personal essay about immigrant parents

College Essay: My Parents’ Sacrifice Makes Me Strong

After living in Texas briefly, my mom moved in with my aunt in Minnesota, where she helped raise my cousins while my aunt and uncle worked. My mom still glances to the building where she first lived. I think it’s amazing how she first moved here, she lived in a small apartment and now owns a house. 

My dad’s family was poor. He dropped out of elementary school to work. My dad was the only son my grandpa had. My dad thought he was responsible to help his family out, so he decided to leave for Minnesota   because  of  many  work opportunities .   

My parents met working in cleaning at the IDS  C enter during night shifts. I am their only child, and their main priority was not leaving me alone while they worked. My mom left her cleaning job to work mornings at a warehouse. My dad continued his job in cleaning at night.   

My dad would get me ready for school and walked me to the bus stop while waiting in the cold. When I arrived home from school, my dad had dinner prepared and the house cleaned. I would eat with him at the table while watching TV, but he left after to pick up my mom from work.   

My mom would get home in the afternoon. Most memories of my mom are watching her lying down on the couch watching her  n ovelas  –  S panish soap operas  – a nd falling asleep in the living room. I knew her job was physically tiring, so I didn’t bother her.  

Seeing my parents work hard and challenge Mexican customs influence my values today as a person. As a child, my dad cooked and cleaned, to help out my mom, which is rare in Mexican culture. Conservative Mexicans believe men are superior to women; women are seen as housewives who cook, clean and obey their husbands. My parents constantly tell me I should get an education to never depend on a man. My family challenged  machismo , Mexican sexism, by creating their own values and future.  

My parents encouraged me to, “ ponte  las  pilas ” in school, which translates to “put on your batteries” in English. It means that I should put in effort and work into achieving my goal. I was taught that school is the key object in life. I stay up late to complete all my homework assignments, because of this I miss a good amount of sleep, but I’m willing to put in effort to have good grades that will benefit me. I have softball practice right after school, so I try to do nearly all of my homework ahead of time, so I won’t end up behind.  

My parents taught me to set high standards for myself. My school operates on a 4.0-scale. During lunch, my friends talked joyfully about earning a 3.25 on a test. When I earn less than a 4.25, I feel disappointed. My friends reacted with, “You should be happy. You’re extra . ” Hearing that phrase flashbacks to my parents seeing my grades. My mom would pressure me to do better when I don’t earn all 4.0s  

Every once in  awhile , I struggled with following their value of education. It can be difficult to balance school, sports and life. My parents think I’m too young to complain about life. They don’t think I’m tired, because I don’t physically work, but don’t understand that I’m mentally tired and stressed out. It’s hard for them to understand this because they didn’t have the experience of going to school.   

The way I could thank my parents for their sacrifice is accomplishing their American dream by going to college and graduating to have a professional career. I visualize the day I graduate college with my degree, so my  family  celebrates by having a carne  asada (BBQ) in the yard. All my friends, relatives, and family friends would be there to congratulate me on my accomplishments.  

As teenagers, my parents worked hard manual labor jobs to be able to provide for themselves and their family. Both of them woke up early in the morning to head to work. Staying up late to earn extra cash. As teenagers, my parents tried going to school here in the U.S .  but weren’t able to, so they continued to work. Early in the morning now, my dad arrives home from work at 2:30 a.m .,  wakes up to drop me off at school around 7:30 a.m . , so I can focus on studying hard to earn good grades. My parents want me to stay in school and not prefer work to  head on their  same path as them. Their struggle influences me to have a good work ethic in school and go against the odds.  

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My Immigrant Parents Wanted A Better Life For Me. This Is Why I Chose My Path Over Theirs.

Guest writer

My father’s family left Greece and emigrated to the United States when he was a teenager. As many come to learn when pursuing the American dream, it wasn’t all rainbows and white picket fences. My grandparents, who didn’t speak English at the time, struggled to adjust to their new life far from friends and family. While they spent 12 to 14 hours a day working toward the better life that they had dreamed of, my dad skipped out on his high school classes. A nonconformist at heart — a trait I clearly inherited — he refused to go to school in protest of his new life. In lieu of studying, he started working in restaurants owned by other immigrants in New England.

At the age of 21, my rebellious father somehow convinced his parents to help him open his own restaurant. Although he had rejected the life they’d envisioned for him, they wanted to support him on his quest to create his own version of happiness. They moved down the coastline in search of a new home, eventually settling in a small town in South Carolina. A few years after successfully establishing his business, my dad met my mom during a trip back home to Greece.

My mom grew up in poverty, working on farms with her parents. She also hadn’t gone to high school, but in her case, she had made that choice to help her family earn an income. Though she was only 19 when she met my dad, she was already considered too old to find a suitable husband, according to the norms of a small Greek village in the 1980s. When a successful Greek businessman living in America showed interest in her, everyone encouraged her to seize this opportunity for a better life. My parents eventually got married, my mom joined my dad in the U.S., and I was born shortly after.

“I associated my dad’s restaurant with a sense of immense pride, security and connection. But as I got older, that transformed into feelings of anxiety and being overwhelmed.”

Growing up, my father’s restaurant played a central role in my life. I remember playing songs on the old jukebox we used to have many years ago. When Hurricane Hugo devastated the coast of South Carolina in 1989, we sought shelter in the back of the building. I sometimes had my birthday parties there. People in town knew me by my father’s business. Customers sometimes came from other states to eat our food. I associated my dad’s restaurant with a sense of immense pride, security and connection.

But as I got older, that transformed into feelings of anxiety and being overwhelmed. My father intended for me to eventually take over the business, but I had no interest in following in his footsteps. While working there as a teenager, I would sometimes lock myself in the bathroom and cry. I wanted to do something that fulfilled a sense of purpose, and running a restaurant didn’t feel meaningful to me.

Throughout high school, I desperately tried to find other jobs over my summer breaks so I wouldn’t have to run the register or wait tables. I started to drop not-so-subtle hints that I wasn’t interested in taking over the business. My dad eventually realized that I intended to live my life on my own terms. He understood why it was important for me to pursue my own dreams, because he had made the same decision despite what had been expected of him. I think he could see himself reflected in me, and he started to encourage me to do what would make me happy.

Even though I was determined to forge my own path, I continued to feel stifled and limited by my mother’s unrealistically high expectations. I felt immense pressure to make her proud, which meant being involved in every possible extracurricular activity while also maintaining an excellent academic record. When I graduated third in my high school class, my mom expressed disappointment that I didn’t make salutatorian or valedictorian. No matter what degree of success I achieved, I felt like I could never do or be enough.

“Even though I was determined to forge my own path, I continued to feel stifled and limited by my mother’s unrealistically high expectations.”

I had always been a very creative child. I loved reading, writing and creating art. I tried to funnel my artistic passions into a profession my mom would approve of — architecture. But after the suicide of a close friend, I started to think about pursuing a career as a therapist instead. My mom was supportive of architecture because she thought it was respectable and financially lucrative. When I started talking about my interest in the social sciences, she perceived that as a downgrade and questioned why I would be willing to give up security and stability.

I felt obligated to please her, especially after rejecting my father’s business, so I applied to a school with one of the best architecture programs in the country and was accepted. But I couldn’t stop thinking about pursuing a career that would allow me to cultivate meaningful human connection. I had never really bought into traditional definitions of success, and purpose meant far more to me than money. Just a few days before the start of my freshman year, I filed the paperwork to change my areas of study to sociology and psychology.

As children of immigrants, we want to make our parents proud, and we want them to feel that their sacrifice was worth whatever they might have given up. But what does that mean, really? Do we carry on their legacy, or do we create our own? The dilemma we face is usually further complicated by cultural differences. Most of our parents come from regions with collectivist cultures, whether it’s Cuba, Mexico, India, Iran, or in my case, Greece. These are societies that place an emphasis on community — inheriting a family business is the expected norm, and the pursuit of individual dreams is not encouraged. But we find ourselves in the United States, a highly individualistic culture that emphasizes choice, freedom and personal fulfillment. We’re torn between who we want to be and who we are expected to be.

I made the decision to pave my own path because I would have become resentful and miserable if I had forced myself to take over my dad’s business out of a sense of expectation or obligation. I often worry that my parents think I don’t appreciate them because I chose my desires over theirs, but nothing could be further from the truth. I didn’t always agree with their perspectives or reasoning, but I was always grateful for everything they did to provide for me.

