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