father’s side, you may think I know more about my mother’s side. On the contrary, I know more about my dad’s side because of my proximity to my father’s family. My mother’s family is spread out around the country, but is mostly in Florida while my father’s family still for the most part lives in New York.
Some of my earliest memories are being in my grandparent’s house. My grandfather used to sit in his chair and watch the news, sometimes on mute, while my grandmother would talk to my father. My grandfather was a military man, very stoic, but at the same time affable. He was a Commander in the Navy with an incredible career. He served in World War 2 and Korea on aircraft carriers. He was an original Seabee, or the United States Naval Construction Forces. The word Seabee comes from the initials “CB,” which stands for construction battalion. After the war he continued working on other projects, such as the Whitestone Bridge. He died when I was very young, around five or six, and he never told any stories from his past. However, even though my grandmother passed away five years later, she was the same. She did not speak about her past either. My grandmother was very religious, and one of sixteen children. Later I found out a few more details of her past, unbeknownst to most of the family during her lifetime, however it is sort of a “family secret” so I will withhold the details. Because she was very secretive about it, I’m sure it burdened her throughout her life. Despite her past and a difficult upbringing, she ended up moving to Washington D.C. where she became a secretary and met my grandfather, who was working at the time. Before my grandfather was a decorated member of the military, he started out as an engineer during the Great Depression, and was the only one in his college class to get a job thanks to FDR’s Works Progress Administration.
I know much less about my mother’s family, simply because I was not as close with them. My grandfather was a lawyer and my grandmother was a housewife. When my grandfather died when my mother was only 11, my uncle took over the family business. My grandmother was very Irish, and an active, energetic and loving woman. The business my uncle took over was very successful when he took over, and became even more successful up until today. Like my father’s parents, my mother’s mom did not speak too seriously of her past either.
My ethnic background is mainly Western European. My father’s side is German and Italian from the regions of Bavaria in Germany and the Molise in Italy. On my mother’s side I’m from Galway in Ireland, the Rhine region in Germany, and I supposedly have some English roots on her side as well.
Now, how did my ancestors arrive in America? That is a good question that I don’t have an exact answer too. My aunt has done countless hours of research into my family’s history, and I’ve learned a few pieces of information about my family’s past. On my mother’s side, the first Hyer (my mother’s maiden name) was born Henry Hyer in New York in 1825. We speculate that he was the first member of my family born in America, and that his parents were immigrants. My father’s family came over in the middle of the nineteenth century on his father’s side and settled around Reading, Pennsylvania and worked in railroads. My father’s mother side came to Pennsylvania a little later in the century. I have a few interesting relatives, one of which was Richard Wagner. I even had multiple relatives who had fought for the union in the Civil War, at battles such as Appomattox and the Battle of Bull Run.
Clearly, my family’s history is very dense and scrambled and it is hard to tell exactly why all of them came to the United States exactly or even when they came over. I know that some of my mother’s family actually came over to avoid the potato famine. One of those relatives was coincidently one of the Civil War combatants, and was shot in the head.
I suppose all of my relatives had similar goals at greater economic opportunity and a better life, and I hope they achieved what they wanted in their lives. I’m sure they were at least relatively successful because my family has wonderful values and raised me very well, but I also know a lot can change over a few generations.
Growing up as an only child, there was not as much family tradition and almost no cultural tradition at all. I find it very strange when people derive such emotion and personal importance from their history and their culture, because I feel so distant from mine. I’m not saying I don’t understand why; it’s simply the fact that I’m unfamiliar with it. My ancestors have already been here for well over a hundred years and potentially two hundred. I do not feel German, Italian, English, or Irish – I am simply an American. In my hometown of Manhasset in the suburbs my friends mostly had similar feelings, however now that I am in college I’ve met all kinds of people from all walks of life that are incredibly passionate about their background and culture. I feel as though I’m missing an intrinsic and formative part of the human experience, one’s ancestors.
My Immigration Story
In response to questions about my identity, I invariably refer to myself as a recent immigrant from Hong Kong. I sometimes wonder how long the word “recent” will lose its effect, urging me to finally change this standard answer of mine.
Three years ago, I came to the United States only semi-willingly.
My family applied for immigration when I was only three years old, a fact unbeknownst to me until eleven years after that. It was done rather randomly. My aunt from my father’s side was the only relative living in the United States. She paid for the applications and did all the paper work in the hopes of getting all of us here. I still cannot figure out, even now, why she was so insistent that we come. She is a dictatorial person, so all the other family members just did whatever she commanded on them, without questions.
As the application took several years of processing, almost none of my family members remembered it. And then eleven years had passed. The application was approved.
After that, my aunt would call once in a while and promote to us how great America is, like a real-estate agent trying to reach sales quota before the imminent deadline. We did not think too much about the whole thing. We just went with what she said, and continued to do what is left to do to go to America.
Very soon, all the documents and actions were done; it was time to go.
Now, we were confused. We never actually thought about leaving where we were born and raised, until that moment that we needed to decide. As typical parents from Hong Kong, my dad, my mum and my aunt thought that sending their children overseas was a precious opportunity, and it would increase their chances of striving towards a bright prospect.
As children, my brother, sister, and I refused to leave a place we had planted a whole life of memories in. We strongly refused.
“Hong Kong is over, now that Britain abandoned it and China is devouring its liberty,” my father sighed about our once promising hometown, “You can get a better job if you got your education from overseas. People will look at you with greater respect.”
Sending children to receive overseas education is usually rich people’s plaything. Well-off parents would dump a bag of money to pay for their kids’ sky-high tuition as international students. Aware, my father thought it was a windfall that we now had a chance to get American education “in a cheap way.”
Unpersuaded by dad’s words, both my older siblings determinedly said they would not leave. My brother argued with my father that Hong Kong was just as great a city in its education and its future, and that he had no desire to run to another place. He continued his bachelor degree in Hong Kong, and my sister continued to pull all-nighters for the pre-university exam for Hong Kong, not with a second of considering the United States.