“As children of immigrants, we want to make our parents proud, and we want them to feel that their sacrifice was worth whatever they might have given up. But what does that mean, really?”

But maybe choosing my own dreams is the ultimate expression of my gratitude. I have a choice because of the sacrifices they made for me. The ability to define my future is possible because they made it so. Am I really supposed to follow in their footsteps when everything they did was to make sure I could make choices for myself?

We so often ignore the desires of our hearts, give up on our dreams and betray ourselves in order to please our immigrant parents. They want us to choose “safe” paths that lead to “guaranteed” success. They push us hard and expect a lot from us because they don’t want us to struggle in the same ways they did. They just want what’s best for us, but they unintentionally stifle our spirits in the process. If their sacrifices were made in order to create space for our happiness, shouldn’t we be the ones to decide what that happiness looks like?

My personal journey as the daughter of immigrants has taught me a critical life lesson — only I can give myself the approval and worth I so desperately seek from others. I could have spent my whole life doing what I thought would please my parents, and they would have always expected me to go one step further. I could deny what was in my heart and strive to live up to impossibly high expectations, or I could choose a life that would bring me joy.

“My personal journey as the daughter of immigrants has taught me a critical life lesson — only I can give myself the approval and worth I so desperately seek from others.”

I chose the latter, and I’ve created a fulfilling life that I love. I didn’t end up pursuing therapy in the long term. During my undergraduate studies, I lived in housing designed to cultivate cross-cultural relationships between international and domestic students. This experience had a profound impact on me and shifted my professional path. I went on to get my master’s degree in cultural anthropology and dedicated myself to a career in intercultural education. I now travel the world full-time as a location-independent intercultural consultant and coach, and I spend every day doing work that gives me purpose.

Not everyone, including my parents, is able to comprehend the value of my work or the life I’ve created for myself, but I do. And I’ve come to realize that has to be enough for me. Not everyone will understand or appreciate what I have to offer. Not everyone will support me or the choices I make. But it’s not my responsibility to mold who I am to fit into a box built out of someone else’s expectations. And it’s not my job to fulfill someone else’s dreams. I am here to live out my purpose, and that’s what I intend to do.

Have a compelling first-person story or experience you want to share? Send your story description to [email protected].

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How to Write a Standout College Essay about Immigrant Parents

Kate Sliunkova

AdmitYogi, Stanford MBA & MA in Education

If you're a high school student, chances are you've been asked to write an essay before. Writing about your immigrant parents can be a daunting task, but it can also be a beautiful opportunity to share your unique perspective. With the right strategies and mindset, you can craft an essay that not only showcases your writing skills but also honors the sacrifices and experiences of your immigrant parents.

Acknowledge the Significance of Your Parents' Journey

Before delving into writing your essay, it's crucial to acknowledge and appreciate the significance of your parents' immigration journey. Recognize the sacrifices they made, leaving behind their home country, family, and familiar surroundings, to provide a better life for you and your family. This appreciation will help you approach your essay with a deeper understanding and empathy. To explore successful college essays that highlight the importance of family sacrifices, visit AdmitYogi for inspiring examples.

Use Their Story as a Springboard for Self-Reflection

Your parents' immigration story serves as a powerful springboard for self-reflection. Reflect on the impact their journey has had on you - your identity, values, and aspirations. Consider how growing up in a multicultural household has shaped your worldview and influenced the choices you've made. This self-reflection allows you to connect your personal growth to your parents' experiences, providing a rich and compelling narrative. AdmitYogi can provide additional guidance on how to effectively incorporate self-reflection into your essay.

Choose a Meaningful Essay Topic

Selecting the right essay topic is crucial to capturing the attention of college admissions officers. Instead of focusing solely on your parents' story, choose a topic that reflects your own experiences and values, while weaving in elements of their journey. For example, you can explore moments where you grappled with language barriers and how those challenges fostered your determination to excel academically and embrace diverse perspectives.

Consider discussing the cultural differences you navigated while transitioning to the United States. Highlight the lessons you've learned about cultural diversity and your ability to adapt and thrive in new environments. This demonstrates your resilience and adaptability, qualities that colleges value in their applicants.

Infuse Your Essay with Personal Anecdotes

To make your essay engaging and memorable, infuse it with personal anecdotes that illustrate key moments or lessons from your own journey. Share specific stories that demonstrate your growth, resilience, and unique perspective. For instance, you can write about a time when you bridged a cultural gap between your parents' native traditions and American customs, showcasing your ability to navigate cultural complexities with sensitivity and openness.

By incorporating personal anecdotes, you showcase your individual experiences and emphasize how you have been shaped by your parents' immigration story, while maintaining the focus on you.

Reflect on the Intersection of Your Identity and Values

Colleges are interested in understanding who you are as an individual and the values you hold dear. Reflect on how your parents' immigration journey has influenced your own identity and values. Discuss the lessons you've learned about perseverance, determination, and the importance of education.

Highlight the ways in which your parents' sacrifices have motivated you to seize educational opportunities and strive for excellence. Emphasize how their story has instilled in you a deep appreciation for the value of education and the pursuit of knowledge.

Showcase Your Personal Growth and Aspirations

A compelling college essay should demonstrate personal growth and aspirations. Reflect on how your parents' experiences have influenced your own aspirations and goals for the future. Discuss the career paths, community involvement, or social initiatives that you are passionate about, and how they align with your values and the experiences you've had growing up as a child of immigrants.

Craft a Narrative That Captivates Admissions Officers

To make your essay truly standout, craft a narrative that captivates admissions officers. Start with a powerful and attention-grabbing opening. This could be a personal anecdote, a thought-provoking question, or a vivid description that draws the reader in from the very beginning.

Throughout your essay, use descriptive language and storytelling techniques to paint a vivid picture of your experiences and the impact of your parents' journey on your life. Engage the reader's senses and emotions, allowing them to connect with your story on a deeper level.

Writing a college application essay about your immigrant parents is an opportunity to celebrate your unique perspective and honor their experiences. By focusing on you and infusing your personal growth, values, and aspirations into the essay, you create a compelling narrative that highlights your individuality.

Remember to reflect on the intersection of your identity and values, choose a meaningful topic, and craft a narrative that captivates admissions officers. AdmitYogi , a trusted resource for successful college essays, offers a wealth of examples and guidance to help you throughout your writing journey. With these strategies and the support of AdmitYogi, you can write a standout essay that makes colleges eager to admit you and the incredible journey you represent.

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The Impact of Immigration on Families

• Posted June 1, 2022
• By Lory Hough
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• Families and Community
• Immigration and Refugee Education

Research tells us that for young people growing up in immigrant families, their immigration status, and the status of their parents, has a big impact on their well-being. What research hasn’t really looked into, and what Ph.D. marshall Sarah Rendón García explored in her doctoral dissertation, is how young people actually learn about their (or their parents’) status.

As it turns out, there’s no one typical way.

“With the rise in the public’s engagement with immigration and anti-immigrant rhetoric, the messages children are receiving can come from home, school, or their neighborhood,” Rendón García says. “That's part of what my dissertation was trying to document, and my findings show there’s a spectrum of sources for children.” 

Her own discovery happened when she was a teenager. Born in Venezuela to Colombian parents before moving to the United States, she was undocumented from the age of 9 to 21 but didn’t realize this until she tried to take part in a teenage rite-of-passage.

“I found out officially when it was time to get my driver’s license, and I wasn’t eligible because of my immigration status,” she says. “It was the first time I was told explicitly by my parents about our situation, but it wasn’t shocking because I had picked up on indicators of difference along the way as a child and adolescent. In other words, I had noticed things that made me and my family different from others based on our immigration status, like our inability to travel freely.”

Having a sense but not quite knowing the full story was a common theme Rendón García found while doing her research, which focused on interviews with children from ages 7 to 15 who live in mixed-status families — meaning at least one parent or caregiver is undocumented. 

“The majority of the children I talked to showed evidence of being, at the very least, familiar with the topic of immigration status,” she says. It was their parents and caretakers who weren’t always ready to talk.

