The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America

by Nikesh Shukla

How do you feed a heart with $1.40? Trick question. You learn to feed something else.

Knowledge, in the days before instantaneous electronic recall, was full of potential energy. It was attended by a guesswork that fostered a different way of knowing, one that allowed for ranges rather than insisting on points.

The general is where solidarity begins, but the specific is where our lives come into proper view.

Such was my dilemma, and the dilemma of many daughters of immigrants whose purpose seems to be the preservation of “our culture” as much as the progression of it.

Community brings safety, but it also brings “What will people say?” Sometimes it is a luxury that I’m now able to define myself outside my community.

It is in my most mundane moments in New York, showing my skin without fiddling with my buttons or holding hands in public, that I am sometimes reminded of how far I’ve spilled out.

My heart aches because these are the girls who have learned to accept being loved only part-time, who must endure the pain of heartbreak by themselves, and then carry the shame alone too. The girls who can’t hear their parents say “You deserve better” instead of “What will people say?”

As the empire selectively swings its drawbridge open for some, others must climb in uninvited. Over barbed fences and across miles of sand. Over bureaucratic red tape and across seas of hypocrisy.

There are no right ways to survive as an immigrant in America. But when viewed within the context of a historical struggle for acceptance and self-determination, our reasons for being become apparent. Every song stands as a monument to those whose feet danced to the rhythm of shackles that failed to keep them in place. Every recipe recalls the traditions that held families together, despite the jagged coastlines threatening to keep them apart. And when accompanied by reminders that our daughters are the most beautiful gifts this country has ever received, each of the kisses we place on their cheeks resound as loving acts of revolution.

What is my home if there’s no real place my people are from that I can return to?