As for me, I did not have much an opinion, as a fourteen-year-old. Finally I nodded.
Though still hesitating, I was instilled with ideas by my parents over my “correct decision.” They also avoided my sibling’s disagreement with them from reaching to me.
Eventually, I left everything that belonged to (as well as defined) me — my friends, my language, my culture, my home, my parents, and came to the States alone. I remember being on the plane, surrounded by a cloud of melancholy, confused about what was next to come. That moment, I felt like I was not in control of anything of mine, not even my life.
On July 4th, 2012 night, as fireworks were sparkling in the night sky, and celebrative clamor probably suffusing the atmosphere above the land of America, I was as if on a lone planet. I stepped out the airport gate, and saw my aunt from afar. She was frowning, a portent I did not know was foreshadowing my stay with her family.
During the one year stay at her house, I was emotionally tested to which I never before imagined possible. I was extremely stressed. Therefore, my mother decided –– despite her old age and her not knowing any English –– to come to the States and take care of me. That was my struggle of pursuing what people referred to as “American Dream,” which is still as blurred and distant as a shooting star in the smog today. Will I ever catch it? Or should I ask, do I actually want to chase this fantasy anymore?
If time rewound, would I have assertively said no to my parents? I am still uncertain about having come to America. To this day, I still cannot figure out the pros and cons of being in either country. Coming to America, I feel like my life so far has only been a sketch by the adults’ decisions and designs. I really hope that some day, I could identify as somebody I become not without a fight.
I never felt comfortable talking about my immigration story. I have always been afraid that I would get responses like, “If you don’t want to be here, then leave.” I am not a hundred percent sure whether I want to be here or not, but it is absolutely true that I miss Hong Kong very much.
It has been three and a half years now. My vacillating mind is always the burden on my path to future. It kept me from being motivated to strive for what I want. Perhaps the experiences I will gain as I age will soon help me be single-minded in my future, and stop me from regretting what I missed or left behind. I should be resolute that my future is here. I need to clear my mind as soon as possible in order to move forward.
Nevertheless, I will never forget where I came from, and I will forever miss what I left behind, in a positive and nostalgic way.
My Immigration Story
If I had to describe myself, I would say that I am an American with Yugoslavian values. I was born in the United States, English is my first language, and I have been educated principally to be a contributing member of American society. My parents, however, have some ways of thinking that are not entirely consonant with those of the “average” American—an entity that I do not quite understand, though, I imagine, deviates significantly from real Americans. This stems partly from their upbringing in their countries of origin, as well as the life they have lived in America since then. As an outsider (at least that’s what I consider myself to some extent) looking in on the workings of both pervasive American society and persisting (though fledgling) Yugoslavian culture, I seem to have been presented two different sets of paradigms, which at times seem to be incommensurable. Sometimes, I wonder why I keep up this Yugoslavian front, considering how little I actually know about my culture. I think about whether it is best for me to try assimilating into American culture; after all, this is the country that I was born and raised in. These thoughts never amount to much—I am happy to say. My identity is firmly grounded in my culture, and it does not make sense to remove a building’s foundation. Furthermore, having two different paradigms is not a weakness, it just means that my foundation is doubly strong.
When I say that I inherit these “Yugoslavian” ideals from my parents, I realize that I am using outdated terminology since there hasn’t been a Yugoslavia for over two decades. In my case, however, “Yugoslavian” is an umbrella term that covers both my mother and father’s shared heritage, despite living in different countries. My mother is from Montenegro and my father is from Kosovo. Both of my parents grew up in farming villages, and from an early age, realized the importance of hard work and sacrifice for the family’s wellbeing. After marrying, they moved to America because of the opportunities it provided to get ahead in life—in Yugoslavia, you could be successful in your work, but you more or less lived and died in your class. The road to success was not easy, especially since they were the “pioneers” of their villages, among the first to relocate to America. Without their village there as support, it was important for them to stick together. One of the things that I took away from my parents is the importance of the family unit, and how resistant it is to being broken apart. For instance, asking my mother to move into the dorms at City College was met with such controversy that I am glad was over. I often liken this aspect of my parent’s with the communist governments that my parents grew up under, and how people were more seen as individual parts of a whole than as whole individuals. Of course, I do not hold this against them since it was necessary for the whole family to be close in order for all of us to succeed. In a way, we compensated for each other’s failings, thus making us stronger. When I leave home, which I dub “the Motherland,” and enter American society, I adopt a completely different, and individualistic mindset: no longer am I the loving son and brother to my family when I go to school or work, but rather I am Taulant Kastrati proper, the individual, and this latter aspect has been shaped by my experiences growing up.
I was born and raised in Flushing, New York, a neighborhood now comprising mostly Asian-Americans, but more diverse during my childhood. Since I did not have many relatives or people of my nationality for me to spend time with, I learned a kind of openness to other cultures and acceptance of different people, who were very unlike me. I think this helped keep me from assuming a white-is-right approach to thinking about people, but when I was in old enough to go to school, I would begin to realize that the children who I would play with, my fellow classmates, were different from me. They were different, however, not only because they ate different foods or wore different clothes or spoken different languages, but because of their likes and dislikes, and in fact their whole personalities. I realized that I myself was a minority in this school, and I was a separate individual from them, not like how I was a recognizable member of my own family. This line of thought continued after moving to Brighton Beach at the age of 7, where I continued my education at a school with a large Russian-American population, though there were many African-Americans, Hispanics, and South-east Asians, too. In addition to seeing myself differently than others, I saw even civic matters differently from the narrow, white-male-centric way that I saw it. Whenever I saw some such event on the news where they were discussing how some economic plan or other that would help the lower class, I would think about children in my class, and who that may also affect—I began to see the news as personally affecting the lives of people, and real people at that, not some Hegelian ghost of collective consciousness. Perhaps my perceptions could also partly be attributed to the fact that my parents have practically given me free reign over my beliefs, never imposing upon my stringent religious or political upon me, and thus, I was able to think about things as I saw them and not how other people made me see them. It is interesting to me now I haven’t seen many white, settled-over-the-years Americans that you’d typically see on television until I came to City College. Even among my own kind, Yugoslavians, I haven’t had too much exposure. Although I’d go to weddings where it would be all Yugoslavians, and I’d occasionally see cousins, I don’t think I could actually associate myself with the population at large, and be the patriot that so many of these Yugoslavian-Americans seem to proud to be. That in and of itself, isn’t bad. Although I cannot claim strong cultural ties that many of compatriots seem to have, my family and me are testaments to how hard work and sacrifice launches the first generation of immigrants into the world of American culture, and strong familial ties keeps basic cultural instincts within the home.