“Most parents with whom I spoke wouldn’t have chosen to have conversations with their children about immigration status just yet,” she says. “A big challenge for parents was being forced into these conversations because of the questions their children were asking or the things their children were noticing. It’s hard for adults to be thrown into such a delicate conversation with children who have varying cognitive capacities to employ in order to understand what is being explained. Immigration policy is complicated to the point that it’s already challenging for adults to grapple with their understanding, let alone how to explain it to a child.”

Parents also want to shield their children.

“They want to protect their children from the potential implications of such life-changing information,” she says. “Parents spoke about the challenges of deciding whether to tell their children the truth about being undocumented and the potential threat of family separation so that their children wouldn’t be caught surprised if their parents were detained and/or deported, or to protect them from the truth so that children didn’t experience anxiety or stress about something that might not happen.”

Rendón García knows first-hand about that anxiety and stress. 

“I was undocumented during a time where public awareness was not yet where it is now. That meant the biggest impact of my immigration status on my experience was psychological," she says. “I didn’t always feel understood by my educators, even when they had the best intentions, and I didn't feel safe to share my experience with them. This is why I gravitated to the social-emotional development and psychological well-being of mixed-status immigrant families in my professional and academic work. My goal is to contribute knowledge that helps practitioners, policymakers, and researchers move toward creating safer spaces for this population.”

She first started down this path as a master’s student but always with an eye toward joining the Ph.D. Program.

“I saw there was not a lot of research out there about people like me,” she says. The Ed School also helped her approach her work from an interdisciplinary lens. 

“This allowed me to think creatively about the questions I was asking and the methods I was using to answer those questions," she says. “I've been able to bring together psychology, sociology, education, and immigration studies to better understand the experiences of mixed-status families. Most importantly, I think HGSE has instilled certain priorities in me regarding the impact I want my work to have.”

After graduation, Rendón García will continue at the Ed School as a Dean’s Postdoctoral Fellow, working with professor-in-residence Carola Suarez-Orozco on the Immigration Initiative at Harvard , teaching for the How People Learn course, and conducting a National Science Foundation-funded intervention research project for parents in mixed-status families as they prepare to engage in immigration socialization.

Asked if anything surprised her along the way while doing her research, she says it’s a tough question to answer, in part because of the families she came to know.

“It was really difficult to see children grappling with the threat of family separation and adults grappling with the impossible decision of protecting their children in the short-term vs. the long-term,” she says. “That wasn’t necessarily surprising because I had anecdotal stories of it happening, but it was still upsetting to see the evidence across and within families.”  

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Now I understand the sacrifices made by my immigrant parents

This article was published more than 3 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.

First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide .

Illustration by Rachel Wada

I have a confession. Despite the fact that I, too, lived over a convenience store run by my immigrant parents, I have never watched an episode of Kim’s Convenience . I’ve heard the show is incredibly well written and witty, but in all honesty I was unsure about how I would feel watching the similarities of my childhood reality played out in a sitcom.

My parents immigrated to Canada when my sister and I were 6 and 3, respectively. They left their professional jobs behind in Taiwan, in addition to their families and friends, to give us “the best opportunities in life,” as we so frequently heard growing up. Now, raising my own three children, in significantly more privileged circumstances, I am at a crossroads – how do I give them what they need and foster their independence, yet still ensure that they live their lives with empathy and gratitude?

My father became an entrepreneur out of sheer necessity to secure a roof over our heads. With limited English skills, employment options were non-existent. They spent their savings on the purchase of a small convenience store, which we also lived above, as many families did then and continue to do so now. My mother, a former midwife and nurse, spent much of our childhood learning to speak English while being a cashier at our quaint neighbourhood corner store. I have many memories of her playing a role similar to a confused Vanna White, but instead of turning letters on Wheel of Fortune, Mom was trying to decipher what brand of cigarettes a customer wanted from behind the counter.

They worked seven days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day, often longer. As a child, I never understood why they needed to work so much or why no one ever volunteered to bake cookies or chaperone school field trips. One day, my fourth-grade teacher called my mother in to speak with her. During a class assignment, I had written a story about how “my parents love money more than they love me.” I can only imagine the embarrassment and stabbing pain my mother felt during that talk. I wish I could go back in time.

We attended a public school out of our district that comprised mostly of white children from well-to-do families. My father would pick us up and drop us off in our “secret” location a block away from the school so that the other children would not see us coming out of a clunky old cargo van, only meant for produce and non-perishables. In hindsight, I’m not sure if he was trying to hide his embarrassment or ours, perhaps a little bit of both.

Nevertheless, my parents did their best to shelter us from their daily struggles. While other kids went on ski trips and spring break vacations, my sister and I spent our free time together. Summers were completely unsupervised, consisting of entire days spent swimming in public pools, biking around the city and reading in the library: Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary, what would we have done without you?

We became experts at making our own meals, a rotating menu of Chef Boyardee, TV dinners and Lipton Sidekicks noodles. We ate our food directly from the pots that we cooked them in, and in front of the TV, watching our favourite shows. We were latch-key kids. My key was tied directly around my neck, never ever to be removed.

We used the aisles that were full of groceries as our personal playground – I’m still convinced that there are few things more fun to a child than stocking shelves or scanning lottery tickets. We had first access to the latest issues of Mad Magazine and Archie comics, expertly reading them without leaving creases.

At Christmastime, gifts were often old items around the house, wrapped in colourful newsprint. My mother was the original “zero waster.” We participated in the Inner City Angels after-school programs provided by the city. We made toys out of discarded boxes – I was so pleased that the screen of my cardboard computer “moved” by turning a roll of paper towel inside. As much as we were without, we never felt it. We were, mostly, happy kids.

People say that the world was easier back then, that it was a better place, that things are different now. In retrospect, I’m not sure if that’s true, especially for children of immigrant families. We were just kids back then, and if you had any semblance of good parents, they simply did their best at making you feel like the world was a great place.

I often find myself in awe of the courage my parents must have had to embark on their journey into so many unknowns. Their struggles motivated me to do well in school, appreciate the value of a hard-earned dollar and, most importantly, to respect others no matter what our differences. In today’s heightened climate, I believe that this has been their greatest gift.

My children are growing up with a basement full of toys, many of which bring them no more than five minutes of joy. I want them to realize the privileges and opportunities given to them that many children do without, as is the wish of every generation, and the generation before them.

As my parents did, I will try my best to expect more from them, to make them appreciate their circumstances in a world that can seem unforgiving. I want them to be curious about how others live and understand that our way of life is not the only way of life. To embrace change and overcome challenges with resilience, not fear, just as their grandparents had. And no matter what their struggles, there is always room to lend a helping hand to someone less fortunate.

To many, my childhood probably seems quite unremarkable, but to me it was a time when optimism, hope and determination collided. A moment of sweet nostalgia, when our family had no one but ourselves to lean on and that was all that mattered. Us against the world. Perhaps it’s time for me to grab a bowl of popcorn, put up my feet and find the first episode of Kim’s Convenience .

Wan Lu lives in Toronto

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A high school student wrote an inspiring college essay about advocating for her immigrant parents

Georgetown University, where Carolina Sosa will attend

The essay chronicles the difficulties Sosa faces in trying to help her parents. In a standout section, Sosa describes how she "sadly understood" why her father couldn't get a job at a convenience store - and then lied to him to hide the real reason why he wasn't hired.

Dave, the chubby convenience store cashier who interviewed Sosa's father, told her, "Listen, girl. He's over 60 and speaks no English. There is no way we would hire him." However, Sosa told her father that Dave had just remembered the store had actually hired someone for the open position the day before.

Sosa elaborates on how hard the job hunt has been for her and her parents:

Job searching is difficult for everyone, but in a world full of Daves, it's almost impossible. Daves are people who look at my family and immediately think less of us. They think illegal, poor and uneducated. Daves never allow my dad to pass the first round of job applications. Daves watch like hawks as my brother and I enter stores. Daves inconsiderately correct my mother's grammar. Because there are Daves in the world, I have become a protector for my family. I excuse their behavior as just being a "typical American." I convince my mother that they are only staring at her lovely new purse. I convince my dad they are only shouting about store sales to us. Aside from being a protector, I am also an advocate. As an advocate, I make sure my family is never taken advantage of. I am always looking out for scams and discrepancies. I am the one asking the questions when we buy or sell a car. I make sure all details are discussed and no specifics are left unanswered.

Sosa also touches on the benefits of growing up in America.

