2009/07/13
Americanization changes immigrants’ sense of home
Interesting article at MSNBC.com. I always find this phenomenon interesting when it comes up in class: immigrants return home and realize they’ve changed–and that creates new, often unexpected, issues about where “home” is.
Outlaws in the United States, strangers at home
Almost at once upon his return, he was felled by a bout of the turistas. His Arlington County-born toddler, Marvin, also took sick, and Sanchez nearly panicked at the difficulty in finding a doctor. His wife, Gladys, was no longer comfortable in the traditional garments of Mayan women, finding them heavy and stiff compared with the Old Navy blouses and jeans she bought at Potomac Mills.
At the airport, they were met by nieces and nephews Sanchez had never seen. Even the elderly couple at the front of the crowd was hard to recognize.
“When I saw my parents for the first time, it was like they were different people,” Sanchez said. “I thought everything was going to be the same. I was wrong. Everything is different, including me.”
On the one hand, they don’t realize how much they’ve gotten used to aspects of American culture. On the other hand, they don’t realize how much life in their homeland has changed in their absence.
The article also describes the way immigrants often group together in their new country:
In Washington, Sanchez lived in a Guatemalan bubble. Immigrants tend to follow each other to U.S. cities, and a huge proportion of Guatemalans in Washington come from certain villages of the Western Highlands. Those from Excumucha, for example, live mostly in Langley Park. Those from next-door Concepción make Arlington their base.
I’m familiar with this same phenomenon in literature about life in Chinatown or in Jewish “ghettos.” What I’ve noticed through the texts is that these communities, while very useful for providing support networks for immigrant communities, also shield them from recognizing how much they’ve changed–and how far they have to go to be considered American.
For instance, in Toshio Mori‘s collection Yokohama, California, the residents of that “Japantown” see themselves as American; it’s only in the stories written after Pearl Harbor that the characters realize that they aren’t seen as American by the Anglo communities around them. Likewise, one of Abraham Cahan‘s characters realizes how different he has become–and how much his hometown differs from his memory of it–when he returns home to Poland in “The Imported Bridegroom.”
It’s an odd thing for my students to realize. Many students don’t want to think about immigrants as being truly American (they would never admit that, but in discussing immigrant experiences, they retain the vocabulary of difference), so it confuses them to realize that even after a few years, immigrants have Americanized enough that they can’t simply return home. I think it also bothers students to realize that the same thing might happen to them if they spend substantial time in another country.
Of course, from a Christian perspective, this is what happens to all converts. We might continue to live in our country of birth, but it’s no longer home. In a way, Christians have a lot to learn from immigrants about the experience of defining “home.”