The Next and Last Stop: The Land of Opportunity
If I were asked to name the origin of my family in a single word, I would, certainly, say Azerbaijan. I have to admit that I consider myself to be a culturally poor person, due to the fact that the deepest level of my family tree that I really know about is my grandparents from my mother’s side. Very often I would talk to my parents and four brothers at the Shabbath dinner, discussing all different things in the world, but the topic of life and migration of my grandparents and their ancestors appeared to be something silently forbidden. It was the point of weakness in what seemed to be a limitless joy from communication with my family members – from the conversations that could easily take any direction.
“Great-grandparents” is the word that evokes a single, simple image in my mind – a black-and-white photograph that my maternal grandfather Binyamin keeps on the wooden nightstand in his room. It is a photograph of my great-grandfather Talhun, and I am almost certain that my grandfather keeps it there out of pride, since he looks just like his father. The only difference is that Talhun had long mustache and burning black eyes that catch my attention every time I look at the framed picture when visiting Binyamin. Even though my great-grandparents were never the subject of our conversations, I managed to infer from the photograph that Talhun worked in the stockyard in Qusar, Azerbaijan, since that is what he is standing in front of on the photograph. Furthermore, I once overheard my parents saying that all of my great-grandparents were from the same city – from Qusar, where population density was so low that they all knew each other from childhood. Talhun’s ripped and stained shirt has set my mind to associate life in Azerbaijan with pain, poverty, despair, and even discrimination, but the energy from the sparks in his eyes transmits the satisfaction with the sense of community, the feeling of being needed that sat in his heart and set the direction for him in his life. One of the other things that I happened to overhear is that my paternal great-grandmother died when giving birth to my grandmother in Qusar. I never asked questions about great-grandparents since then. It was, indeed, a forbidden mystery.
Even though all of my grandparents were born in Qusar, paternal side spent most of their lives in Haifa, Israel. The decision to move was unexpected, since my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer and needed immediate treatment. I remember visiting them at least once in two years. My mentally ill grandfather Natan would go outside and walk near the house he lived in with a cane, showing different signs and gestures to his home attendant. I never heard him talk. He would often try to communicate with me by gently pushing me with his thin arms to catch my attention and pointing up to the sky with his fingers. I always thought that his goal was to teach me religion and to tell me about God, since I could trace the elements of pride and hunger for understanding in the look he gave me. My father told me that Natan was beaten up badly by hooligans on the street when he was young, and that is how he ended up being speechless and mentally ill. However, I never believed that explanation: the simplicity of the explanation was inversely proportional to the complexity that I found in Natan’s character and state of mind. Unfortunately, both of my paternal grandparents died in Israel in 2011, and I did not go back to Israel ever since. I still regret not spending more time with them, since the stories told by my parents did not have the capacity to really make me understand my grandparents’ lives. In my mind, Israel is a little synagogue surrounded by a desert. It is a place that I immediately associate with religion, especially because my older brother was named in Natan’s honor, and his Bar Mitzvah took place in Tel Aviv in 2010.
My mother’s parents were always around until we moved to Beijing, China. I was born in Moscow, Russia, when my parents and maternal grandparents have already been living in Russia for four years. Anti-semitism and financial hardships formed a strong force that pushed them out of Azerbaijan. Since childhood, I was trying to avoid displaying my religious beliefs and affiliations to the public. Whenever I wore a kippah – a brimless cap made of cloth, a tallit – a fringed garment, black non-leather shoes, and a fancy-looking rounded hat on top of the kippah, people would burn me with the laser lights coming off their eyes. Sometimes they would even spit trying to explicitly express their disgust towards my religion. Often, they would shout “chernomazie ponaehali”, which translates from Russian as “these black bastards keep coming to this country.” This discriminative phrase was used to show both treatment of Jews as colored people and the message that the Russian land is meant for Russians, not for immigrants who steal jobs and territory. To my own surprise, after having heard it so many times, I would often find myself thinking about complexity of the Russian language, knowing that just two words can combine to carry so much meaning. I knew that Jews have suffered a lot due to their religious beliefs in the world dominated by Christians, and I would often ask my parents if preservation of some ideas was worth sacrificing tranquility for the whole Jewish population. In response I would get silence and a feeling of guilt for asking the question that kept bothering me.
I could not walk comfortably beside my family during the holidays when we had to wear complete religious attire. Often, I would walk far behind them pretending to enjoy the beauty of the parks and their surroundings. I always tried to hide my religion and pretended not to be a Jew.
Our family’s migration decisions were never discussed with me or my brother, and we just accepted them as necessary steps that had to be taken on our way to success. We moved to Beijing when I was eleven and spent five years there. At the same time my maternal grandparents and two of their sons moved to the United States in hope for a better future. I never experienced the true cultural shock, since the school I went to was at the Russian Embassy, and it was just like living and studying in Russia with a different climate. My father used his savings to open up a shoe store quickly after we moved, so we all felt at ease in the new environment. The Chinese New Year became my most anticipated holiday, since I loved fireworks, and the people in Beijing launch the fireworks for at least two weeks after the New Year’s Eve in February. New Year in Beijing is the time when you can lie in bed and feel like there is a war taking place outside the four walls your room is bounded by. I once heard a loud explosion at two o’clock in the morning that seemed to occur in the next room. I felt the sound waves shooting my ears, some of them dancing on the walls of my room to irritate me, and then flying into my ears after partying, tired, with less intensity. I had to get off from the bed to check my parents’ room. They were sleeping like tired babies while green, yellow, and red lights were racing through the window onto the ceiling of the room.
