Identity Development for the U.S.-Born Children of Immigrants
As the American-born daughter of immigrants and a Black-presenting minority, I had to learn to connect with my parents’ culture while also navigating my own unique American experience. Coming into one’s self-identity while living between cultures is messy, and like Hua Hsu in his memoir Stay True, I felt this conflict most sharply in college as well. As a first-year student, Hsu noted and was unsettled by his Japanese American friend Ken’s complete assimilation into American culture—he could “playact” as American. Despite being American born like Hsu and Ken, I could not playact the socioeconomic privilege that Hsu or Ken had in college, nor speak with a crisp American accent like my peers. Hsu’s identity was constantly evolving in relation to his parents, friendships, and academic environment. In his acknowledgments, Hsu wrote that his book is about “being a good friend,” but the elements that felt most poignant were his teenage uncertainty about where he fit in and reflections on what it felt like to carry both Taiwanese and American identities.
Hsu’s experience mirrored a lot of my own—we both grew up in transnational, bilingual households, traveling abroad to see family every year. The long distance was bridged by fax machines for him and pre-paid phone cards for me. Hsu did an incredible job expressing home and homeland as both physical place and emotional space for immigrants and their children. Yes, home and homeland can coexist, but I bet this is part of what made Hsu feel uncomfortable and different from his parents and Ken, whose family had lived in the U.S. for generations.
Like Hsu, I remember my parents constantly reliving their departure from their homeland, their longing for things that felt familiar like food and language, and their hopes of eventually returning home. But to me it was their home and never really felt like mine. I spent a long time wondering who my parents might have been and who I would be if they had never left their home. Hsu painted a touching picture of his father in Taiwan trying to maintain an interest in American culture to bond with his son. The line that resonated most with me was Hsu’s realization that this running dialogue would not always be successful: “It took me a while to understand that this was my life now—my parents had worked hard in order to have a place in both worlds. Becoming American would remain an incomplete project” (Hsu 23).
Finally, I was moved deeply by Hsu’s suggestion that it would be up to the generations after his parents to tell their stories. I looked for cultural anchors in everybody while attending college; some pulled me out of my parents’ worldviews, and others brought me back when I panicked because I’d moved too far away. Music was clearly Hsu’s anchor and a way to tell his stories, and books were mine.
Works cited:
Hsu, Hua. Stay True: A Memoir. Vintage Books, 2023.