Blog 4 Topic 4

I am a first generation immigrant. I moved to the United States 3 years ago in 2013 and have only had the chance to visit home, the Philippines, twice. I cannot fully sympathize to the “normal” struggle of many immigrants in the US considering that I grew up bilingual and had, sort of, better circumstances than a lot of other immigrants. I can however sympathize to some aspects of their lives in a different way.

Maxine Hong Kingston tells how she “spoils [her] day with self disgust when [she] hears [her] own voice come skittering out into the open,” and “it makes people wince to hear it.” In the same respect I had a hard time adjusting to the accent that Americans have but over time I was able to speak with their accent enough that they could properly understand what I was saying without having to repeat myself more than twice. I sympathize with the effort it takes to have to, in a way, learn to speak again because society doesn’t understand what you’re saying even if you’re speaking their language. Unfortunately for her she had to learn a new language altogether since at home they did not speak English. I on the other hand had already known English and I had also moved to the US at a much older state than she did. Much like her, “I didn’t know Americans don’t drink out of saucers.” It wasn’t exactly that fact that I didn’t know, but in the same way I didn’t know that they did things so differently in America. Growing up in the Philippines one could/would eat with their hands and have dinner with their family all the time. In America, I found that it’s somewhat unacceptable to eat with your hands and many families don’t even eat meals together. The culture change was something to get used to since standing out isn’t the best way to stay hidden in a place where you don’t know what to do.

I also share the same feelings with Sandra Cisneros as she writes in her story “Woman Hollering Creek” about  basing life off of what we see on the television. To be clear, in my own experience there are things that are spot on when it comes to TV mimicking real life and some things that don’t happen at all. The main character in the story, Cleofilas, was basing her life in America after the kind of life “the books and songs and telenovelas describe when one finds, finally, the great love of one’s life, and does whatever one can, must do, at whatever the cost.” Much like her, I had expectations to live a life that I saw on TV, whether it be something like “Glee”, “Gossip Girl”, or some other TV show. But, like a big surprise to the both of us, life was nothing like that of what we saw on TV or read in books. Of course I wasn’t expecting there to be any singing and dancing but the type of lives the characters lived, filled with drama and excitement, was something I was hoping for and wanted to live. Cleofilas wanted a love that could only be reached by someone being played in a movie or on TV and was destroyed when she realized that life wasn’t a reality show waiting for the host to spice it up.

I may not know what the hardest struggles are when it comes to being an immigrant, but I do know what it is to miss your family that now live thousands of miles away, I know what it’s like to have to change the way you live to be accepted by a society that never really wanted you in the first place, and I know what it’s like to have to leave everything you know behind to go to an unfamiliar place for “better opportunities.” Unlike most immigrant stories that have people that don’t speak English or people that believe everything they see on TV, I want an immigrant story about the immigrant that already knows how to speak English and doesn’t believe everything they see on TV but still knows the struggles. I came here knowing English and knowing that life isn’t always what you see on TV but I had my own struggle that I had to go through that many people don’t always seem to realize.