In an April episode of the On Being podcast, Vietnamese poet Ocean Vuong eloquently describes the conundrum of being the child of an immigrant in America:
The great crisis of the first and second generation is the first generation made it here, and to live at all is such a privilege that they’re happy, and even encourage you to put your head down: work, fade away, get your meals, and live a quiet life. And I think the second generation, the great conundrum there, the great paradox, is that they want to be seen. They want to make something. And what a better way to make something and feel yourself with agency than to be an artist? So, so many of us immigrant children end up betraying our parents in order to subversively achieve our parents’ dreams.
There is growth and freedom for all of us in considering how our desire to be more seen in our stories meant leaving our parents and family culture. Vuong words offer us a way to reframe that betrayal as actually entering into our parents’ dreams for us, whether they see it that way or not.
Join my online group on Tuesday, July 28th, from 6:00-7:30 pm MST discussing two fabulous movies (The Big Sick & The Farewell) that explore the immigrant experience and what it has to offer all of us in understanding how we leave our family systems in order to enter into a truer life than our parents were able to give us.