"From caring public school teachers to subsidized lunches, the United States has put me on a path to success," she writes. "Undoubtedly this path wasn't always paved, but rugged and relentless feet have carried me along."

Currently a student at Westfield High School in Centreville, Virginia, Carolina Sosa will attend Georgetown in the fall, where she plans to study public service, politics, or diplomacy. You can read her full college essay at The New York Times.

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Growing Up in America With Immigrant Parents

I wrote about how my parents taught me to love who I am by being true to myself.

 Being Assyrian has always been a huge part of my identity. As a child I felt so embarrassed to be who I am. No one had ever taught me to feel that way, I just didn't like how different my life seemed to be, compared to the other kids from my school. I had a unibrow and I had to take ESL classes because I was raised learning a mix of Aramaic and English. I refused to speak Aramaic publically. I was so ashamed of all of these things for some reason. I just wanted to be like the other kids at my school, blonde hair and blue eyes with a “normal” name. I hated my brown hair, brown eyes, my unibrow, and my “odd” name (Amena).

As I grew older, I started to become more accepting towards my background. This started happening around middle school age. I realized that there was no reason for me to be ashamed. I still felt different though. No matter how much I adapted I was still being raised differently from everyone else. My parents were always more strict that the others. They wouldn't let me hangout with certain people, I was never allowed to go to sleepovers, I couldn't wear certain clothes because they were “too revealing” even if everyone else in my grade was allowed to. I think that these are just things that you have to deal with when you have Middle Eastern parents. Things that were so normal for every other kid seemed to be so unbelievably offensive to my parents. I used to think it was so frustrating to deal with this.

To this day I still struggle with their grip. I can sometimes understand and appreciate why they raised me this way. As immigrants in America they dealt with a lot of the same feelings as I felt when I was younger. They struggled with not fitting in as a child just like me. When my mother's family moved here she was only a year old. She was raised in Davisburg Pennsylvania, she didn't have anyone to relate to around her other than her siblings. She had it so much worse than I did but today she loves being who she is. My dad moved to America when he was nine. He was raised in Detroit Michigan and in attempt to fit in he had to sacrifice some of his identity. Today I see him as the one of the most confident, down to earth people on this planet. He always stresses to me that I couldn't make a bigger mistake that being fake with myself. I think that all this time my parents were trying to point me in that direction. They wanted me to love who I am. They didn't want me to try so hard to be something i'm not just because I wanted to blend in. Instead they taught me how to stay true to myself and how to be comfortable in my own skin

Although it was frustrating at times I think overall it benefited me to be raised this way. I learned to do what's best for myself and have good judgment. They taught me to be comfortable in my own skin and put myself first. They taught me that no ones opinion matters except my own. Here in America you are able to do almost anything you'd want as long as you give it your all. Being true to myself is the only way for me identify my dreams. My parents wanted to make sure that I had my priorities straight so that I can focus on what's important.

It's ironic how I learned one of the most important American values from my immigrant parents. I thought this whole time that their “Middle Eastern morals” would separate me from everyone else but really they were what made me feel comfortable with myself now. They really have taught me so much about how to live a good, happy, healthy, American life! Today I live to please myself and the ones I love only. I know now that I don’t have to attempt to make everyone like me. I do what I please while still being reasonable and respectful. The only person really judging me is myself. I live by these morals and i couldn't be any more stress free.

• Written by Amena
• From Royal Oak High School
• In Michigan
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Waking Up from the American Dream

By Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

If you are an undocumented person anywhere in America, some of the things you do to make a dignified life for yourself and your loved ones are illegal. Others require a special set of skills. The elders know some great tricks—crossing deserts in the dead of night, studying the Rio Grande for weeks to find the shallowest bend of river to cross, getting a job on their first day in the country, finding apartments that don’t need a lease, learning English at public libraries, community colleges, or from “Frasier.” I would not have been able to do a single thing that the elders have done. But the elders often have only one hope for survival, which we tend not to mention. I’m talking about children. And no, it’s not an “anchor baby” thing. Our parents have kids for the same reasons as most people, but their sacrifice for us is impossible to articulate, and its weight is felt deep down, in the body. That is the pact between immigrants and their children in America: they give us a better life, and we spend the rest of that life figuring out how much of our flesh will pay off the debt.

I am a first-generation immigrant, undocumented for most of my life, then on DACA , now a permanent resident. But my real identity, the one that follows me around like a migraine, is that I am the daughter of immigrants. As such, I have some skills of my own.

You pick them up young. Something we always hear about, because Americans love this shit, is that immigrant children often translate for their parents. I began doing this as a little girl, because I lost my accent, dumb luck, and because I was adorable in the way that adults like, which is to say I had large, frightened eyes and a flamboyant vocabulary. As soon as doctors or teachers began talking, I felt my parents’ nervous energy, and I’d either answer for them or interpret their response. It was like my little Model U.N. job. I was around seven. My career as a professional daughter of immigrants had begun.

In my teens, I began to specialize. I became a performance artist. I accompanied my parents to places where I knew they would be discriminated against, and where I could insure that their rights would be granted. If a bank teller wasn’t accepting their I.D., I’d stroll in with an oversized Forever 21 blazer, red lipstick, a slicked-back bun, and fresh Stan Smiths. I brought a pleather folder and made sure my handshake broke bones. Sometimes I appealed to decency, sometimes to law, sometimes to God. Sometimes I leaned back in my chair, like a sexy gangster, and said, “So, you tell me how you want my mom to survive in this country without a bank account. You close at four, but I have all the time in the world.” Then I’d wink. It was vaudeville, but it worked.

My parents came to America in their early twenties, naïve about what awaited them. Back in Ecuador, they had encountered images of a wealthy nation—the requisite flashes of Clint Eastwood and the New York City skyline—and heard stories about migrants who had done O.K. for themselves there. But my parents were not starry-eyed people. They were just kids, lost and reckless, running away from the dead ends around them.

My father is the only son of a callous mother and an absent father. My mother, the result of her mother’s rape, grew up cared for by an aunt and uncle. When she married my father, it was for the reasons a lot of women marry: for love, and to escape. The day I was born, she once told me, was the happiest day of her life.

Soon after that, my parents, owners of a small auto-body business, found themselves in debt. When I was eighteen months old, they left me with family and settled in Brooklyn, hoping to work for a year and move back once they’d saved up some money. I haven’t asked them much about this time—I’ve never felt the urge—but I know that one year became three. I also know that they began to be lured by the prospect of better opportunities for their daughter. Teachers had remarked that I was talented. My mother, especially, felt that Ecuador was not the place for me. She knew how the country would limit the woman she imagined I would become—Hillary Clinton, perhaps, or Princess Di.

My parents sent loving letters to Ecuador. They said that they were facing a range of hardships so that I could have a better life. They said that we would reunite soon, though the date was unspecified. They said that I had to behave, not walk into traffic—I seem to have developed a habit of doing this—and work hard, so they could send me little gifts and chocolates. I was a toddler, but I understood. My parents left to give me things, and I had to do other things in order to repay them. It was simple math.

They sent for me when I was just shy of five years old. I arrived at J.F.K. airport. My father, who seemed like a total stranger, ran to me and picked me up and kissed me, and my mother looked on and wept. I recall thinking she was pretty, and being embarrassed by the attention. They had brought roses, Teddy bears, and Tweety Bird balloons.

Getting to know one another was easy enough. My father liked to read and lecture, and had a bad temper. My mother was soft-spoken around him but funny and mean—like a drag queen—with me. She liked Vogue . I was enrolled in a Catholic school and quickly learned English—through immersion, but also through “Reading Rainbow” and a Franklin talking dictionary that my father bought me. It gave me a colorful vocabulary and weirdly over-enunciated diction. If I typed the right terms, it even gave me erotica.

Meanwhile, I had confirmed that my parents were not tony expats. At home, meals could be rice and a fried egg. We sometimes hid from our landlord by crouching next to my bed and drawing the blinds. My father had started out driving a cab, but after 9/11, when the governor revoked the driver’s licenses of undocumented immigrants, he began working as a deliveryman, carrying meals to Wall Street executives, the plastic bags slicing into his fingers. Some of those executives forced him to ride on freight elevators. Others tipped him in spare change.

