Personal Narrative: Integrating Into American Society

I didn’t believe in aliens until I was abducted by them. I was put in some kind of contraption and I’m not sure what happened exactly, but it’s clear that I’m not where I was. Everything in 2016 is different, I don’t know if I’m in a different state or not but people are dressing differently and acting differently, and the cars, the cars are all different! I’ve been here for quite some time now and have noticed a lot of differences from where I lived in Oceanside, California in 1940. I’ve been transported to the year 2016 and there are so many things that have changed and evolved and among them are political, economic, social, and cultural changes.

Johnnie, Veronica, Frank et al. do me a solid with all your “knowledge” and “wokeness” step outside your educational privilege and support systems for a minute. I in no place in my post said anything about America being perfect so what you did was hijack a status about the solidarity I feel for the people in my life and in this country who very much will struggle with an intensified troubling life experience in the country to PROVE you have some kind of exceptional wokeness or understanding of America. MISS me with it. No America was not safe for everyone but we just did was extend the people who it was unsafe for. If that’s cool with you then carry on with your bullshit. I have NEVER EVER said it’s a safe place for everyone. I have NEVER

The way the story begins is probably the same as others. Obviously you are born and raised somewhere. Well my story began in Worcester Massachusetts. I was born on January 15th, 1995, to wonderful parents who people might think is not your usual mix. My mother is from the Dominican Republic and my father is from Ecuador. Yes, I know, the weirdest mix ever but it brought me into this world, so I'm proud.

Growing up in America, I have always been surrounded by many cultures and different ethnic groups. Many of those cultures differ from my own traditionally. For the first half of my life, I was raised in detroit, a predominantly black city - I had always assumed. My family eventually moved out of Detroit and we moved to Inkster. Inkster was a much smaller city, but it was also a predominantly black city. In 2011, my family moved from Inkster, Michigan to Canton, Michigan. Although the two cities are less than a half hour apart - the cultural and ethnic groups are extremely diverse. While attending my freshman year of high school in Canton I realized, I was a minority there. More than half of the student body, more than half of the community

“American Dream.” Those two words are what drove my parents to escape the challenges of living in poverty stricken Colombia. Being a first generation, young, female, Latina immigrant my upbringing has made me fortunate enough to embrace all of the opportunities available for me.

Walking, walking, and more walking. Today is the day that we begin traveling to Fiume to board a steamship to this place called America. My family doesn't have a lot of money so we can't afford a ride to the port. I only have one pair of shoes and they have many holes in them. We've walked for what seems like an eternity or at least to me. Today is very bittersweet. We're leaving the only place I've ever called home to live in a place we've never seen before. IM not ready to leave. I love Italy but I know it is no longer safe for me, my mom, and my dad. I'm only six years old but I'm old enough to know this could be all a lie. What if America isn't so amazing? What if we done make it? What if we get sent back? So many questions and not

That’s basically all I could understand as I left the immigration center. People all around me were talking in languages I had only studied in textbooks, which barely helped. That was the first time I could really look around and see where I was. The sound of car engines roared in my ears as I walked across the street; people squashed into a small bus while chattering in a garbled language that made no sense. Everywhere I looked I saw chaos, and I couldn’t have been happier.

My “American Dream” wasn’t exactly my American Dream so I’m gonna make up some stuff. The way I will achieve my American Dream is to kinda try in school, just enough to pass it at least, and I will help out my community by doing things around in my area which is almost nothing because I live in the middle of nowhere. In school I will need to finish my English work and complete all of my aows. In Algebra I will have to try really hard because math is super important in life but math is extremely hard and and is dumb but you have to have it.

Living in America has its ups and downs. The different culture and people is what makes America to me. Every day I learn something new while I go to school in America. Personally, as the days go back I carless about humanity and more about myself and how to improve myself. Money has become a major need for me recently and I don’t believe in love anymore. Sometime I just sit and think what kind of person I be like if I keep living in America. I’m happy I can here for school, I don’t think I would know this must about life. And as the days pass by I learn so much more about myself that it makes me question if I ever knew anything to begin with. Unfortunately, I still wonder what life would have been like if I did my college education in Nigeria.

Moving to America was a significant personal experience. When I was just in at the age of eight, I did not really care for our emigration from our country as I was just a boy not knowing the different ways it was going to affect me. I thought it was just going to be a change of scenery and not much else but boy was I wrong. The setting, culture, and people were so different from what I was used to. I was used to not wearing shoes in people’s house, seeing mountains in the horizons instead of skyscrapers, and being surrounded by family and I had to do something abouts this feeling of unfamiliarity. What I did was what anyone else would do when trying to

Some people view the outside world as a dangerous place full of disparity and misery, others like to embrace that unknown and try to use it as a catalyst for inner growth. I like to see myself as the latter, the individual who lives for the rush of the unknown. I looked down to see what I could only describe as a dream come true. It was a ticket for a six month tour around Asia that would lead to the complete immersion of native culture and tradition- Vietnamese Pho, the mountain folk of Nepal, the Muay Thai martial arts of Thailand, Chinese Architecture and the beaches of Laos are some of the places that we got to experience first-hand. As a participant I was expected to live with 15 other individuals from around the world that I had never

Anyone who has the desire to live in the Unites States of America knows that it is the greatest nation among all nations. People either have little knowledge of other countries to believe this general notion or have truly seen and been informed of the opportunal prosperity that exists in the spirit of America. The American Dream is the idea that sets the minds of people determined to be part of a great nation because everyone has the equal opportunity to become successful and prosperous, if you work hard enough to achieve it. The American Dream is the reason why so many people come to the United States in search for better economic and liberty opportunities. What causes frustration and discouragement to enter this nation is the fact that the

I feel that America’s greatest gift to my generation would be freedom. Freedom has technically given me life, an education, and has taught me important life lessons. I would not want to live in a country that is not free.

As an international student, it is critical to consider schools which are friendly towards persons who may not share the same culture as the major population of the student body. Having lived and thrived in a culture so different from my own for sometime, I have learned that for the most part, people are a lot welcoming to my culture when I do not try to hide from it but rather, offer my different perceptions and opinions about the questions I am being asked.

An anonymous poet once said “ABC and NBC do not weep” and “as blood drips from my television screen onto my living room floor, but I walk around it.” This powerfully speaks to the desensitization of the American society, and to twenty-first-century society as a conglomeration. Every night's millions of us sit down to watch some crime series such as Criminal Minds or NCIS. These shows give society a fractured, disjointed account of the justice system and law enforcement, but they also cause us to become comfortable with the idea of murder and a broken justice in a way, “[the] blood drips from [our] television screen onto [our] living room floor[s], but [we] walk around it,” masking the horror and rationalizing it. I have fallen victim to this