Personal Narrative: My Life As An Immigrant

I come from an immigrant family and I have had the privilege to be exposed to different social, cultural and economic realities all my life as I constantly navigated across cultures. Aside from family origin in Ecuador, I was born in Virginia and lived in the Caribbean (Puerto Rico) for six years. The biggest influences on the way I see life comes from my immigrant parents. I have learned to perceive their differences and appreciate their interactions with me.

Growing up with parents who are immigrants can present many obstacles for the children of those immigrants. There are many problems people face that we do not even realize. Things happen behind closed doors that we might not even be aware of. Writers Sandra Cisneros and Amy Tan help us become aware of these problems. Both of these authors express those hardships in their stories about growing up with foreign parents. Although their most apparent hardships are about different struggles, both of their stories have a similar underlying theme.

Welcome. A single word on the carpet by the door greets me whenever I come home. There had been times where that one word made my heart beat and cry with joy. But not now, for many things changed through the years. Now when I look at this carpet, I instead question back: ‘Do you really mean that?’

It was summer of 2010. My parents were still married and we went up to Wichita Falls, Wichita to go see my brother Chris who was in the Military on base working. We stayed there for a week. I still remember the car ride up there. We rented a van, we had tvs in the rented van, my sister Rylee, my other brother Garrett (he was in the military too), my mom Traci, and my dad Doug, and my brothers military bag it was like a person. I still remember I had to sit in the back with that bad it was so big. Garrett put the seatbelt around the bag like it was a person. The car trip was so long but it was all worth it in the end. It was in the middle of the week and we were out on the beach. My brother Chris and his pregnant wife Ashley had a boat the water

It is not uncommon to hear one recount their latest family reunion or trip with their cousins, but being a first generation immigrant, I sacrificed the luxury of taking my relatives for granted for the security of building a life in America. My parents, my brother, and I are the only ones in my family who live in the United States, thus a trip to India to visit my extended family after 4 years was an exciting yet overwhelming experience. Throughout the trip, I felt like a stranger in the country where I was born as so many things were unfamiliar, but there were a few places that reminded me of my childhood.

“Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us (p. 111).” These words, spoken by Ántonia, the protagonist of the novel ‘My Ántonia’, give light to the situation immigrants found themselves in after moving to the North America’s Western frontier. This novel reveals how immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s had to overcome numerous obstacles on the path towards ‘The American Dream’ which those native to the area did not have to face.

It was a wonderful eye-opening experience to interview Carmen Anton, a Spanish immigrant for this project. I learned so many things about how she arrived in American as a small child with only her sister by her side and her strive to become American. The emotional struggles of Carmen and her sister, Elena, were real and I didn’t realize it was that emotionally draining to come to a new country. Her experience showed me how hard it is to fit into a new society knowing absolutely nothing about the world she was dropped into. The fact that she flew here with her younger sister and then live for three months without her parents to guide her in this unfamiliar setting, shows me how strong and brave Carmen was at the young age of eight. When she first came, she assumed it would be like

When reading through the different perspectives in Cristina Henriquez’s The Book of Unknown Americans, each perspective provides a different sense of emotion as each individual travels to the United States in search of the American dream. In Alma, Arturo, and Maribel’s case, the family travels in search of more adequate health care and better school systems to suit Maribel’s needs after her accident. By taking in their perspectives, it is nearly impossible not to root for their characters. Although immigration is such a pressing and more challenging topic to debate in the United States, the book raises the question of, “Wouldn’t you do the same for your family?” There are a numerous amount of influences in making this decision that tell what we should and should not believe when addressing this issue including family, friends, the media, politics, etc. With these influences, it is difficult to make an unbiased decision.

I am from a country with beautiful landscapes that has turned into a warzone country.

So, I decided to document this experience to check some myths and facts about immigration and the American dream, through the life of eight immigrants.

I am the seventh of eight siblings, born and raised in Port-au Prince, Haiti. On January 10, 2010, my family was victim of a major earthquake resulting in my parents losing their business, house and a one of my siblings. We suffered from economic difficulties and my parents were no longer able to provide for us. Consequently, we departed to the U.S. to find a better life and live “the American dream.”

They all have kids making me an aunt of 6 nieces and 2 nephews. For me being an aunt is like being a mother. I’ve learned to care for them and nurture them as if they were my kids. I always try my best to set a good example. Pushing my older nieces to their limits is important simply because as a child I never had the help of my siblings in school nor my parents since they didn’t speak fluent English, understanding my homework was as hard for them as it was for me. My parents arrived to this country at young age from Colombia. Not knowing one English word, but that didn’t stop them. They had responsibilities and the hope of one day living the American dream. My parents have lived in Queens ever since. If it wasn’t for my parent’s decision to arrive to this country where would I be now? Would I have had the opportunity to sit in your classroom? Maybe not. So I’m grateful for what I have and what I’ve learned and proud of who I am now thanks to the courage of my parents leaving their family to begin their

Everyone with a job in my family put in money to get my aunt and her 3 kids to come to the US. I remember when I was about 13 being really excited to have my cousins and my aunt here with me. My aunt, cousins and anyone from a third world country would love to come to America. My aunt or “Tia” as you would say in spanish, would look forward to working and be in better living conditions than she was in the DR. At times there was not any light or water to shower in her village. My cousins would always dream about coming to school here and going to college for anything they wanted to study in their future.

My parents did not come to San Diego with a lot of money, they only had ten million dong when they came, which to me sounded like a lot but my mom laughed and told me it was a thousand dollars in the U.S. For my parents, this meant they would go homeless in two months if one of them did not find any sort of work. For the first month, it was very difficult for them to find a job because they did not know how to find one. My mother would tell me how my father was a very strong man and yet no one would hire him because he would not know what to say during the interview. My mother would tell me how there were many nights she would fall asleep crying because she would think back to Vietnam when she was with her family and friends, where she did not feel limited or restricted by anything but money, and how now that she was here in San Diego, it was not only money but also her opportunity to socialize and communicate with many of the people around her. Even with my father by her side, she felt helpless and excluded from the community, like she no longer had a voice. Fortunately, near the end of the first month, one of the Vietnamese neighbors actually noticed my parents and greeted them. This man had a family and welcomed my parents greatly. He even helped my father find a job and get access to government services such as rent assistance, Medi-Cal and Food Stamps. Many immigrants share the same experiences my parents

At the young age of 10, my native born Filipino mother was adopted by her aunt in Canada and shipped across the world to a place unknown to her. The reason behind this adoption came for two reasons: the first being poverty and the second being favoritism. While my mother wasn 't unloved, she certainly wasn 't the favorite among her siblings. This, along with her family 's deepening poverty, was the catalyst for a life changing event. Scared and inexperienced with any culture other than her own, she looked for answers and comfort before leaving. I can distinctly remember her telling me the story for the first time; her father bringing her to the airport, holding her while she cried and begged to stay, and slipping a small