One of the crucial decisions ever made by my family was moving to the United States. The reason was simple – they saw no future in any other country. The success that Ruvin, my uncle, came to after graduating from a law school in New York reinforced our desire to come to this country. My parents did not want me and my brothers to live a wandering life, so their decision was firm. We took a plane to New York, and throughout the whole flight I was so emotionally tired from moving around all the time that I did not have any feelings to express. I just wanted to reach the destination and fall asleep forever.
Staying at Brighton Beach feels like living in another type of Russia, for the community is mostly Russian. However, it was easy to assimilate to a new location, since the language barrier was not one of the obstacles we had to face. An obstacle I did have to face was the subway system. I never used subway before, and on my first day of school in New York I could not figure out how to use a metrocard, so I jumped the turnstile. I was nervous about going to a new school and meeting new people, so I was speedily walking up the stairs, when two police officers surrounded me and told me to go back downstairs. They asked for me for ID, but I did not have any documents on me, so they handcuffed me and kept me there until I told them my name, address, and age for them to identify me.
I must admit that I do not consider myself an immigrant. My grandparents and uncles have been living in New York for four years at the moment when we moved. Ruvin was constantly helping me with schoolwork, and my father got employed as a truck driver. My mother’s job was the same – she was taking care of five sons and a husband. Being busy kept us alive, and my parents constantly encouraged me and my brother to work harder to get into a good college. The goal was to gain that financial stability and independence – qualities that life in the United States is known for.
Lack of consistent discipline was something that I noticed in my first American high school. I would rise from my seat every time a teacher entered the classroom only to find out that it is not considered a norm here. I would alienate myself from other students, feeling irritated by the inappropriate language used by the teenagers. Thoughts about never being able to get used to the mentality of these people kept bothering me. I would see violent student fights so often that I just ignored them, even if my acquaintances were involved. I knew that my character was formed and under my control, but I was afraid that my younger brothers will follow the momentum and adopt some of the undesired traits, especially because my two youngest brothers were born here in New York. They are still very young, and my family has a lot of faith in them.
Now that I think about all that, I understand that the journey of Agaronov family paid off. Even though some hardships, such as alienation, unsociability, and my heavy Russian accent endured, the benefits outweigh all the stress. I am in college now, and I got into a very promising Macaulay Honors Program. My brother is studying finance in a different honors program. My parents are happy and proud of us, and I am happy that we are eventually realizing their hopes. United States is the country that gave me a feeling of achievement. United States is the country I want to stay in.
Who Am You?
Michael Borrello
MHC Seminar 102
Professor Rosenblum
February 23, 2016
Our self identity and our personal history are constantly in an intricate dance describing who one is and where one came from. In today’s world, my family is successful and most definitely living the dream such that all of my family is employed making names for themselves and my generation is college bound, becoming professionals in our desired area of study. Looking back in my personal history, this was clearly not always the case which is why I identify closely which my Italian and Czechoslovakian ancestry and give homage to both sides of my family, each of which had broken traditional boundaries to come live in America.
I know less about my maternal immigration history most likely due to the circumstances in which the emigration took place. Stories were lost and relearn from second hand information and therefore skews the personal history and replaces it with documented history. Nevertheless, the Czechoslovakian stories told by my maternal grandpa still hold a majority of the family history. My maternal grandfather’s parents both came over from Czechoslovakia, not at the same time though. His mother came over when she was nearly an adult, whereas his father came over when he was twelve years old. Both of my great-grandparents came over for the same reason which was to escape the future spread of communistic views and leadership. A majority of the reason my Eastern European background came to America was solely to escape the impending issues that were to come in the near future.
As for the assimilation, my great-grandparents had very different stories. For my assimilating great-grandfather, he became more attuned to the “American” culture, finding identity in his neighborhood on the East side and learning American customs and games. My great-grandmother had a much different story of assimilation such that she had very little grasp of the English language yet had to find a way in her adult world. My great-grandparents met in living their day to day lives, finding happiness in the fact that they shared similar roots and practices similar traditions. They stayed on the East side, 66th and 2nd, and had a family where my maternal grandpa was the first born American citizen of the family.
My maternal grandmother’s story was unfortunately lost as a result of what happened in her life. She was born in America as a daughter of two Slovaks. Her father left the family early on in life and her mother passed away at an early age, leaving my grandmother to grow up all on her own. She had relatives in America already but they did not care for her much at all. So due to the unfortunate circumstances that aggregate to my grandmother’s childhood, we do not have much of her family’s immigration history. One could infer that this is one of the more extreme examples of how awful it can be to enter a new life in a new country, only to destroy the life of another life brought into the world.
Unlike my Czechoslovakian ancestry, my Italian background is very well known and very specific. In fact, I believe my grandmother is rolling in her grave right now that I called my paternal ancestry “Italian” and not Sicilian. Both grandparents were born in America which makes recalling their history easy but makes calling upon their parents history very challenging. For the most part, their immigration story is similar to one another’s except for where they emigrated from. That, as it turns out, made all the difference once beginning their lives here in America.
My paternal grandfather’s family was from Calabria, the southern-most tip of Italy (which is probably the only reason he even stood a chance to marry my grandmother). His family came to America because Italians work starting to get all of the jobs the Irish used to have. The family similarly came to New York and lived in East Harlem with the other Italians living there. He was born to family that did not pursue education in the slightest and only went into business. My grandfather always wanted to become a hard worker like his family, but also wanted to work at a higher level in life. What he wanted to be, though he did not know it, was an engineer. Unfortunately he was never given the opportunity to pursue higher education. However, he was still a genius and proved it by becoming a self taught mechanic, worked as a mechanic in Vietnam, and becoming a self taught saxophonist who played with great names such as Duke Ellington and Count Basie. His family’s immigration story proves that it is very possible to come to America looking for something great and finding it, be it business ownership or the pursuit of one’s own goals.