My mother worked in a factory. For seven days a week, sometimes in twelve-hour shifts, she sewed in a heat that caught in your throat like lint, while her bosses, also immigrants, hurled racist slurs at her. Some days I sat on the factory floor, making dolls with swatches of fabric, cosplaying childhood. I didn’t put a lot of effort into making the dolls—I sort of just screwed around, with an eye on my mom at her sewing station, stiffening whenever her supervisor came by to see how fast she was working. What could I do to protect her? Well, murder, I guess.

Our problem appeared to be poverty, which even then, before I’d seen “Rent,” seemed glamorous, or at least normal. All the protagonists in the books I read were poor. Ramona Quimby on Klickitat Street, the kids in “Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.” Every fictional child was hungry, an orphan, or tubercular. But there was something else setting us apart. At school, I looked at my nonwhite classmates and wondered how their parents could be nurses, or own houses, or leave the country on vacation. It was none of my business—everyone in New York had secrets—but I cautiously gathered intel, toothpick in mouth. I finally cracked the case when I tried to apply to an essay contest and asked my parents for my Social Security number. My father was probably reading a newspaper, and I doubt he even looked up to say, “We don’t have papers, so we don’t have a Social.”

It was not traumatic. I turned on our computer, waited for the dial-up, and searched what it meant not to have a Social Security number. “Undocumented immigrant” had not yet entered the discourse. Back then, the politically correct term, the term I saw online, was “illegal immigrant,” which grated—it was hurtful in a clinical way, like having your teeth drilled. Various angry comments sections offered another option: illegal alien . I knew it was form language, legalese meant to wound me, but it didn’t. It was punk as hell. We were hated , and maybe not entirely of this world. I had just discovered Kurt Cobain.

Obviously, I learned that my parents and I could be deported at any time. Was that scary? Sure. But a deportation still seemed like spy-movie stuff. And, luckily, I had an ally. My brother was born when I was ten years old. He was our family’s first citizen, and he was named after a captain of the New York Yankees. Before he was old enough to appreciate art, I took him to the Met. I introduced him to “S.N.L.” and “Letterman” and “Fun Home” and “Persepolis”—all the things I felt an upper-middle-class parent would do—so that he could thrive at school, get a great job, and make money. We would need to armor our parents with our success.

We moved to Queens, and I entered high school. One day, my dad heard about a new bill in Congress on Spanish radio. It was called the DREAM Act, and it proposed a path to legalization for undocumented kids who had gone to school here or served in the military. My dad guaranteed that it’d pass by the time I graduated. I never react to good news—stoicism is part of the brand—but I was optimistic. The bill was bipartisan. John McCain supported it, and I knew he had been a P.O.W., and that made me feel connected to a real American hero. Each time I saw an “R” next to a sponsor’s name my heart fluttered with joy. People who were supposed to hate me had now decided to love me.

But the bill was rejected and reintroduced, again and again, for years. It never passed. And, in a distinctly American twist, its gauzy rhetoric was all that survived. Now there was a new term on the block: “Dreamers.” Politicians began to use it to refer to the “good” children of immigrants, the ones who did well in school and stayed off the mean streets—the innocents. There are about a million undocumented children in America. The non-innocents, one presumes, are the ones in cages, covered in foil blankets, or lost, disappeared by the government.

I never called myself a Dreamer. The word was saccharine and dumb, and it yoked basic human rights to getting an A on a report card. Dreamers couldn’t flunk out of high school, or have D.U.I.s, or work at McDonald’s. Those kids lived with the pressure of needing a literal miracle in order to save their families, but the miracle didn’t happen, because the odds were against them, because the odds were against all of us. And so America decided that they didn’t deserve an I.D.

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The Dream, it turned out, needed to demonize others in order to help the chosen few. Our parents, too, would be sacrificed. The price of our innocence was the guilt of our loved ones. Jeff Sessions, while he was Attorney General, suggested that we had been trafficked against our will. People actually pitied me because my parents brought me to America. Without even consulting me.

The irony, of course, is that the Dream was our inheritance. We were Dreamers because our parents had dreams.

It’s painful to think about this. My mother, an aspiring interior designer, has gone twenty-eight years without a sick day. My dad, who loves problem-solving, has spent his life wanting a restaurant. He’s a talented cook and a brilliant manager, and he often did the work of his actual managers for them. But, without papers, he could advance only so far in a job. He needed to be paid in cash; he could never receive benefits.

He often used a soccer metaphor to describe our journey in America. Our family was a team, but I scored the goals. Everything my family did was, in some sense, a pass to me. Then the American Dream could be mine, and then we could start passing to my brother. That’s how my dad explained his limp every night, his feet blistered from speed-running deliveries. It’s why we sometimes didn’t have money for electricity or shampoo. Those were fouls. Sometimes my parents did tricky things to survive that you’ll never know about. Those were nutmegs. In 2015, when the U.S. women’s team won the World Cup, my dad went to the parade and sent me a selfie. “Girl power!” the text read.

My father is a passionate, diatribe-loving feminist, though his feminism often seems to exclude my mother. When I was in elementary school, he would take me to the local branch of the Queens Public Library and check out the memoir of Rosalía Arteaga Serrano, the only female President in Ecuador’s history. Serrano was ousted from office, seemingly because she was a woman. My father would read aloud from the book for hours, pausing to tell me that I’d need to toughen up. He would read from dictators’ speeches—not for the politics, but for the power of persuasive oratory. We went to the library nearly every weekend for thirteen years.

My mother left her factory job to give me, the anointed one, full-time academic support. She pulled all-nighters to help me make extravagant posters. She grilled me with vocabulary flash cards, struggling to pronounce the words but laughing and slapping me with pillows if I got something wrong. I aced the language portions of my PSATs and SATs, partly because of luck, and partly because of my parents’ locally controversial refusal to let me do household chores, ever, because they wanted me to be reading, always reading, instead.

If this all seems strategic, it should. The American Dream doesn’t just happen to cheery Pollyannas. It happens to iconoclasts with a plan and a certain amount of cunning. The first time I encountered the idea of the Dream, it was in English class, discussing “The Great Gatsby.” My classmates all thought that Gatsby seemed sort of sad, a pathetic figure. I adored him. He created his own persona, made a fortune in an informal economy, and lived a quiet, paranoid, reclusive life. Most of all, he longed. He stood at the edge of Long Island Sound, longing for Daisy, and I took the train uptown to Columbia University and looked out at the campus, hoping it could one day be mine. At the time, it was functionally impossible for undocumented students to enroll at Columbia. The same held for many schools. Keep dreaming, my parents said.

I did. I was valedictorian of my class, miraculously got into Harvard, and was tapped to join a secret society that once included T. S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens. I was the only Latina inducted, I think, and I was very chill when an English-Spanish dictionary appeared in our club bathroom after I started going to teas. When I graduated, in 2011, our country was deporting people at record rates. I knew that I needed to add even more of a golden flicker to my illegality, so that if I was deported, or if my parents were deported, we would not go in the middle of the night, in silence, anonymously, as Americans next door watched another episode of “The Bachelor.” So I began writing, with the explicit aim of entering the canon. I wrote a book about undocumented immigrants, approaching them not as shadowy victims or gilded heroes but as people, flawed and complex. It was reviewed well, nominated for things. A President commended it.

But it’s hard to feel anything. My parents remain poor and undocumented. I cannot protect them with prizes or grades. My father sobbed when I handed him my diploma, but it was not the piece of paper that would make it all better, no matter how heavy the stock.

By the time I was in grad school, my parents’ thirty-year marriage was over. They had spent most of those years in America, with their heads down and their bodies broken; it was hard not to see the split as inevitable. My mom called me to say she’d had enough. My brother supported her decision. I talked to each parent, and helped them mutually agree on a date. On a Tuesday night, my father moved out, leaving his old parenting books behind, while my mom and brother were at church. I asked my father to text my brother that he loved him. I think he texted him exactly that. Then I collapsed onto the floor beneath an open drawer of knives, texted my partner to come help me, and convulsed in sobs.

After that, my mom became depressed. I did hours of research and found her a highly qualified, trauma-informed psychiatrist, a Spanish speaker who charged on a sliding scale I could afford. My mom got on Lexapro, which helped. She also started a job that makes her very happy. In order to find her that job, I took a Klonopin and browsed Craigslist for hours each day, e-mailing dozens of people, being vague about legal status in a clever but truthful way. I impersonated her in phone interviews, hanging off my couch, the blood rushing to my head, struggling not to do an offensive accent.

