Introduction, Waking Up American

by Angela Jane Fountas

I USED TO WALK PAST a Vietnamese restaurant that sold pho, beef noodle soup, on the way to my bus stop after work. I never saw any customers inside, just two Asian children, a boy and a girl, about four and six years old, and their young parents busy behind the counter. The children sat on their knees at one of the tables, coloring or drawing their worlds, or so I imagined.

One week, the girl sat outside on a crate with a box of See's school-fundraising chocolate bars and a sign that read $1.00. I walked past on Monday and smiled, in a hurry to catch my bus. On Tuesday, I stopped and bought one; she smiled back, sitting quietly next to her sign. I bought a second chocolate bar on Wednesday. After the girl shyly said "thank you," she ran inside the shop calling out something I couldn't understand to her parents.

I grew up, in part, in my family's diner, so I felt a kinship with this Vietnamese girl. But she also reminded me of the divide I had sometimes felt growing up. My father emigrated from Greece in 1958 and married my mother, an American, in 1962. This little Vietnamese girl was able to communicate with both of her parents in their native tongue. Up until the age of twenty-seven, I could not. At home, we spoke English; at the diner, my father and his siblings spoke Greek. I have been forever curious about girls like me who grew up biculturally and make their home in the United States. And this anthology is my way of satisfying this curiosity: Where are you from? Who have you become?

Why this curiosity about women, specifically? The reason is simple. I am the second of four sisters, and although I have two brothers, they didn't enter my world until I was a teenager. My mother is one of seven sisters. Most of my memories from childhood are of my mother, her sisters, and my sisters. My father, like most immigrants, worked long hours so that his children would have more than he had growing up. So, in many ways, mine was a female- centric upbringing. And my adolescence, like many girls', was overshadowed by a desire to fit in, which was complicated by the expectations my father and his family brought with them from Greece. In collecting these essays, I wanted to see how others traversed this terrain to come out whole on the other end.

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According to the 2002 U.S. Census Bureau report, one in five residents is either foreign-born or first-generation, the highest level in U.S. history. Americans' collective consciousness is imprinted with images and stories of famine ships crossing the Atlantic, Asian immigrant laborers feeding the gold rush frenzy, Mexican immigrants heading north to escape the turmoil of the revolution, European immigrants passing through Ellis Island. All important stories.

Waking Up American collects essays by women from a new wave of first-generation Americans, including those whose stories begin after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was passed. This act eliminated national origin, race, or ancestry as a basis for denying immigration, ridding the law of its discriminatory elements. This change in immigration law, which grew out of the civil rights movement, resulted in a shift in immigration from developed Western countries to developing countries, such as those in Asia and Latin America.

"First generation" by definition covers two groups of people: immigrants and those whose parents are immigrants. This book expands on this definition to include women like me, for whom being first generation on one side of the family tree is an inextricable part of their identity.

The writers in this collection have roots in China, Germany, Greece, Haiti, India, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Russia, and Vietnam.

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I literally woke up American, born to a legal alien from Greece and his mostly Irish American wife. Some of the women whose essays are collected in this book are children of immigrants; others immigrated to the United States during childhood. But we all, at one time or another, woke up American, and continue to wake up to what this means.

American equals citizen, but it is also an identifier. What happens when another noun joins it to signify ethnicity or descent? You'll find some of the answers to this question in this book.

In "(Un)American," Patricia Justine Tumang writes about being confronted with her own identity when Kenyans refused to accept that she was either American or Asian while in the country for a study-abroad program: "Trying to combine my two cultures was like mixing oil with water -- no matter how much I tried to mix my Filipino and American identities, they always separated."

Adolescent girls from all walks of life struggle with identity; first-generation girls struggle with an additional layer of cultural identity. The contributors in this book explore coming to terms with multiple identities while coming of age biculturally. This includes being identified as American while strongly identifying with one's mother country. For some, it includes the additional layers of racial or sexual identity that add to the complexity of being "American."

In "Back in the U.S.S.R." Victoria Gomelsky writes: "All the traits, sayings, and customs I associate with my family -- from the moments of superstitious silence we observe before leaving on a trip to the exclamation points that pepper our letters -- belong to a larger cultural legacy I abandoned in childhood. Being here is my way of getting it back."

Amy André and Marlene Barberousse-Nikolin, both Haitian American, discuss their "experiences, similarities, and differences in growing up, coming out, and exploring multiple layers of identity" through a recorded conversation in "Up the Mountain from Petionville."

In "Hello Kitty Packs Heat," Tina Lee writes: "Like a chameleon, I adapt my colors to an ever-changing environment because my perception of the world is filtered through three lenses: one Chinese, one American, one female. It's like being a Toyota-esque automobile designed by Chinese engineers specifically to meet American needs, assembled by small-town autoworkers in the heartland adhering to an East/West hybrid set of manufacturing standards, and then marketed to the American consumer as something smart and efficient that'll 'love you long time.'"

These essays are moving, sometimes funny, and always honest.

During adolescence, some of us broke ourselves apart to fit in. And most of us have had to find ways to answer the question, "What are you?" that didn't leave us anything less than whole. Side by side, these statements may sound contradictory, but in many ways first-generation women become whole by halves. To some, we are hyphenated Americans. But to ourselves, we are compound individuals with roots that extend across the seas.

In putting this book out into the world, my intention is to add to the conversation about the ways in which culture and identity shape individual lives and continue to help shape this country. And my hope is that this book will one day make it into the hands of the Vietnamese girl who sold me the chocolate bars and inspire her to write her own story.