Parents' sacrifices pave generation's way

With an eye to their families, first-generation students define their culture and their place at Yale.

"The central premise of my formative years was: if you perform on equal footing, but not better than, your average American student, then the system will always prefer the American student because you're foreign. My mom's daily maxim became, `You've got to be better! You've got to be better!'" Steve Nam, TD '01, can't help but laugh when talking about the battle-like mentality his Korean-born parents instilled in him.

SHAWN CHENG/YH

Victor Silva, BR '01, also can laugh in retrospect about his Mexican-born father's motivational methods and the seemingly subtle way he showed Silva the future without an education. "From first to sixth grade, my dad took me out of the first few weeks of school to work with him picking grapes. I think he did this on purpose so I could grow so tired of the fields that I would actually want to go back to school."

Whether funny or bitter in retrospect, these moments illustrate the push to better their families' place in America that many first-generation Asian-Americans and Latinos like Nam and Silva feel, growing up caught between two cultures.

Yet even as they carry the hopes of their families with them to New Haven, they are not exactly akin to their parents in values or in culture. Instead, they create their own hybrid culture, defining Latino-American and Asian-American cultures with their own actions. The questions of identity that Indian-American Sangini Shah, MC '03, deals with—"What part of India I'm from, what religion I am, but also, I'm [more than] South Asian, I'm also Asian, I'm also a minority. I'm trying to find out which parts I identify most with" —are not hers alone. For first-generation students at Yale, whether their families come from Mexico, Korea, India, or Puerto Rico, the influence of their family and the values they exported have formed a large part of who they are, and how they ended up at Yale.

Coming to America

Though the parents of many first-generation Yalies immigrated to the same state—California—the differences in the circumstances of their arrival are often as vast as the distance between Mexico and India.

Some first-generation students have never visited their parents' homelands, but since they were raised in areas so densely populated with their own people, it was, in many ways, as if their families never left. Mexican-Americans Silva, Francisco Lopez, TD '02, and Vindia Fernandez, BR '01, all came from families who migrated to majority-Chicano, Central Valley towns to be farm workers. "It was basically like living in Mexico," Silva said. Korean-American Elaine Kim, ES '01, and Nam both lived in mainly Korean areas in and around Los Angeles, Nam in an internal suburb, Kim in L.A.'s Koreatown. Cuban-American Raul Ruiz, DC '03, was born in Miami, but in an area where his high school of 4,000 had a total of one white student, Spanish was more essential than English; he didn't begin speaking English until age 10.

On the other hand, Indian-Americans Shah and Sunita Puri, DC '02, both grew up in more affluent families, in areas where fellow Indians were more difficult to find (North Stonington, Conn. and L.A., respectively). The differences were reflected in their relationships with their parents' homelands. While Lopez visited Mexico with his family despite his father's undocumented status—"I remember crossing the border with my dad in the trunk and wondering, `Why is he there?'"—Puri's only knowledge of India was the one-sided picture her parents gave her. "They would always be like `India's the best—everything about it is morally and culturally superior,'" Puri recalls. It wouldn't be until years later, when Puri actually visited India during the summer after her freshman year of college, that she could feel more deeply connected with the culture.

Ann Thai, DC '02, grew up in the Southern California town of Sarinos where there were few Vietnamese-Americans like herself, and even fewer who could relate with traditional values, such as the concept of "hu." Hu, explained Thai, is a type of "filial piety—because your parents gave birth to you, you owe a lot and you should always obey them. In American culture, once you're 18 you're on your own, or once you're a certain age, you become your own person." With her own father more assimilated into American values than her mother, who kept her more traditional ways, Thai herself felt attached to American culture but still had to make allowances for her mother. This wasn't always easy for others to comprehend, though. "Some of my friends wouldn't understand that I couldn't go out simply because my mom wanted me [home]," Thai said.

Carrying the hope

In Puri's house, the pressure to do well academically even turned religious. "My parents would pray for me to do well on a test, and whenever SAT scores would come, or any other important document, they'd put them on the altar in the shrine in our house," she said.

Assistant Dean and Director of the Asian-American Cultural Center Saveena Dhall, herself a first-generation Indian-American, sees the much-stereotyped pressure common to Asian-American culture that drives their youth towards professions in the sciences. Many of the students interviewed who had the most academic pressures put upon them were Asian-American. Even the liberally-raised Thai admits, "My parents would be very happy if I was to tell them one day I had changed my mind and was going to be a doctor. "In retrospect, most of those under the most pressure admit they wouldn't be at Yale if they hadn't been pushed; nevertheless, Shah, a pre-med student, considers her parents "lucky I wanted to be a doctor."

However, many Asian-American students also acknowledge just how much their families sacrificed for them to bring them to the U.S., and to Yale. This appreciation, even when it comes with a sense of guilt, is a major motivating factor. "To this day, I feel really guilty that I'm not working to put myself through college," Puri admits. "They didn't have the freedom that I have, so I have to go that much further in my life." Nam's parents, whose Korean college education could not be used to its fullest potential when they started a laundry business in the U.S., even gave up going back to Korea for the sake of their son's education. "Basically, they realized that I was so far into the school system that I wouldn't be able to adjust to Korea," Nam said.

