Finding One's Identity: 1st Generation Immigrant Perspectives

Being the daughter of first generation parents of African decent (Ghana, West Africa to be exact), who emigrated from Ghana to America, I've spent my entire life fascinated with the idea of identity. According to the Merriam Websters online dictionary, identity is the “...distinguishing character or personality of an individual” Furthermore, identity is the way we characterize ourselves as individuals. Because this “characterization” can take many forms, identity can be very complex. For example, I identify myself as a “Ghanian-American, christian, Brooklyn-nite, Syracusean” etc (yes, it can be that long!), while others may identify themselves as a “Gay, Italian-American, catholic”, just to name a few. Due to the complexity of identity, as teachers, we need to see how adolescents are already grappling with finding a sense of who they really are. From the time kids enter school, they are fighting to identify themselves in a cloud of many labels and categories. By the time they reach middle school and high school, those labels have morphed to become more complex and complicated. With that said, if native born American adolescents are already grappling with identity issues, imagine what it must be like for immigrant students. According to Elizabeth Clifford in Immigrant Narratives: Power Difference and Representations in Young Adult Novels with Immigrant Protagonist, “...the idea of who we are is integrally lined to the food we eat and the clothes we wear....integral to teenagers (Clifford, et al, 2011, p.11) Immigrant students, specifically those who either just emigrated to a new country, or are the offspring of parents who emigrated to a new country, struggle with this idea of identity in a two-fold manner. In other words, 1st and 2nd generation adolescents issues with identity are even more heavy than it would be for native students. Now, as an aspiring teacher and having worked with several 1st and 2nd generations students, I see how this idea of identity having so may pedagogical implications that will be tackled in this annotated bibliography.

One thing about identity is that it is constructed by the individual, as well as by society. For example, the identity I constructed for myself was one that I built on my own. How, you might ask? Well, I came up with that based on my experiences, my sense of culture, my beliefs, and etc. Also, identity can be formulated by others view of who I am. This is part of the reason why identity is so complicated for adolescents. However, to bring the focus back to immigrant adolescents, they are often asking themselves these following questions:

1.How can I assert my identity in a society that doesn’t always encourage individuality?

2. How do I balance my new culture and uphold my old culture?

3. How do I navigate between these two worlds, or in other words, which world do I being to? Do I belong to the new country, the old country, or neither?

4. How do I learn this new language, forget my traumatic past, and adapt to this new climate, while holding on to the old country?

5. Can I practice my culture(i.e. speak the language, eat the food of my culture, dress culturally etc) and not look weird in front of American people?

6. Who am I?

All of these questions and many more just give insight as to some of the things many immigrant students (as well as 2^nd generation children like myself) grapple with on a daily basis in this society, which is highlighted by Clifford, as the “transformational impact of immigration”. (Clifford, et al, 2011, p.11) . Identity formation is sadly seen as a deficit (anything that is different from the norm is seen as a deficit). The texts that were chosen for this annotated bibliography help target this very notion of identity, but for immigrant students. Because of my own personal experiences, this text set really hits home for me.

The following texts represent a range of countries and continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean) and represent a wide range of perspectives that will be helpful for immigrants students to not only see their own personal stories represented in text, but to help native student as well, understand the struggles that their immigrant peers experience. Some of the major themes represented in these texts are: separation, fondness/longings of the old country, breakdown of family structure, feeling suspended between two worlds, issues of belonging, adjusting to American life (language, customs, ways of living, etc.), rejecting the ways of the old country, language as a means of self identity, hostility, power, difference, and wanting to fit in, just to name a few. In all of these texts, the protagonist must as Clifford says, “...undergo the total confusion of having to choose between the familiar and the new is related to issues of power and status” (Clifford, et al, p.11)

Texts: Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean

1.A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah (Africa- Sierra Leone)

 

Written as a first person narrative, Ishmael recounts his experience before, during, and after the civil war in Sierra Leone. Starting from when he was a young boy, and ending when he was an older teen, Ishmael recounts his harsh and often disturbing experience as a child solider, witnessing and participating in several of the violent acts that come along with war. Eventually moving to America, Beah struggles to find a new life in America, assimilate to American culture, while at the same time deal with his traumatic past. As highlighted when Beah states “I smoked marijuana, ate, and snorted cocaine and brown brown. That was all I did for three days before we left for the new base we had captured. When we left, we threw kerosene on the thatched-roof houses, lit them with matches, and fired a couple of RPGs into the walls.” ( Beah, p.159)

While being rehabilitated, he must adapt to the American culture, weather, way of life, schooling, as well as culture, while at the same time missing his home, yet coming to terms with the harsh reality of violence of what was once called his home. Is Ishmael a criminal or a victim? Should he forget the memories of the past, or confront them head on? These and other more are questions Ishmael deals with as he attempts to create a new life in America.

2.Pushing the Elephant (documentary) (Africa-Congo)

This documentary tells the heart- wrenching story of a Congolese mother of 10 who escapes with 9 of her children from the horrors of civil war in the Congo to Phoenix, Arizona. As she struggles to reconcile her past, while making a better life for herself and her 9 children, she struggles to bring her last and final teenage daughter who was exiled in Kenya during the war, to reunite with the rest of her family in Arizona. The story documents her daughters transition in Phoenix as a teenager going to a new school, while also dealing with the heavy load of the war.