My grandmother’s side of the family was from the island of Sicily and also decided to come to America when they found out Italians were being hired to do the work of the Irish. Like good Sicilians, the family left to go the New York together and work and make money. When in New York, the family lived in East Harlem, like most other immigrants from Italy, and did not mingle much with any other part of society besides the Italian part. However, being Sicilian, my grandmother’s family did not get along well with other Italians in the neighborhood. This caused division within the neighborhood and overall provided unnecessary challenges for my grandmother’s family. By the time my grandmother was born, her father was not in the picture. He was an Italian who was slandered for marrying a Sicilian and left because the families feuded when they came together. Her mother, shockingly similar to my maternal grandmother’s mother, also became gravely ill leaving my grandmother to grow up with her relatives. For the most part, she grew up with her grandmother, speaking both Sicilian and English, attended school until she went to work in textiles like most women of lesser education would. She lived in a world where there was division not only between the immigrants and the natives but also division between Sicilians and Italians.
Though my immigration story is distant and vague, I still find immense pride in my ancestry. Some of them had hard lives in an attempt to make the lives of those to come easier and worthwhile. For that, I am eternally grateful. Their stories serve as a constant reminder to me that I may be constantly aware of the current hardships and trials being faced by people all around me. One thing in common between every story is that all of my families came into America to live in New York and make a new life for themselves. So many years later, my brother sister and I found ourselves coming back to where it all started to pursue chemical engineering degrees, masters in investigative journalism, and PhDs in biomedical science. It is humbling to realize that our not so distant ancestors walked the same streets either just making it by while we are the lineage making it big for ourselves. There is a selfless twist on immigration when one realizes their family, through trials and trepidation, put everything they had on the line so that one day a person like myself can have life in a great country and have that life to the fullest.
My Immigration Story
My father was born in Egypt on October 30th 1962. He lived in a small city called Zagazig. It is not the desert that people tend to think of when I tell them I am from Egypt. It is a city with tall stone buildings, narrow sandy roads with BMW’s and mule-drawn vegetable carts, red and white taxi cabs with hot leather seats. Everyone in Zagazig knew their dry cleaners, the local shop owners, their neighbors and their neighbor’s neighbors by name. It was nothing like the Brooklyn or Queens that I grew up in, but it had a welcoming and optimistic aura to it.
Since I had a knack for getting myself into trouble or hurting myself when I was a child, my father used to tell me stories of irresponsible things he used to do in his childhood. His favorite activity was to sneak into the cherry fields and climb the cherry trees. He would climb to the top of every cherry tree in the field, stuffing himself with as many cherries as he could fit in his mouth. The cherries were sometimes his only dinner. My grandfather left my father before his tenth birthday. When my grandmother remarried, my father’s stepfather had to prioritize my father’s stepsiblings leaving my father to fend for himself mostly. He worked to be able to buy his own clothes and his own food if he had to. My father studied hard to be able to establish himself career-wise but the education in Egypt was a very unfair system. His friends told him stories of how everyone had equal opportunity in the United States, and that your success was a measure of how hard you worked, not dependent on the circumstances of your birth.
So my father set out to pay for a flight to the States. He didn’t have much of anything except free time and hobbies. Dad had a natural ear for music and rhythm. He would study up on all the famous musicians of his time and learn all he could from them. Dad and his friends would watch and copy their favorite musicians and before any of them realized they had their own band. My dad was the drummer. Slowly and surely they would practice and get better and soon enough they started playing at parties and festivals. When my dad married my mom he left the groom’s seat to perform at their marriage ceremony. He taught me the importance of diligently pursuing a passion.
Once dad had earned enough for a flight to the States he packed with haste. This is the moment he had been dreaming of since he was 12. He was 27 when he arrived in New York in 1989 and had nothing but a map, a lightly packed suit case, and roughly one hundred dollars. It was bitter work. Dad took various odd jobs from mopping floors to waiting tables to delivering pizzas to pay for food and for a motel room if he couldn’t stay with a friend that night. Establishing himself was hard.
One day my dad caught a lucky break and met a band searching for a drummer. My dad picked up his drumsticks again and started performing here in the States. He played for small gigs in New York, Jersey, and Connecticut. He was no rock star, but performing was something he loved and it paid for his expenses while he tried to establish himself in an unfamiliar land, far from his friends and family. My father knew he could not make a real career from performing as a drummer while he had my mother waiting for him back in Egypt. He had to find a way to support a family so he could send for my mother.
So my dad started hitting the books. He was a student at the City University of New York in the morning and a performer at night. Sometimes there were night where he would perform late and get up the next morning and take an exam. He was studying accounting and after four years he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in accounting. He found an accounting job and slowly started to make a stable life for himself. My father went back for my mother in Egypt and they moved into a studio apartment together in Queens. A few years later I was born and spent my first few years in that apartment.
My father never wanted to raise his kids in an environment like the one he grew up in. This is one of the things that motivated him to leave Egypt for a shot at something bigger in the United States. He would always tell me that my life is better because of what he had to do, and that I now have to work hard to make sure my kids live better just like I did. Although it does put a heavy weight on my shoulders, it motivates me to be my absolute best at everything that I do. My father came here so that he could live better, but he also came here so that I could live better and do things he could not do in his home nation. He wanted me to have the chance to do whatever I want with my life and not be limited by the education and politics of his homeland.
Though I was born a New Yorker I still feel a strong connection to my culture and relatives in Egypt. I made so many great memories and made so many friends in Egypt. I know my people have a proud history, beautiful holidays and festivities, and unifying sense of community. I am proud to have been born an Egyptian American and I am excited to leave my mark. One day I hope to proudly tell my kids the story of why they were born Americans.