Some Latinos experienced academic pressure less by statement and more by example. While Silva was taken directly into the grape fields to find out for himself that he didn't want to become a field worker, Lopez understood his father's example in a different way. On a drive up the West Coast, his father pointed out all the places where he had worked, instilling a deep appreciation of what he had done to support his family. "I feel incredibly indebted to my parents," Lopez said. "To the day I die, I will be indebted to them."

Ruiz's parents also set an example of hard work—in particular, his mother, who lied about her age when the need for money was at its worst and started working in the U.S. at the age of 13. Though his parents were not the controlling type, they did give him the advice he needed to succeed. "They never told me, `Go to your room and study,'" Ruiz said. "They did say, `This is your life, do what you want to do, but if you want to be successful, this is what you do. You were given a map, and you could take the journey if you wanted to." Even if the map wasn't clear for all of their parents, and if they sometimes, as Fernandez said, "probably weren't even sure where they were leading me," first-generation Latinos were taught by example that the road to greater things involved hard work. What their parents often didn't know was how far they'd go, and their children often didn't know what would happen when they got here.

(Not) falling into the Gap

Homesickness ran deep, too. Lopez, who both fell ill and learned of his parents' losing their jobs all within his first month, had his mom pleading for him to come back home to go to community college. Yet, he knew what going to Yale meant to his family and stuck it out. "It was the hope and the pain all boiled into one," he said. Ruiz missed Miami as well, but he knew that going back home would be betraying his parents. "Everything they've given me, this is them, so how can I want to leave this place already?" he asked himself.

Nevertheless, as the head of La Casa Cultural de Latino and the Native-American Cultural Center, Assistant Dean Rick Chavolla, points out, first-generation students usually come with fairly accurate expectations of Yale, whether or not it makes the transition easier. "They have a sense that they're going to be in the minority, they're not going to have the same cultural or linguistic situation as at home, but I think what surprises them is how difficult it can be," Chavolla said.

Surprisingly, however, one group of students, all born as American citizens with a seemingly clear image of American culture, seems to have a more difficult time adjusting to Yale: Puerto Ricans. Ingrid Fuentes, TD '03, had visited the U.S. often despite living all her life in Puerto Rico, but she still had her share of adjustment problems. "It wasn't really like the shock just came one day, but little things added up, like I'd forget where I was and speak Spanish, or not be able to think of the words properly," she said.

Antares Ramos, TD '01, hadn't even heard the term "minority" before going to PROP, the freshman orientation program now known as Cultural Connections (CC). "Hearing the term made me feel minor," Ramos said. Both Ramos and Fuentes found comfort in Puerto Rican students' group Despierta Boricua (DB); Ramos headed the group last year and Fuentes is the current DB president. Even in DB, however, they were two of the only members whose families were still on the island.

Student groups helped the other first-generation students adjust to the world of Yale. Mexican-American group Movimiento Estudiantíl Chicano de Aztlán (MECHA) was an important activity for Silva and Lopez, who served as a national representative and is currently treasurer, and particularly to Fernandez. "MECHA's like a second family when you're away from home and in a strange environment," Fernandez said. "It's nice to have a group of people to fall back on that have so many things in common with you, culturally and educationally."

40 of the over 200 Yale student organizations are affiliated in some way with the cultural centers, and though both Deans Chavolla and Dhall believe the students have more to do with the groups' success than anything. Ruiz particularly praised the unification of the Chicano and Puerto Rican Cultural Houses into La Casa Cultural de Latino this year. "Since I wasn't Chicano or Puerto Rican, I kind of felt left out," Ruiz said. Shah noted the increased presence of the South Asian Society this year, as well as the slowly increasing number of Asian Studies classes. And Silva, co-founder of the group Ballet Folklorico de Yale, was happy with the performance space, funding, and support of the Administration. "Deans Trachtenberg and Brodhead even once actually showed up for an entire dress-rehearsal of ours. It really surprised us," he said.

Lopez, whose positive experience with PROP led him to get involved in CC, realizes that no program can work for all the members of any ethnicity. Regarding CC, student groups, and Ethnic Counselors (EC), Lopez said, "At least the hand that was offered is a little appreciated, if not always taken. In that sense, Yale has provided an `it's there' attitude on a limited scale." With what he sees as the slighting of Native-Americans and Ethnic Studies, Lopez also points to that when it comes to Yale's "hand" of offering, "The cuff is still halfway over the hand," Lopez said. Nam, who has been an Ethnic Counselor this year, sees flaws in the EC program in application, evidenced by the fact that few if any students have been coming to him at all. "Yale needs a greater commitment to the EC program to make it actually work," Nam said.

Creating a culture

In life after Yale, many members of this generation are ready to put their newfound knowledge and perspective to use in their communities. Fuentes sees something valuable within her first difficulties with classes here—"One of the greatest things I realized was that our education back home was really lacking, and that's one of the things I'm going to go back home and work with." Fernandez, founder of the Latino Youth Enrichment Team, a community service group that teaches Latino children in Fair Haven about their culture, hopes to work with children in the future. But "giving back" to their communities isn't limited to the future use of their education—Ruiz himself, in dealing with the "proudest parents on this planet," says, "I have to send them Yale gear every weekend."

COURTESY YALE OFFICE OF INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH

Photo of Francisco Lopez, TD '02, by Katie Aldrich.

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