The roots that anchor and spur on
How nurturing their origin helps immigrants expand their identity
Roots connect us to the origin, the foundation, to where the story begins. They remind us of where we come from and keep us from getting lost. Like a boat that sets out to traverse the vast and turbulent ocean full of uncertainty and the unknown, immigrants need an anchor, a soundness to pause, reflect, regroup and then keep going.
As I continue to dive deep through the immigrant mind, the most powerful anchor that comes through an array of cultural customs and traditions that help them feel connected with their roots, is — language. Language is strength, grounding, confidence, integrity, refuge, ease, an instant access to identity, a clear sign of belonging:
I’m teaching my Cameroonian dialect to my daughter. I want her to be able to understand where she comes from.
A lot of problems are happening here within the black community because most of them have lost their culture, most of them don’t know where they’re from, so it causes them to be lost in the society.
I have a strong sense of myself because I know where I come from, I know what I have. That gives me strength to be able to battle anything, go through struggles and tough times.
I know where I’ve been and what I went through and I know the values that I hold. My destiny is in my hands not in someone else’s. I know what I stand for. I know my culture, I know my ancestors, I know what my people did, I have them behind me.
Such powerful feelings that mother tongue conjures up compels many first generation immigrants not only to preserve it for themselves but to extend its sense of protection on to their children.
Interestingly though, others explain their practicing their heritage language at home as a mere practicality. Not speaking it would be a lost opportunity to equip their children with a valuable skill sought after in the increasingly global world:
We speak Italian at home, but mostly to be able to communicate with family back in Italy. And it’s a powerful practical skill to know languages and I’m proud that my kids speak it. But it’s mostly a necessity, not because I’m Italian and they should know it.
For a while I thought of them as Italians like me and my husband are, but then realized that no, they are American, their story is different.
While they know their children’s story diverges from theirs, most immigrant parents find it unnerving to see their offspring stray too far from the roots and completely replace their culture of origin with a new one.
Stressing the purely pragmatic nature of her decision to speak to her children in her native tongue, a women I interviewed later, seemingly casually, added that “it just feels more natural to speak German with them.” As children are a natural extension of ourselves, language, too is so automatic and visceral that forgoing it seems as if voluntarily parting ways with a limb, severing the ties with the continuation of who we are.
The man from Zambia I interviewed mourned his daughter’s loss of African languages she used to speak because she’ll no longer “have something tangible to identify with.” Neglecting the language brings with it the unsettling possibility of our flesh and blood becoming unrecognizable:
The priority here is to not have your offspring get lost in the American society. We want them to have some cultural base of the motherland. Maybe they wouldn’t get lost, but we would.
We fight that our kids don’t lose that identity, that part of who we are. Because we see ourselves in them and them through us. It is not really necessary for the kids. For them it’s hard work to learn the language, the behavioral recipes and cultural customs while living in the society that’s different.
But, we don’t need to push them to become Americans because they already are. We want them to also be what we are. (Bosnia & Herzegovina)
However different their children’s story, it stems from the same anchor as their parents’. The roots cannot be denied, they cannot ever be fully abandoned, only built on. Building on strong roots implies progress because their soundness provides a sense of direction.The origin they draw from, lays the foundation to the framework for going through one’s life. Roots give a semblance of control in an unpredictable and often cruel world.
As direction is generally reduced to either right or wrong, maintaining the roots becomes about upholding the values along the right path. Like a tree, a person’s integrity can grow or deteriorate. Always looking for the sun, opportunities and ideas, immigrants search for the promising, shinier, better land, a new soil that will grow them in ways motherland couldn’t.
However, there are different ways to get to the sun’s light. Its rays can blind us into veering off the right path. What healthy roots condition is a strong core and as long as its essence is maintained, clear and present in the mind of an immigrant, the tree can flourish and branch out:
The origin is the core, like a tree, you don’t let it bend. For me, Ghana is like the stump of the tree. In botany, etiolation happens when the tree grows toward the sun. To straighten it up, you need to have a stick and if you don’t do that it grows the other way and that is not a good thing because you want to raise a straight tree, a good boy. Then the boy is very correct, tells the truth, has work ethic.
The sun is a good thing to keep the tree alive. The tree can still get the sunshine, but if it bends down it wouldn’t be a healthy tree. The branches and the leaves represent the rest of my life elsewhere. If you see some of the branches going down, yo do something about it. And if the stump is healthy, it’s not that hard.
Roots are not there to go back to, to get stuck at, to dwell on. They are not there to unveil the destination either. Not roots, not anything can point to it anyways. For immigrants, roots are something to reference, a powerful guide to those who are never truly settled, a reliable support on the journey, something to hang on to when confusion takes over or the going gets tough.
The ever floating roots of migration are up against a fine balancing act between retaining the nourishment of the past that sprouted and birthed life into them, and letting the newness in, the sustenance of the new land that can spur on the growth to its full potential.
What immigrants find in America are many improvements to their mostly material life quality. However, its predominant culture of individualism does not lend itself well to building true connections and the distances between people (natives and immigrants) become wide and palpable. With communication reduced to occasional pleasantries and work related exchanges, none of us get a chance to see and be seen. Our various backgrounds get watered down, even extinct.
We all end up living the same efficiency dominated lives that prioritize productivity over deeper human connection and squeeze out of it the variety and warmth. Soon, diversity becomes a threat and preserving roots pointless and unwelcome. Our time and zest is instead directed to acquiring things. We become estranged, bland clones of each other desensitized to celebrating our diversity.