The Journey Here
Being a natural born citizen and having parents of ethnic descent, I often questioned my identity. Outside my home, in school, I felt American. I attended the same classes as everyone else, ate the same lunch as other kids, and played the same games. Going home was a completely different experience. I felt my Asian roots. It was a culture change, I watched shows in Chinese and ate foods that would often be considered “gross” by many other students. My family was also very different that those of my friends.
Going to school was a fun experience for me, it allowed me to interact with kids who shared similar cultures and others who didn’t. Becoming friends with people who come from all different backgrounds and social statuses was a very enlightening experience for me. Making friends however wasn’t easy. I was often questioned about my culture by some whose families have been living in America for a very long time. “Aren’t you a math genius” or “Do you eat dog” were questions I often received. This didn’t bother me as I accepted my nationality of being Chinese. I was proud of my heritage and embraced my distinct family background. I knew that while I was Asian, I was just as American as anybody else.
My mother is currently the owner of a small insurance company. She operates in Flushing, a densely populated area with a large population of Chinese and Korean Americans. My mom decided to have her office located here as she wanted to be in close proximity with people of the same ethnic group. She would be able to have lunch in an area that would give her a sense of nostalgia of the food from her childhood. She would be able to communicate in her first language comfortably and freely, being reminded of the place she once called home. Its been 30 years since she lived in New York, finishing high school, graduating college, and having a kid and a husband. Now, without a second doubt, she is able to call America her home.
I always questioned my mother why she decided to come to America. She had never been aboard a plane in her life yet she was willing to travel thousands of miles across the world to start a new life. She left her friends, her family and everything she had and came to a completely new and unfamiliar place. She always had the same response – to get a better life. My mother was the last of her family to leave Hong Kong. Her mother, father, and siblings have all left in order to escape the upcoming handover of the British territory back to China in 1997. They were afraid to be part of a communist nation where everything they had worked for would be diminished. My family wanted to continue to live in a capitalistic society and America seemed like a bright option. They wanted motivation for working hard and this would not be possible if they remained.
I never understood why she thought America was such a great place. I now realize she wanted to receive a college education, something that is very difficult to receive in Hong Kong. She wanted a job where she would be able to use her intelligence rather than her strength to make money. To use her skills in a place where they can be appreciated. My mother wished to see her child happy giving me the opportunity she didn’t have at my age.
Getting to this point in her life was certainly no simple task. And her achievement still shocks my family to this day. She was often bullied in high school due to her lack of English speaking skills. She felt threatened, unable to fit in with the rest of the environment. Back in Hong Kong, she was inadequately educated and struggled to adapt to the college system in America. My mother was the youngest of seven children and was the only one in her family to graduate from a university. After completing college, she worked as an insurance saleswoman for 15 years where she was able to earn enough money to start her own business. She was determined to make a change, setting a path for future generations to follow.
Coming to America also gave us the opportunity to celebrate new holidays. Traditionally Christmas was not seen as a huge holiday in Hong Kong and Thanksgiving was rarely celebrated. After my family immigrated here, we often found ourselves at friends and family’s homes talking, eating and enjoying each others company. We also paid less attention to the more traditional holidays having only one or two day festivities that were often a week long when back in Hong Kong.
The people in America were also very different than those in Hong Kong. My mother, while growing up has rarely had more than a two-minute conversation with her neighbors despite the cramped living spaces that were often found in Hong Kong. Having spent a good portion of her life in Long Island, she was often invited to gatherings and events by her colleagues and coworkers. This was a major culture shock. Rarely did strangers compliment each other and holding the door for the next person or saying “thank you” was certainly not a common gesture. This however, was not necessarily a bad thing. My mother managed to learn this new way of life fairly quickly from her college experience and through operating her business with American clients.
Being a first generation student and being born to an immigrant mother, I have been exposed to both my ethnic heritage and the culture and traditions in America. There are many differences between the two and my family has learned to appreciate the new culture. Moving thousands of miles away from your hometown is certainly no easy task and I can now understand why my mother was willing to make the journey. I am proud to be the son of an immigrant and being able to represent my individuality. My family and now can now comfortably call New York our home.
My Immigration Story
My grandmother, born Miyoko Ogawa, was born in southern Japan on February 12, 1941. Born into a family where her mother was a seamstress and her brother a pig farmer, she came from a simpler time. She grew up with a sister and a brother, and went through her education only learning a small amount of English. Japan in the early 1940s was not a fantastic place to live, but many countries were in the same position. However, when the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki took place, my grandmother was only four years old. Living not too far from those cities, she grew up witnessing the horrible aftermath of those attacks. Deaths from the attacks numbered more than 100,000 and many people were injured, psychologically affected, or suffered from radiation poisoning.
When my grandmother was 18 years old, she happened to meet a charming American Marine who was stationed in Japan following the Korean war. His name was Robert Gildersleeve, and he was born October 16, 1941 to a family of six children. They quickly became wed despite the challenging language barrier, and had their first child, Michael, while still living in Japan in 1962. Shortly after, Miyoko became pregnant again, this time with a girl.
They decided to come back to America where Robert was originally from and he was subsequently transferred to the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Triangle, Virginia. They traveled – Robert, Miyoko, and baby Michael – by boat from Japan to California. Upon their arrival, Miyoko was let into the country, but did not yet become a U.S. citizen. From California, they flew to Virginia, where they had their second child, my mother Arlene, on November 24, 1964.
The Japanese internment camps put into place after World War II existed throughout the 1940s in the United States. I often wonder if my grandmother knew about these camps before coming to America. I wonder if she was anxious about the stigma and racism she would face. I’m often thankful that she didn’t have to face those extreme hardships, and was allowed to come into this country freely and settle down with her new family.
As time in the United States passed, Miyoko began to learn English and the new customs of this country. After a few years in Virginia, my grandfather left the Marines, and they moved to back to Long Island where he had grown up. At first living in an apartment complex in Lake Ronkonkoma, my mother has fond memories of playing with her older brother and their dog outside. She was four when they first relocated to Long Island, and two years later, they purchased their first home in a town called Centereach. This first home they bought became the only home they ever bought, and my grandmother still lives there today, a mere five minutes from my parents.