You know how, when you get a migraine, you regret how stupid you were for taking those sweet, painless days for granted? Although my days are hard, I understand that I’m living in an era of painlessness, and that a time will come when I look back and wonder why I was such a stupid, whining fool. My mom’s job involves hard manual labor, sometimes in the snow or the rain. I got her a real winter coat, her first, from Eddie Bauer. I got her a pair of Hunter boots. These were things she needed, things I had seen on women her age on the subway, their hands bearing bags from Whole Foods. My mom’s hands are arthritic. She sends me pictures of them covered in bandages.

My brother and I now have a pact: neither of us can die, because then the other would be stuck with our parents. My brother is twenty-two, still in college, and living with my mom. He, too, has some skills. He is gentle, kind, and excellent at deëscalating conflict. He mediated my parents’ arguments for years. He has also never tried to change them, which I have, through a regimen of therapy, books, and cheesy Instagram quotes. So we’ve decided that, in the long term, since his goal is to get a job, get married, have kids, and stay in Queens, he’ll invite Mom to move in with him, to help take care of the grandkids. He’ll handle the emotional labor, since it doesn’t traumatize him. And I’ll handle the financial support, since it doesn’t traumatize me.

I love my parents. I know I love them. But what I feel for them daily is a mixture of terror, panic, obligation, sorrow, anger, pity, and a shame so hot that I need to lie face down, in my underwear, on very cold sheets. Many Americans have vulnerable parents, and strive to succeed in order to save them. I hold those people in the highest regard. But the undocumented face a unique burden, due to scorn and a lack of support from the government. Because our parents made a choice—the choice to migrate—few people pity them, or wonder whether restitution should be made for decades of exploitation. That choice, the original sin, is why our parents were thrown out of paradise. They were tempted by curiosity and hunger, by fleshly desires.

And so we return to the debt. However my parents suffer in their final years will be related to their migration—to their toil in this country, to their lack of health care and housing support, to psychic fatigue. They were able, because of that sacrifice, to give me their version of the Dream: an education, a New York accent, a life that can better itself. But that life does not fully belong to me. My version of the American Dream is seeing them age with dignity, being able to help them retire, and keeping them from being pushed onto train tracks in a random hate crime. For us, gratitude and guilt feel almost identical. Love is difficult to separate from self-erasure. All we can give one another is ourselves.

Scholars often write about the harm that’s done when children become caretakers, but they’re reluctant to do so when it comes to immigrants. For us, they say, this situation is cultural . Because we grow up in tight-knit families. Because we respect our elders. In fact, it’s just the means of living that’s available to us. It’s a survival mechanism, a mutual-aid society at the family level. There is culture, and then there is adaptation to precarity and surveillance. If we are lost in the promised land, perhaps it’s because the ground has never quite seemed solid beneath our feet.

When I was a kid, my mother found a crystal heart in my father’s taxi. The light that came through it was pretty, shimmering, like a gasoline spill on the road. She put it in her jewelry box, and sometimes we’d take out the box, spill the contents onto my pink twin bed, and admire what we both thought was a heart-shaped diamond. I grew up, I went to college. I often heard of kids who had inherited their grandmother’s heirlooms, and I sincerely believed that there were jewels in my family, too. Then, a few years ago, my partner and I visited my mom, and she spilled out her box. She gave me a few items I cherish: a nameplate bracelet in white, yellow, and rose gold, and the thick gold hoop earrings that she wore when she first moved to Brooklyn. Everything else was costume jewelry. I couldn’t find the heart.

I realized that, when my mother found the crystal, she was around the same age I am now. She had probably never held a diamond, and she probably wanted to believe that she had found one in America, a dream come true. She wanted me to believe it, and then, as we both grew up, alone, together, she stopped believing, stopped wanting to believe, and stopped me from wanting to believe. And she probably threw that shit out. I didn’t ask. Some things are none of our business. ♦

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By Jiayang Fan

By Souvankham Thammavongsa

By Casey Cep

• Relationships

8 Challenges of Growing Up as a Second-Generation Immigrant

Things about having immigrant parents that no one talks about..

Posted January 10, 2023 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

• Find a Codependency Therapist
• As a child to immigrant parents, you might have automatically blamed yourself for their struggles.
• If you were born to immigrant parents, you might have lived "between" two cultures all your life.
• Overcoming the trauma of being the second generation of immigrants is not only possible but essential.

Second-generation immigrants often wish their parents had been different. You may long for parents who share your intellectual level, values, and political or spiritual beliefs. In this post, we will discuss some of the challenges of having immigrant parents, including the ones that are often tabooed.

1. The Heaviness of Unspoken Guilt . Children naturally blame themselves for their parents' pain. Your unwarranted guilt is worse as a second-generation immigrant when you know that your immigrant parents came to a new country to "give you a better life.” As a child, you might have automatically blamed yourself for your parents' struggles because you thought you did something wrong or did not help enough. So you studied harder, did more housework, counseled them, and may even have become their emotional punching bag.

Unconscious guilt can manifest itself in unexpected ways. Even now, you may have trouble taking care of yourself and managing money. You may work too much and feel guilty when you relax or have fun. Despite your success, you feel like an imposter. You are wary of being vulnerable even in close friendships and romantic relationships .

2. Rootless Without Home. If you were born to immigrant parents, you might have lived "between" two cultures all your life. Unlike your parents, your sense of self does not revolve around your heritage from the old country. But neither is it a purely Eurocentric integration into the new country.

You may have been conditioned to behave a certain way toward your relatives but a very different way toward your friends. You have not had the opportunity to explore and solidify your identity if you constantly hide one or more aspects of your personality to fit in, like a chameleon. Even now, you could be struggling with identity confusion, having difficulty deciding on important life goals such as a career or a romantic partner.

3. The Intellectual Divide. You may find that while other families may have stimulating discussions about current events, your parents seem rooted in the past and unable to see beyond their narrow perspective. Your parents may have shown no understanding of diversity, feminism, the dark side of capitalism, etc., and so there are no intellectual or political discussions about these issues at home. The intellectual distance between you and your parents can make even the most mundane conversations tedious, if not painful.

You may feel compelled to challenge your parents when they say or do things against your values. However, if you try to correct them, they may become defensive and either avoid you or become combative.

Although you respect and love your parents very much, you may find it difficult to relax and be yourself around them. You feel existentially alone in your own home, but you have no one to talk to about it because it is such a taboo.

4. Not Seen for Who You Are. Your immigrant parents may not have been exposed to global perspectives that would help them understand your place in the world. They think you are "good" because you have good grades or a steady job, but that misses the point. They do not know how to appreciate your ability to think independently, your willingness to stand up for what you believe in, your commitment to social justice, or your courage to defend the truth.

When it comes to our own family, it can be exceedingly hurtful to hear that we are "too much" (too emotional, too dramatic, too demanding, too intense, too sensitive). The pain of not being recognized by, or even being rejected by, our own family can cause immeasurable suffering that lasts a lifetime, even if we try to rationalize it by saying that we are materially well provided for.

5. Trapped in Codependency. It is sadly common for parents and children in immigrant families to develop an unhealthy level of codependency. You may feel obligated to put your parent's needs before your own, blame yourself for their problems, worry about them constantly, feel responsible for their happiness , and neglect your own needs. Part of you wants to rescue or help your parents, but you're also angry and resentful because their needs stunted you.

6. Constant Disapproval. Your immigrant parents may judge who you're with, what you do, whether you're single, married, polyamorous , etc. Worse, you know that many of your so-called "choices" in fact just represent who you are. Parents may reject you because this new information contradicts what they are sure they know. Their unconscious bias hurts you, even if they don't mean to. Their casual comments, facial expressions, or punitive silences may reveal prejudices even when they say nothing.

7. Navigating Life with " Learned Helplessness ." If you were born into an immigrant family, you might have witnessed or experienced institutional discrimination , microaggressions , and racism too early, too soon, perhaps even as a child. Psychologists use the term "learned helplessness" to describe the effects of being regularly exposed to systemic oppression and injustice without being able to do anything about it. You may have internalized the idea that no matter how hard you try, you will ultimately get nowhere. This can affect your self-esteem and your ability to pursue goals as an adult. You may also feel powerless in the face of injustice or corruption. You cannot just dismiss them or pretend they do not exist, but you're paralyzed by an overwhelming sense that it is impossible to change the world.

