(i.e. people who have immigrated to America before their teens)
Dear 1.5th Generation immigrant:
It’s overwhelming to be us.
I would like to first address that it’s okay to feel disconnected from your homeland and your “homeland”; It’s okay to feel like you are not enough for both, but too much for either at the same time.
Say it with me, even if it does not feel credulous:
It’s okay to speak your mother tongue in a country that may demonize it whether its silent oppressors realize it or not, and it’s okay to not speak your mother tongue to feel more included.
It’s okay to feel like you’re the only person like you in the room, even if the room is filled by people who look like you.
It’s okay to have a list of marginalized identities that go on and on, and feel like that you’re using that list as an excuse for your pitfalls. Trust me, you are probably not.
It’s okay to speak with just little enough accent to be passed as an American, and it’s okay to not hold it back and own it.
It’s okay to feel like you belong to neither nations you have ever lived in, and it’s okay to pinpoint yourself with one or the other.
Whatever you do, I want you to know that there are people out there who will appreciate you wholeheartedly, even though it may be rarer to find. Because not being able to compromise is a luxury we don’t have, but compromising itself is an amazing human virtue that have kept our species going, and have kept people like us going. One thing we should especially own for ourselves is our ability to trek into unknown realms, in a world where too many are not reaching out of their comfort zone.
Yes, our parents might have paved half of the crossroads to Rome, but the rest is up to you while most people are already there. You see your peers with legacy, with previous endowments, peers who walk with jest and could fit in to the mainstream with no problem, and peers who use their ignorance as a path to bliss. You see them living life with less to worry and more immediacy for indulgences. And you?
You must pull some all-nighters, go out of your way to reach out and network, somehow prove ourselves that we are have enough flair but not too much of it. To learn how to finish the rest of the construction work to Rome, with nothing but your bare hands, your ingenuity from cultural comparison as our part time job, and your fear of not fitting in or fitting in too much. Because let alone legacy, you barely have family relatives in this nation, and everything that your parents have ever done to bring you here has rockier foundation than some of your peers. You fit in, but do not at the same time, and you often wondered your place.
Fitting in, what an arbitrary phrase!
Now that I am 18, having resided this country in under ten years, I have grown to love, not fully, but as much as I could, my intersecting identities, and I am here to tell you that self-love is sometimes about breaking hearts, including our own, to grow into a better someone that we have yet to meet. However, the results are extremely worth it, and you will do yourself a favor in the long run.
So, let’s always, always bring our love for the American experiment with leeway for hesitation, regardless of how small or how controverted that love may be sometimes. To always have thankfulness, tolerance, and understanding in our hearts for our first home, regardless of how much we disagree with its political climate or cultural customs.
Let’s think of a personal way to move, to encourage ourselves, and cling not to the danger of the single story when moving through life; to address our afflictions honestly, and to heal the wounds, no matter how small or how big, by preaching our stories such as having to translate for our parents and teach them about social justice. Stories of us having to teach them how to survive while teaching ourselves from the same textbook. Being there for them, dealing with excruciating solitude as a child, and working fifty times as hard just so you could reap half of what others could.
To the incredible patience that has come out of having stellar adaptation skills just to order coffee in a local joint at a young age, to learn how to deal with oppression and learning how to be a part of the solution in the hard way.
How to bleed, not visibly, but through our hearts that yearned for this country to love us wholeheartedly, only to be let down, but still getting back up with incredible astonishment and appreciation for what we have learned.
To balancing our fight with our resting times and becoming experts at it.
To the journey of loving ourselves that is not always accompanied by sunshine. To getting let down, but cherishing that feeling more than success.
To success: to unapologetically owning our growths. To the wonderful intellectual versatility our international experiences offer us, the fruits gathered from breaking our own branches of prejudice because we have been on the both sides of things: America, where resources for change outweigh the incentives for change. And another nation, and in my case, China, where incentives for change are largely censored and resources monopolized.
To cultural literacy, and to use our experiences as our textbooks. To being truthful and moving on when others judge us for the place of origin. To creating great noise in a world of apathy.
To cracking open this book that we have shoved to the bottom of our to-do list before. To creating some noise on an issue that only covers a small minority, in an ocean of continuous meshing of different identities such as race, sex, gender, background, religious beliefs, etc. that intersect and overlap with one another. To diversity and what it truly means, way beyond just the colors of our skin but relevant to daily experiences and what we learn because of our differences.
It’s half and half, it’s either/or/neither/both/maybe/unknown/let’s-ignore-it-and-move-on. To shifting identities that bring colors to this unique nation. To channeling our frustration into making this world into a better place than we have found it.
To the incredible grit and the hustle of a semi-new immigrant. To those of us who take on some of the heavy responsibility that parents of 1st generation Americans had to shoulder. To recognizing the fact that in order for America to become the nation for all people that reside in it, we should cross rivers uncrossed and speak words unheard.
To us, 1.5th generation immigrants who are after all, human.
With thankfulness,
Ying