My mom has told me a few times about helping my grandma study for her citizenship exam in that very house, and about how some things my grandma pronounced incorrectly inadvertently passed on to my mom when she was a child. My grandma still remembers saying “underground pool” instead of “inground pool”, and though she fixed that, she still can’t help but say “shortpants” instead of “shorts”. Her accent keeps her from saying “boulevard” or “hood”, and says “seltzer” like “salsa” which can lead to some funny confusion when she requests it.
My grandfather worked, after leaving the Marines, at a company called Grumman. Today that company is called Northrop Grumman, and according to their website they are now “a leading global security company providing innovative systems, products and solutions in unmanned systems… to government and commercial customers worldwide”. But in the 1970s until the 2000s, my grandfather worked there as an engineer for aircraft. While he worked hard to support the family, my grandmother both raised their two children and for a time, worked as a waitress in a Japanese restaurant. There she met many young women like herself, but didn’t work past my mother’s teenage years. The neighborhood they occupied was also home to many young Japanese women and their ex-military husbands. My grandmother still has many close friends in the neighborhood and that fact allows her to retain her Japanese language and culture.
Today, I feel as though my grandma has simultaneously adapted very well to the American lifestyle and yet, maintained the ways and culture she grew up with. She practices her sect of Buddhism every day, and attends meetings and forms friendships within that community. She has the upgraded cable package on her TV that gives her access to several Japanese television stations, and eats mostly Japanese cuisine. Often when she answers her phone, she cheerfully exclaims “moshi moshi!”, and she had me program her smartphone to read in Japanese.
Growing up, I spent a lot of time at my grandparent’s house while my mom worked, and I fondly remember playing Scrabble with my grandma and helping her spell and pronounce words, and her teaching me the basics of Japanese: the alphabet, numbers, and parts of the body. She still struggles with her accent and will often forget words, but I find the way she speaks to be impressive and delightful. She is highly intelligent, but often in her everyday life, she gets taken advantage of by people she encounters. She has my mom make all her important phone calls and accompany her to the mechanic and car dealership, so they don’t manipulate or overcharge her. She asks many questions about her bills and the ever-changing culture of our modern society. However, she doesn’t let her disadvantages keep her from living an independent and successful lifestyle, and enjoys her life here.
The catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in Japan of 2011 was the source of much anxiety for my grandma. Her sister still lives there today, and for weeks she couldn’t make any contact with her. She watched the news constantly for information about the disaster, but even during that tough time, she was still thankful that she had immigrated here. She sees the great success she has attained in the United States, and knows that her life in Japan would have been extremely different.
I’m proud to say my grandma is an immigrant, and because of our close relationship, I feel very connected to my Japanese ancestry. Miyoko Gildersleeve is a beautiful and vibrant woman, and I’m hoping her Japanese genes cause her to live well into her nineties. I can’t thank her enough for everything she’s taught me and the qualities she’s passed on to me.
A Short Migration Story
My migration story is short. My whole family including me was born in Guang Dong, China. Back in the old days, both my parents were unemployed but sometimes my dad would get part time jobs to earn an income. Getting a job in China was difficult, especially when we did not have college degrees and had to compete with 1.3 billion other people. This typical reason of immigration became my family’s explanation too. My dad moved to New York in 2004, and I followed him three years later in July.
The common understanding of America to our family was a country filled with opportunities and money. My mom’s uncle’s family was the first generation to settle in New York. Her uncle introduced a young, but not very handsome guy to my aunt, wishing that she could obtain citizenship from the United States by marriage. The guy fell in love with my aunt by the first sight at her picture and he proposed to her. My aunt had little freedom and therefore she followed her uncle’s instruction. Our relatives became the primary reason for our choice of destination. Since 1997, my family started applying to immigrate. Finally in 2004, my dad became the first person in our family to go. Before I moved to America, I remembered that my dad used to complain a lot. Not about the poor working condition or the quality of the food, but mainly about the boredom he was experiencing. He was trying to adapt to a new country and facing a language barrier without friends and family. He has been working as a physical therapist assistant in clinics for ten years. And even now, he still wanted to move back to China. That soon became my situation when I moved to the United States. Before I came to New York, I was looking forward to a new life. I failed some of my major classes in school and I wished I can avoid pressure from my mom by escaping. But adapting to a new country was harder than my expectation.
The first neighborhood I had moved in was Avenue U in downtown Brooklyn. It consisted of several types of people. Up past Nostrand Avenue, there were mainly the African Americans. Where I lived, 26th Street was a mixture of Chinese and Russians. Ten blocks down near the train station was a blend of the Middle East and Chinese culture. I liked the fact that the neighborhood was mostly Asians, it aided my settling and also allowed me to become familiar with the people around despite my language barrier. However, the environment was not what I was accustomed to. In China, I mostly lived with my mom in my grandfather’s district for school. In an apartment house with one bedroom, four people crowded inside — me, my mother, my uncle, and my grandfather. It was a noisy and prosperous area. I used to only wake up fifteen minutes earlier, because my school was just ten meters away. On the other side of the street, two rows of stores were facing each other, selling variety of daily use articles and clothing. Further down, there were several supermarkets and my friends’ houses. At anytime, I can call them out and hang out. China was never a tiresome place for me. Neon lights from stores were seldom turned off, which reminded me of a mini 42st Street. But in Brooklyn, when I walked out to the street, rows of houses were facing each other. Everyone kept their door shut, the neighborhood was quiet. Further down in Avenue U, there were more people and stores, but it was incomparable with my hometown. Consequently, I stayed home and played computer for most of the time.
The emigration from one country to another, the transformation from childhood to adolescence, and the adaptation of a new environment; none of these were easy for anybody, especially me. After staying in America for a month, my apprehension finally arrived, and it was the first day of my fifth grade class. That gloomy morning, my classmates stared at me and probably figured out that I was a transfer student just by looking at my unfamiliar face. The most embarrassing moment came when my homeroom teacher asked me to introduce myself. I stood in the front solemnly without knowing what to say. Minutes later, my teacher finally gave up. Ever since then, I decided that I hate school.