8. Unmet Emotional Needs. Your immigrant parents may have struggled, but they never modeled what it was like to show or express feelings. What if grief kept them from working? What if they let out all their emotions and cannot control them, leading to a depressive breakdown? Because of these fears, they felt they had to suppress any burgeoning emotions. So, when you show vulnerable feelings such as shame or sadness, they do not know what to do. They may try to silence your feelings, so they do not have to face their own. They may tell you it's "bad" to show emotion , or punish or silence you to keep you from being expressive and spontaneous.

Furthermore, with a general lack of mental health awareness, your immigrant parents may misunderstand your depression as laziness, your eating disorder as defiance, your ADHD as a character flaw, etc. They may be unfamiliar with the idea of seeing a therapist or psychiatrist, let alone paying for such services.

Internalized beliefs that it is unacceptable to express feelings, have emotional needs, or be vulnerable can prevent you from developing meaningful relationships or finding fulfillment in life.

Discovering Strength and Peace as a Second-Generation Immigrant

You wish you had parents with whom you could have open, honest conversations about life and the world. But you are silenced for your loneliness because it feels wrong to be ungrateful. Transgenerational trauma can have devastating effects. But since we can't blame our parents forever, we must heal ourselves. Consider these questions: How do you approach authorities? What's your money mindset? Do you feel guilty when you outshine your siblings or parents? How well can you express vulnerabilities with intimate partners?

You may feel guilty or fearful when it's time to separate yourself from your parents' values, even if you logically know your feelings have no logical basis. If you follow your heart, you are afraid to break theirs. But if you ignore the existential call to be yourself, you may become physically or emotionally ill.

As you enter your second half of life, overcoming the trauma of being the second generation of immigrants is not only possible but essential. You can thrive by embracing repressed emotions and gifts. By acknowledging your history and struggles, sharing your true feelings, and overcoming generational trauma , you can build bridges between yourself and your family and contribute to your community.

Liem, R. (1997). Shame and guilt among first-and second-generation Asian Americans and European Americans. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 28(4), 365-392.

M Rothe, E., J Pumariega, A., & Sabagh, D. (2011). Identity and acculturation in immigrant and second generation adolescents. Adolescent psychiatry, 1(1), 72-81.

Phipps, R. M., & Degges‐White, S. (2014). A new look at transgenerational trauma transmission: Second‐generation Latino immigrant youth. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 42(3), 174-187.

Pumariega, A. J., Rothe, E., & Pumariega, J. B. (2005). Mental health of immigrants and refugees. Community mental health journal, 41(5), 581-597.

Imi Lo Imi Lo works with highly sensitive and emotionally intense people. She has two masters, one in mental health and one in Buddhist studies. Her books include Emotional Sensitivity and Intensity, and The Gift of Intensity.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, how to approach writing a college essay as a first-generation immigrant.

Hey everyone, as a first-generation immigrant, I wanted to share my unique experiences in my college essay. However, I'm not sure how to approach it without sounding cliché or like I'm complaining. Any advice or tips from fellow immigrants who have written successful essays would be greatly appreciated!

Hey! As a parent of a first-generation immigrant who has gone through the college admissions process, I can share some tips that worked for my child. When writing your college essay, focus on the positive aspects of your journey and the lessons you've learned from your experiences.

Instead of sounding like you're complaining, discuss how your background has shaped your perspective and contributed to your personal growth. For example, you could write about how your experiences have made you more resilient or adaptable to new situations.

It's also important to make your story unique and personal. Avoid generalizations and clichés by diving deep into specific moments, feelings, or events that have had a significant impact on your life. Providing vivid descriptions and reflecting on these experiences will help your essay stand out from the rest.

Lastly, don't forget to proofread your essay and ask for feedback from trusted friends, teachers, or counselors. Good luck with your college essay and the admissions process!

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18 Essays About The Immigrant Experience You Need To Read

These stories illuminate what it takes, and what it means, to uproot your life in one country and begin it again in a new one.

BuzzFeed Staff

Growing Up American In Gaza Taught Me What We Owe To Refugees — Rebecca Peterson Zeccola

"In Palestine, we could so easily have been treated as the enemy, but we were welcomed like family."

I’m Not OK With Being One Of The Lucky Muslims — Romaissaa Benzizoune

"This weekend’s immigration order doesn’t apply to me or my family; I’ll be fine. But so many others I know and love will not."

I Grew Up In The Rust Belt, But I'm Not In Any Of The Stories About It — Alia Hanna Habib

"It’s strange to see the media turn its attention to places like my hometown in coal-country Pennsylvania and find that my experience there, as part of the non -white working class, is still invisible."

Here’s What I’m Telling My Brown Son About Trump’s America — Mira Jacob

"Sometimes I wish I could ask America when, exactly, it made its mind up about us. The myth, of course, is that it hasn’t, that there is still a chance to mollify those who dictate the terms of our experience here, and then be allowed to chase success unfettered by their paranoia. To live, as it’s more commonly known, the American dream."

There’s No Recipe For Growing Up — Scaachi Koul

"My mom’s Kashmiri cooking has always tethered me to home. So it’s no wonder she won’t give me (all) the secrets to doing it myself."

How I Learned That Beauty Doesn’t Have To Hurt — Sonya Chung

"Growing up in a Korean American family, I absorbed the idea that any feeling of pleasure comes at a cost. But as I get older, I’m realizing it doesn’t have to work that way."

Why Brexit Has Broken My Heart — Bim Adewunmi

"As a child of immigrants, I am deeply ashamed that this is who we are."

I Found A Home In Clubs Like Pulse, In Cities Like Orlando — Rigoberto González

"I cherish the time I have spent in clubs like Pulse in cities like Orlando, where gay Latinos — the immigrants, the undocumented, and the first-generation Americans alike — gravitate because we love men and we love our homelands, and that’s one of the places our worlds converge."

Making Great Pho Is Hard, But Making A Life From Scratch Is Harder — Nicole Nguyen

"After fleeing Vietnam, my parents turned to food to teach us about what it means to be Vietnamese."

When Home Is Between Different Countries And Genders — Meredith Talusan

"I moved to the U.S. from the Philippines when I was 15, where I had been raised as a boy. About a decade later, I started to live as a woman and eventually transitioned. I think of migration and transition as two examples of the same process – moving from one home, one reality, to another."

I Found The House My Grandparents Abandoned in 1947 — Ahmed Ali Akbar

"So many Americans go to India to find themselves. But I went to find the history my family lost in the subcontinent’s Partition."

How I Became A Southern-Fried Nigerian — Israel Daramola

"I once felt torn between Nigeria and Florida, between jollof rice and fried alligator, but there is no real me without both."

Learning To Mourn In My Father's Country — Reggie Ugwu

"After my brother died and my father was partially paralyzed, my family traveled 7,000 miles in search of an old home, a new house, and the things we’d lost on the road in between."

How To Get Your Green Card In America — Sarah Mathews

"When you perform the act of audacity that is consolidating an entire life into a couple of suitcases and striking out to make your way, what is not American about that? When you leave the old country so that your daughters can have a good education and walk down their streets without fear, what is not American about that? When you flee violence and poverty to come to a land of plenty, when you are willing to learn new languages, to haul ass, to do twice as much work, what is not American about that?"

A Childhood Spent Inside A Chinese Restaurant — Susan Cheng

"Being one of the few Asians in my school was hard enough. Working at my parents’ Chinese restaurant didn’t make it any easier."

How I Learned To Celebrate Eid Al Adha In America — Zainab Shah

"I bent over backward to explain myself. 'From Pakistan,' I would say. 'Not a terrorist,' I almost added. But I didn’t — the joke would only be funny if racial profiling didn’t exist."

Texts From My Parents: What It Was Like To Leave Vietnam — Nicole Nguyen

"They did it for us, and I'll spend the rest of my life trying to make the most of it."

What It’s Like Speaking A Different Language From Your Parents — Zakia Uddin

"My parents and I communicate in an incomplete mash-up of Bengali and English. I sometimes wonder what we are missing."