Her daughter transitions from being a motherless child in Kenya to being in ESL classes, learning to swipe a card at a lunch line, and speak English. She faces the stares of her classmates because she is different.

3.Behind the Mountains by Edwidge Danticat (the Caribbean- Haiti)

 

Celiane is the main female protagonist in a story about her coming of age in Haiti, and subsequent relocation to Brooklyn, NY due to political and economic unrest. Celiane deals with many themes such as the changing of her family structure, as well as longings to be back home in Haiti, while adjusting to and figuring out her identity as a Haitian adolescent, growing up to be a woman in New York.

“When I moved to Brooklyn at the age of twelve, it was hard for us to be a family again...Eventually, I adjusted to life in New York...I would never stop missing the Haitian mountain villages, which I have revisited many times as an adult, and have returned to in my imagination....(Danticat p. 164 ) I find the snow less beautiful now, messy even. When so much of it is falling, it looks like it can be dangerous...(Danticat p. 79)

Celiane is trying to adjust to the American way of life but longs to relive the Haiti of her childhood. She fights to figure out who she is: should she forget he life in Haiti and fully be American? Or can she be both? These are questions Celiane grapples with throughout the text.

4.Flight to Freedom by Ana Veciana- Suarez (Latin America- Cuba)

Yara Garcia and her family live a middle class life in Cuba, but until 1967 when she is in the 7th grade, when Fidel Castro comes into power. Her family must flee to Miami, Florida to escape political resistance, due to her father's anit-Castro beliefs. As her family transitions, Yara must come of age and reconcile her identity, as her family grows ambivalent to her independence and merging of American culture with her Cuban culture.

“Mami worries about the bad influences I will encounter. I have no idea what she means and, quite honesty, I am a little excited about being away from home for the first time.” (Veciana Suarez p. 30) While she fights to find her independence from her family who wants to hold on to the old culture, she does have feelings of longing to be back home when she says, “I miss everything-my mother, my father, the tile porch at my Abuelolo, the fresh watermelon batidos on a hot summer afternoon. I miss clean bathrooms and warm baths...I miss the feel of my palms when they are soft.” (back cover). Yara is clearly struggling with adjusting to new life in America, but deep inside, the of sense of who she was with her family back at Cuba, still haunts her.

5.Swimming to America by Alice Mead (Europe-Albania)

 

Linda Berati is an 8^th grader when her recurrent nightmares haunt her, yet don’t make any sense. When she confronts her Mother about this, her mother recounts to Linda the painful story of how her family escaped, through dire and remarkable circumstances from Albania to America, eventually settling to Brooklyn, when Linda was a baby, barley old enough to remember anything.

Linda struggles to reconcile her family’s painful past with her current situation living in Brooklyn when she says “ I know her life was hard, But that was a long time ago, In Albania, for Pete's sake. Things would be a lot better for me if she stopped yelling.” (Mead p. 56)

While Linda comes to terms with her family’s hidden, yet painful history, Linda must now come to terms with her own identity as well. She is not a native born American, but she must reconcile her identity with her painful past.

6.The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahri (Asia-India)

 

Gogol Ganguli is the son of Indian immigrants who never feels like he can find his place in the world. Ganguli grows up as a "typical American boy", able to date beautiful girls, and even go to an American ivy league university. Ganguli's story is the classic struggle of cultural assimilation for 2nd generation immigrant children.

“How is little Gogol”...Does he only speak English”? She laughs, “He doesn’t speak much of anything, at the moment” (Lahri p 34) clearly highlights the issue of identity in the form of language that Gogol must go through with his family. While Gogol was born in America, he struggles to reconcile his Indian heritage, yet still be a “typical American boy”. Either way, Gogol feels shunned by both sides, left to feel suspended between two worlds.

7. A Step from Heaven by An Na (Asia-Korea)
   
   
    

Young Ju is four when her family moves from their home in Korea to California. As her family fight through hardships in America such as low paying jobs, and her father's deteriorating condition (bitter, alcoholic, and abusive), Ju must struggle to come of age and assert her identity while her family structure continues to break down before her eyes.

Young Ju tries to understand her father's abusiveness as they are settling in American when her aunt says “Your life can be different, Young Ju. Study and be strong. In America, woman have chives. You have choices, Uhmna.” (Na p. 129). Ju witnesses how the breakdown of her family structure has really affected the way she views herself, as well as the new country, and longs to be back home in Korea.

In closing, these texts highlight these three main points mentioned by Clifford, “a) rejecting American culture, b) embracing American culture and rejecting the home cultures and c) realizing that the best alternative is to accept elements of both cultures whole recognizing that taking on some American cultures does not necessarily mean losing all of ones native culture.” (Clifford p. 14). All of these themes contribute to the growing identity development that immigrant adolescents must undergo, which can quite possibly take a lifetime. All of these characters form these text want and have the need to come of age in very unstable, very resistant conditions. While immigrant students go through the same thing as they transition to America, the great thing about these texts is that they help immigrant adolescents see perspectives that are similar to their own. It also and helps native students be educated on the immigrant adolescent perspective.