As days passed, I sat in the corner of my classroom quietly, repetitively reading the same kindergarten level books that my teacher told me to read while she was teaching lessons to the class. The books were at first hard to me, but then they became easy and eventually turned boring as I read them over and over again. My teacher was satisfied with my gradual improvement. My favorite class used to be my ESL class. I met many friends there. We all came from foreign countries, and we all understood each other’s feeling. We loved to joke around and make plans to hang out during our free time. I never considered my language barrier as a horrible thing. Thanks to it, I was always excused from doing something wrong. Though life was dull at first, but I enjoyed the relaxation very much.
Just like my father, the idea of moving back to china sometimes flashed in my mind. I thought I still wanted to immigrate back until I went back for vacation recently. I spent my entire winter break in China, but I did almost nothing. I lost contact with my friends and classmates, and I had nowhere to go besides visiting my relatives. I started to miss the days in New York. I finally understood that, my happiness did not come from the region I live, but rather the people I have.
Eight years is quite long to me, but I learned a lot. I learned to take responsibility of myself and I learned to be a cheerful person. Recently, I also learned that I enjoy living in America. In this country, I get free education and many opportunities. I enjoy the freedom I am experiencing too. My dad wished that he can go back to reunite with his friends and family after I graduated from college. But I guess I changed my mind since the last trip, I wish to stay in America for the rest of my life.
Stories – Adam Wolfson 3/7/16
Most of the things I know about my family, I know from stories. Not my immediate family, of course. I know what one would typically expect me to know about my parents, given I live with them. For anything further back than a decade or so before I was born, though, stories are the primary medium of exchange. Stories are how people pass along information that they’re not specifically trying to teach.
I don’t know a lot of stories from my mother’s side of the family. I don’t have many surviving relatives on that side, and my mom wasn’t ever that close with her family anyway. The only one that really ever stuck in my head was the way my mother’s father died (my Grandfather I suppose, although I never really thought of him that way). He was a doctor, and he died of pneumonia. Apparently at first he thought it was just a cold, and even when it started to get worse he didn’t have it checked out because, well, he was a doctor himself. By the time his pneumonia finally got bad enough for him to get it checked out, it was bad enough that there wasn’t a lot that could be done. Normally the treatment would have been penicillin, but he was allergic to the stuff and whatever they used instead apparently didn’t work. He died long before I was born, though, so I’m not personally broken up about it.
I know a few more stories from my dad’s side. Many of them involve Harold “Geep” Courlander, my great Grandfather. He fancied himself an inventor, and was apparently a bit of a card. Some of his “inventions” included the electric flyswatter (a flyswatter taped to a power cord) and the alligator hunting kit. The alligator hunting kit consisted of a pair of binoculars, a pair of tweezers, and a box. It “worked” as follows: first, the user was to turn the binoculars around and look through them backwards at the alligators. The alligators having become very small, user was then to use the tweezers to deposit them in the box. Geep was also a writer, and one of the more fraught narratives of my family’s history was the legal battle between him and another author who plagiarized his work.
There are other stories. My father’s family spent a few years living in italy when he was a young, although there aren’t a lot of stories from that time. One of my favorite stories, largely because it’s funny, is the one about the cucumber. As a teenager my father was trying to remove a cucumber from its vine. After several unsuccessful attempts, he returned home to ask if there was a trick to it, whether it needed to twisted or bent in a certain way. His response was lactonic: “just pull harder”. This story led to the creation of the family phrase ‘a cucumber problem’, denoting any problem most easily solved by the application of greater force. There is the story of my Grandfather Alan Wolfson (not the same one as the doctor) discovering a key chemical component of decaf instant coffee. I don’t know a lot of detail about what happened, but it reminds me that my Grandfather was a chemical engineer at one point, which can be hard to remember since he’s had three careers. These stories don’t really comprise a strong ethnic identity the way some people’s do, but I do think that the contribute majorly to what you might call the character of my family.
Those are just the stories that I’ve heard in the course of by everyday life with my family. For the purposes of this assignment I asked my parents for any stories they knew of could look up from further back, and I got quite a few. Although the Wolfsons specifically only go back a few generations to ellis island (before that they were the Akbars, from Latvia), it turns out that I have ancestors on both sides of my family who have been in America for quite some time. According to a family tree my mother put together a few years ago, one ancestor on her side was here long enough ago to (allegedly) lend Paul Revere his horse for the famous midnight ride.
On my father’s side the most interesting ancestor I now know of was Jacob Courlander, who somehow managed to serve as an officer on both sides of the Civil War at the same time. Apparently he was a peddler who routinely traveled back and forth between the two sides anyway, and he simply alternated between serving in the two armies. He must have been fantastic at maintaining a cover story, especially considering that it’s suspected he had two families complete with wife and children, one on each side. Several generations later there was David Courlander. He, like my Grandfather, apparently had several careers. He became a painter near the end if this life, and several of his paintings are currently kept (although not displayed) at the Smithsonian. My family also has one in our living room. He painted in a style called primitivism, which involves simple or deliberately crude seeming images. This came as a great surprise to me when I found out. I had been looking at that painting nearly every day of my life, and I had always assumed that he just wasn’t a very good painter (not knowing of his success). My mother’s uncle Frank Sanderson invented the fountain pen, although he later sold the patent. Her Grandfather Melton Sanderson nearly invented the hanging file, but his design was to heavy and bulky to be practical.
It’s sad, in a way, that I hadn’t heard some of these stories up until now. The ones I listed first, that I learned just as part of growing up in my family, help inform where I come from. As I said earlier, they give a sort of sense of the character of my family, which certainly has had an effect on my character. The stories from further back, the ones I had to ask for, aren’t quite the same. Intellectually I know I’m related to these people, but they feel like strangers. My family has been reinterpreted and reimagined by what my parents chose to pass down. Such is the power of stories.
