I
risa Lico grew up in Ra-
vonik, Albania in a tiny vil-
lage surrounded by moun-
tains. For the first eight years of her
life, she lived on a farm, in a two-
bedroom house with 12 other fam-
ily members. They grew their own
food and produced their own milk
and cheese, traveling to the nearby
city of Korçë only in the wintertime
when they needed groceries. Until
moving to the United States in 2008,
Irisa had never met a Black or Asian
person. She had never been exposed
to any culture other than her own.
“In my village, we only had one
shade of (makeup) foundation be-
cause everybody looked the same,”
Irisa told me during a Zoom call last
week.
It was a Tuesday afternoon, and
Irisa and I were chatting about cul-
ture — hers, Albanian; mine, Bul-
garian. As she called in from her
parents’ house in Westland, Mich.,
and I from my college apartment in
Ann Arbor, Mich., we laughed over
our loud families, the bowl-cuts we
endured as children and the cryptic
recipes our mothers have shared
with us. (What does “adding a fin-
ger” of something even mean?)
As a child of immigrants, I have
recently been contemplating which
parts of my cultural background I
can claim as my own and how my
identity will change as I move out
of my parents’ home. While I’m bi-
lingual and consider myself in touch
with my Bulgarian side, I’m not sure
if I will choose to reside in Bulgaria,
let alone have children with another
Bulgarian. And though starting my
own family is still very much a dis-
tant event, I feel a pressure looming:
Will my family’s Bulgarian heritage
— in language, tradition, identity —
end with me?
I wondered if other first- or
second-generation Americans feel
the same. For those who immigrat-
ed here, was facing assimilation a
choice between remaining loyal to
old traditions or fully adapting to
American values? Did they have to
pick one culture to reign over the
other, or do they exist in perfect bal-
ance? For those like me, who are
born and bred in the U.S., do they
worry they are too far removed from
their parents’ culture to properly
pass down that legacy?
Irisa, who has lived in the U.S.
for over a decade, described how
changing her political and social
mindset was necessary evolution,
albeit one that took a number of
years to accomplish.
“I was eight years old (when I
moved to the U.S.). I remember be-
ing so anti-everything. I think I was
even a Republican in 2008,” she said
with a laugh. She explained that like
many rural Albanians, her conserva-
tism was largely borne out of a lack
of exposure to anything different
from what is expected.
“Racial issues, issues within the
LBGT community — I was not ex-
posed to those kinds of conflicts,”
she said. “I was just in Albania
where ‘race wasn’t a thing’, and
‘sexuality wasn’t a thing’.”
As she spoke, I had a hard time
envisioning Irisa as a child eagerly
waving around a McCain flag. Irisa,
an LSA Junior majoring in Inter-
national Studies and Middle East
Studies, describes herself today a
democratic socialist, mentioning
that “liberal isn’t left enough”. But as
she explained moving from an Alba-
nian village of about 1,000 people to
metro Detroit, that juxtaposition of
past and current beliefs made a little
more sense.
“I understand why Albanians
think the way they do back home,”
Irisa said. “But coming to the U.S.
and learning, and going to a super
diverse school... having my best
friends from all different cultures —
they taught me so much about their
identities and the issues that they
face in their own communities.”
It’s an inspiring point, and while
listening to her, I felt within me a
small twinge of patriotism. Indeed,
the U.S. is a melting pot, a salad
bowl, a meeting point — whatever
you want to call it. We are a nation
built by immigrants and home to
nearly 45 million of them. There are
over 350 languages spoken within
our borders. Our economy depends
on the contributions of immigrants.
Despite the hateful and exclusion-
ary rhetoric of former U.S. President
Donald Trump and his followers, a
majority of Americans still believe in
a diverse, welcoming nation.
For Irisa, that diversity is one of
the few tethers that make her feel
connected — and even proud — to
be an American.
“I appreciate America in terms
of the different cultures that I’ve
learned about, and that makes me
proud to be an American,” Irisa said.
“But with anything else — I don’t
have a strong connection to the U.S...
I don’t want to live here for the rest
of my life.”
I wondered if that was an easy
conclusion to come to. Were there
other aspects of American culture
that would be hard to leave behind?
“There’s no culture,” she said.
“What is the American culture?
Like, McDonald’s?”
***
One of the things Batuhan Akçay
misses most from home is getting
together with his friends for “cry
sessions.”
Batuhan, a first-year master’s
student studying computer science,
moved to the U.S. from Turkey four
years ago to attend the Univer-
sity of Michigan as an undergradu-
ate. When we spoke over Zoom, it
was nighttime, and he laughed as I
probed for more information about
the aforementioned “cry sessions.”
