I once saw a video of a chef talking about how a lot of the second-generation immigrant kids end up going back home. America prices them out. Culture makes them feel like they don’t belong…and they return to what they find is familiar, yet not. Admittedly, this was in the context of Asian culture that the person was speaking about.
I have always loved what I believed America stood for. Which was a place where people from all different backgrounds came to and worked together to make a place where anyone could come from and anyone could be American. I don’t love what it’s turned into.
But even the America I believed in was a myth. It was taken from people that were already here. Maybe how America returns to what it once was, is that the immigrants return home. The white people that forgot their roots. That their ancestors fled religious persecution, war, and hunger too.
And then the Natives reclaim their land.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m not making sense. I don’t think anything does right now. Except, I keep on thinking about my ancestors. Who were not American. But Irish, and Polish. And Canadian. And French. And German. And Norwegian.
And I don’t even know if Canadian is the right term, when they were from Newfoundland, and Newfoundland got taken over too…
Turned into Canadians even though they didn’t want to be.
Although there were people there then. Before. There always are.
Maybe the new American dream is going back home to where we came from before our ancestors had to leave there. Don’t twist this. I love immigrants I love learning about cultures, and customs, and food.
I love knowing that half of the American phrases are made up of syntax from other languages that came here. Meshed together through movies and books and music into its own, unique thing that is not at all similar to the King’s English.
I am waxing nonsense late at night on a computer made up of parts from a country I will probably never get to see.
Who knows what any of this actually means? No one will read this anyway. Probably.
With love,
Diana Crescent
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