Dehydrated of meaningful human connection, immigrants reach for their roots to supply the spiritual component we all crave in our daily lives. Immigrant or not, reminding ourselves of where we come from and of what truly matters, is a way to combat blind consumerism that too often whirlpools us all into the oblivion of the rat race:
We try to preserve our culture and our identity. At the same time we are the citizens of the new country and we don’t want to be different from the mainstream. It is a question of balance.
I’ve seen people who have lost roots couldn’t make much progress. People who have maintained their roots successfully to some degree, have made some economic and spiritual progress.
Our roots are constantly floating. Planting roots in the US is difficult for any category of immigrants because of the society here, the economics. There is more stress and more priority given to making improvements in your physical life, having higher economic status. It is the pressure that you have to maintain day after day. You cannot escape it.
The way we live blind consumerism totally detaches you from your roots. You always talk about the new gadget, television, car that comes on the market, so you don’t have time to think about your roots.
Integration of the newcomers to the host-land is rightfully expected and necessary. However, the process of adaptation is most successful when gradual and not at the price of the immigrants’ eternal cultural amnesia.
Immigration is not about reincarnation but a continuation of the story. Immigrants cultivate respect and love for both their heritage and adopted cultures, blending the two into a thriving amalgam.
Fusing our many cultural identities is what makes up the American alloy. It is what being American means:
I am very much a proud Cuban American. My family stuck to their roots and always spoke Spanish at home. They also believed in assimilation. But our heritage and our roots was something to be celebrated and preserved. It was important to them for me to know and continue to speak Spanish and not to look down on being from this little island.
You have to assimilate to this country and its customs and norms, and become a part of the greater melting pot that this country is. It’s what the founding fathers created for us, it is why we came.
While assimilation is thankfully a deserted term, the idea that this woman expresses is encompassed within the more humane expressions of today like inclusion.
Introducing cultural traditions to those unfamiliar with it is the offering of our truth that humanizes our differences and fosters understanding of all of our different ways.
Inclusion sensitizes us to each other and allows us to take in, discover, appreciate, understand. Cultural variations invite us to tame the temptation of face value judgements and embrace its gift of an expanded horizon:
Playing soccer, reminds me of my life in Mexico. I take my son with me, I want him to always know where he came from. I believe everybody should be proud of where they come from, their roots.
I want people to know that Mexico is a great place, I want to give them that. And if they hear me talking about it, I hope they’d be interested to learn about it besides just going to a resort.
Multiculturalism is what keeps America vibrant:
My son insists that we speak Romanian when we talk. He wants to keep it going. I’m happy that he wants to do that, but I do not force it. It’s a good thing being multicultural. As with learning to play the piano, learning different languages helps you develop as a human being. Your brain, your reasoning is improved, so it makes you a better person. It opens your eyes to the world.
You see that the world is different and that being different is good. You get to experience different cultures. It leads you to enjoy life more. Like if you watch the same TV channel all the time, it gets boring and you get stuck in a certain point of view. But if you really get to talk to different people from different places you can get a better idea.
Still, in an effort to more seamlessly blend into the host culture, some immigrants decidedly subdue their past to become this clean slate person starting fresh. But, as many of us find, our past is a part of who and what we are in the present. Our origin finds its way to reminding us that our roots cannot (nor should) be erased.
Finally, immigrants with time and years of navigating through the many layers of identity, find how to fit its puzzle pieces into their story, both complete and unfolding as they move forward:
It is important to preserve the awareness of who we are to preserve our sanity. There is a moment when you say; I don’t want any more for you to tell me what I should be.
I want to be able to express who I am just the way I want to express it, without hiding any parts of it, all the pieces that make me. I want the truth of me to be what you see.
What I am preserving are some of the cultural traditions that have defined who I was growing up and then that continues to drive a little bit of shaping of who I am going forward.
Also, there are certain things that no matter how hard you try to translate it’s just not the same once it’s translated to a different language. The expression of who you are is best and more truthful done in that language.
When immigrant groups say we want to teach our children their native tongue it’s not because, and I hear this all the time, they are being resistant to becoming American. It has nothing to do with that!
It has everything to do with: there is something beautiful about allowing someone to know more about the past. Only in the understanding of where you come from are you grounded enough to know the forward movement, where you’re going. (Taiwan)
Preserving languages, cultures, customs, cuisine, music, is a way to better understand where we all come from. And understanding is a catalyst for compassion and empathy that we can then extend to ourselves and others.
Celebrating our roots is also about refusing to lose touch with our humanity, a way to fight against drowning it into an automaton-like existence only a few benefit from.
Cutting ties with our roots is like cutting the anchor off the boat of our lives, leading it to disarray, confusion, frustration, emptiness. Our roots are not for clenching either, but a springboard for sharing, discovering, embracing, weaving all of our stories into a strong fiber of the only sails that can take us forward.
Thanks for reading! Now, give it some 💚, share, comment :)
I’d love to hear if you have a different take or an experience preserving a language or other cultural traits.
This post is a glimpse into the insights that emerged from my research on the immigrant experience in the US. I spoke to women and men who immigrated to the US from 33 European, African, South American and Asian countries. My one-on-one hour long exploratory interviews dove deep into how the immigrant experience impacts one’s beliefs, value system, worldview, patriotism, sense of identity and belonging.
If you are interested in a complete study report drop me a note at bergitabugarija@gmail.com