“Turkish people like to listen to a
lot of sad songs,” Batuhan said. “We
have these kinds of cry sessions with
friends — some people do cry, some
people don’t. But like, we love being
in a really romantic, depressing en-
vironment sometimes, listening to
music.”
I think I would love Turkey, I
thought to myself — I am also a fan
of creating romantic, depressing en-
vironments. But as our conversation
progressed, and laughter turned
into seriousness, I noticed parallels
between Batuhan’s perception of
the U.S. and those of the other first-
and second-generation Americans I
had spoken to.
“When I was in Turkey, I never
thought about cultures that much,
because Turkey is very mono-cul-
tured,” Batuhan said. “A lot of the
people are very similar and act in
certain ways, but when I came to
the U.S., when I saw people from
many different backgrounds, many
cultures, then I realized the impor-
tance of cultures and how (culture)
affects people’s lives.”
Like Albania, Turkey is relatively
homogenous, with the majority of
the population being Muslim and
ethnically Turkish. For this reason,
Batuhan explained, many people
share similar ideologies and have
trouble understanding issues faced
by minorities.
Again, this struck me. When I
had been thinking about my Bul-
garian culture, and how to main-
tain it, I figured this would be an
attempt done in spite of the U.S.,
not by way of it. But talking to Batu-
han and Irisa made me wonder if
culture is best celebrated when it
evolves — not when it is carefully
polished and delicately handed
down to the next generation. May-
be, I thought, my hybrid version of
Bulgarian-American culture is ac-
tually a necessary one.
“The way I view life and people
and cultures is that some of them
are better in some ways, some of
them are worse in some ways,”
Batuhan said. “To be able to survive
in a different environment with
people from different cultures, dif-
ferent mindsets, you have to adapt
yourself … some of the things that
come from your culture — you will
have to let them go.”
Batuhan said that one aspect of
Turkish culture that he rejects is a
patriarchal mindset.
“Turkey is very patriarchal,”
Batuhan said. “I would say like a
typical Turkish man, they would
want their wife to be at home, just
cooking or cleaning, taking care of
the kid.”
He said that the general Turkish
population also has a problematic
mindset surrounding sexuality.
“They believe that being gay,
or bisexual or transgender are not
good things and they think of them
as like, ‘Oh you’re committing a sin,’”
Batuhan said.
Batuhan explained that even be-
fore moving to the U.S., he mostly
rejected this mindset because he
had exposure to different cultures
through travel and education. Still,
like Irisa, moving to the U.S. helped
him learn more about and solidify
his views on equality, whether it be
through talking with LGBTQ+ peers
or women in his STEM classes.
This is not to say that Batuhan —
nor myself, nor should you — views
Turkey as a wholly close-minded
place and the U.S. as a haven for
acceptance. It was clear from our
conversation that Batuhan is deeply
proud of his Turkish identity, and
that while he aims to raise his family
in the U.S., this decision is not based
on some fairytale ideal of the Ameri-
can Dream. Like many immigrants,
his is rooted in factors that tran-
scend abstract feelings of belonging
and homeland.
“The reason I would like to live
in the U.S. in the future is that the
politics and economy in Turkey is
not that great,” Batuhan said. “And I
don’t think I’ll be able to have a de-
cent life out there, both ideologically
and financially... In the future, if it
was the case that the politics change,
the economy changes, and Turkey is
back again as a vibrant country, then
I would actually like to go back.”
Indeed, the diversity that Batu-
han and Irisa mentioned ranks low
on the reasons immigrants choose
to move to the U.S., according to a
study conducted by the U.S. Depart-
ment of State. Economic and edu-
cational opportunities clearly rank
higher, and more so, the fact that
there is diversity in the U.S. doesn’t
necessarily mean it is celebrated.
When Irisa told me about the mi-
sogyny that women in Albania face,
she didn’t note the U.S. as its inverse
of perfect equality. She noted it as a
step up. When Batuhan mentioned
the diversity of cultures in the U.S.,
he didn’t indicate celebratory, com-
munal potlucks. He actually later la-
mented how individualistic Ameri-
cans can be.
In an age of increasing national-
ism, it is dangerous to inaccurately
categorize people and places into
binary camps: the “backwards, left-
behind” nations of the East versus
the “modern, progressive” West.
It also made me realize that my
search for a strong sense of Bulgar-
ian identity could play into this trib-
alist sorting. Trying to “pick a side”
or determine which culture is better
to identify with is not merely impos-
sible, but destructive to any move-
ment towards inclusion.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement
Constructing a
culture: Dilemmas of
first and second-gen
Americans
BY MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
ILLUSTRATION BY EILEEN KELLY
ILLUSTRATION BY EILEEN KELLY
Wednesday, January 27, 2021 — 13
Read more at MichiganDaily.com