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Writing about the Immigrant Experience

Sep 23, 2021 by Tammy Pasterick published in Writing

Immigration is an emotional topic that can turn the friendliest of conversations into a fierce debate. People have wide-ranging views that have been shaped by their own experiences, the opinions of friends, and the news programs they watch. Writing about the immigrant experience requires a lot of nuance and attention to detail.

Seven years ago, when I started writing my historical novel, I was not paying close attention to the news coverage of the migrants at the Mexican border or the Syrian refugees crossing the Aegean Sea to get to Greece. I had been inspired by my research into the lives of my great-grandparents, who immigrated to America at the turn of the twentieth century to work in the steel mills of Pittsburgh, and simply wanted to recreate their world in a novel. 

I did not anticipate that my genealogy project turned historical novel would have so many parallels with today’s immigration issues and would provide such a relevant and timely message about empathy.

I’m an American. I was born and raised in Western Pennsylvania and have lived in Maryland for the past twenty years. I cannot speak to the challenges faced by today’s immigrants nor have I considered telling their stories. People who have ridden Mexico’s La Bestia or who have recently fled the Taliban rule in Afghanistan have heartbreaking stories to tell, and I am not qualified to provide advice on how to write a memoir. 

My expertise lies in historical research and novel writing, and I have learned some important lessons about how to write about the immigrant experience from the past and pay tribute to their unique sacrifices. 

Whether your ancestors were from Italy, Ireland, Egypt, or Argentina, the following tips will help you bring your family’s past to life while taking readers on an entertaining and emotional journey in writing about the immigrant experience.

Research your family history.

Conducting research into your family’s past is the first step in writing about the immigrant experience. Websites like Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com have a wealth of birth, marriage, military, and death records as well as ship manifestos and census information. These documents may reveal some fascinating facts about your ancestors and spark your imagination. 

While I was on Ancestry.com, I found the World War II draft registration card for my Lithuanian great-grandfather, who was in his early fifties at the time he signed it. I’ve often wondered what motivated his bravery, as his advanced age exempted him from the draft. Was he hoping to return to Europe to find a lost love or a child he gave up for adoption? Was he seeking revenge on the Germans for killing his best friend during World War I? I may never know, but these theories are all good premises for a novel.

Research the time period.

The world you create in your novel should be historically accurate, so read as much as you can about life in the time and place your immigrants settled. In my case, I read excerpts from The Pittsburgh Survey, a sociological study conducted from 1907-1908, which chronicled the living conditions of immigrant families. I also consulted several books about the steel and coal mining industries in Pennsylvania in the early 1900s. 

While there is more freedom in writing fiction than non-fiction, you should still try to educate readers as you entertain them. Just be careful not to weigh your story down with too many unnecessary details. It takes time to achieve the right balance, and you’ll most likely master this during the editing process.

Be careful when writing dialogue.

Dialogue is tough for all writers, but it’s especially challenging when writing historical fiction—even more so when your characters are speaking a foreign language. You need to stick to a certain style when your immigrants are speaking to each other in their native tongue and another style when they’re struggling to converse in a second language. 

For instance, characters who are learning English might misuse words and only speak in the present tense. They might also stutter or pause repeatedly when telling a story. When immigrant characters are speaking to each other in their native language, simply insert tags like “he said in Slovak” to alert readers that the conversation is occurring in another language. You won’t need to manufacture mistakes in these situations since people generally speak their first language effortlessly.

Sprinkle in world events, politics, and societal conflicts that affect the immigrant experience.

In my opinion, the best historical novels always have characters struggling with both internal and external forces. In Dr. Zhivago , for instance, Yuri Zhivago falls in love with a beautiful young nurse while married to his childhood sweetheart. He wrestles with his feelings and his conscience while the events of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution tear his world—and his family—apart. 

If your story takes place in a turbulent time, include those events. Providing a portrait of the larger world will help readers gain a deeper understanding of your immigrants’ struggles. 

In my novel, the primary focus is on the relationships within the immigrant family, but I also show how the labor movement, social inequality, anti-immigration sentiment, and the deplorable working conditions in the steel and coal mining industries impact their lives.

Add plenty of drama!

Historical fiction readers are looking for an escape to the past. They want to be taken on an emotional journey while learning about a specific time period or world event. While it may be tempting to include every fact you uncovered about Chinese immigrants building the transcontinental railway, don’t do it. Your novel will turn into a history book. 

Drama is the key to good historical fiction, and your book should have plenty of it. You want your readers to laugh, cry, clench their fists in anger, and maybe even throw the book across the room. 

In my novel, I paint a very accurate picture of 1910s Pittsburgh and include vivid descriptions of the steel mills, coal mines, and immigrant neighborhoods. It’s all very interesting, but what makes my book even more fascinating is my main character’s unraveling sanity. It affects her entire family and drives the plot forward. It’s the element that keeps readers turning the pages. 

No matter what type of drama you choose to add—a love triangle, a murder, or kidnapping—you can create an authentic portrayal of the immigrant experience and still keep your story spicy.

A native of Western Pennsylvania, Tammy Pasterick grew up in a family of steelworkers, coal miners, and Eastern European immigrants. She began her career as an investigator with the National Labor Relations Board and later worked as a paralegal and German teacher. She holds degrees in labor and industrial relations from Penn State University and German language and literature from the University of Delaware. She currently lives on Maryland’s Eastern Shore with her husband, two children, and chocolate Labrador retriever. Beneath the Veil of Smoke and Ash is her first novel.

You can follow Tammy on Facebook , Twitter , and Instagram .

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July 27, 2022

5 Tips on Writing About the Immigrant Experience for Law School

Many applicants are recent immigrants or have parents who are immigrants and plan to write about this aspect of their life in a personal statement or diversity statement . Certainly, having this life experience makes you distinctive and can add to your appeal at any school . But, often these essays fall flat. 

First, you must decide if you are going to write your immigrant narrative in the personal statement or diversity statement or both. How do you decide? The personal statement is the opportunity to answer the questions, why law school and why now. If your immigrant story is part of the answer, then introduce the narrative here. If you hope to become a tax attorney, your immigrant story may be best told in your diversity statement. Each statement should stand alone. They should complement each other and not duplicate each other. For those applicants using both opportunities to tell aspects of your family history, don’t repeat. Tell unique stories and provide unique insight in each essay.

Here are 5 tips to help you improve:

• Show. Don’t Tell . Just telling the reader that you and/or your family assimilated or learned English isn’t always enough. You need to show the admissions committee – paint a scene . Give a specific example. You need an arresting image to get their attention. Did you learn English watching cartoons? Immersed in an elementary school classroom? Are you still maintaining cultural aspects of your country of origin, and if so what are they and why? How do they impact your law school decisions or how will they impact the law school community?
• Show grit. In your essays, focus on how you solved the problem rather than the problem itself. For example, if you moved to the U.S. and didn’t speak any English, what did you do? How did you learn the language? How did you make friends, form a new community? Are you still observing certain holidays or traditions from your native country? If so, what are they and why? How do they influence you today?
• Avoid clich é s . “Fish out of water.” “Cultural differences.” “Breaking down barriers.” “Pulled up by their bootstraps.” These are phrases that are repeated often. That repetition has made them, well, cliched. You are trying to set yourself apart from the applicant pool; don’t employ overused phrases that cause you to blend in. You are better off explaining your situation with specificity than turning to hackneyed, overused, boring clichés.
• Don’t make Mom the focus. Often, applicants write about people they admire – usually a parent or grandparent. It’s great to love your family, but don’t make them the focus of your essay. You need to show the admissions committee that you are a good fit , not your father, mother, or other relative. Set a scene, but make yourself the lead character.
• Make a point. Going through an experience – good or bad – means nothing if you haven’t gained insight into yourself. Law schools want people who can think critically and examine the world around them. Your essay needs to show what you learned and how you can apply that skill to your studies and work. How have you grown from this experience? How does your experience help other people?

Remember that most basic failures of imagination in essay writing occur because applicants don’t want to spend time brainstorming, thinking, and writing . All that preparation is an important part of the process that will produce a quality finished product worthy of pride.

Work one-on-one with an Accepted advisor to devise an admissions strategy that will help you present a compelling story and produce an application that will stand out and get you accepted. Check out our  Law School Admissions Consulting Services  for more information. 

Related Resources:

• 5 Summer Experiences That Could Enhance Your Law School Profile
• The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans Application Essay Tips
• 7 Simple Steps to Writing an Excellent Diversity Essay

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