Category Archives: Fall 2017 Issue X: Immigration

Fall 2017 Issue X: Immigration

From the Archives: Smith Students Rally Behind Scholarships for Refugees

Faced with ongoing, destructive conflicts in several Middle Eastern and African nations, the world today has witnessed the highest levels of forced displacement since World War II.  At a time when a new wave of anti-immigrant rhetoric continues to build momentum, 10 million of the more than 22 million refugees remain stateless, denied access to basic rights which include a right to education. In response to this crisis, students at Smith College have demonstrated an interest in helping to extend their educational opportunities to their fellow scholars around the globe who do not presently have access. A noteworthy example is the organization Higher Education for Refugees at Smith or HERS, a group formed last year by students looking to establish scholarships to bring refugee students to Smith. Yet, this organization and its aims had a predecessor, and this concern for refugees amongst students is not the first to take hold on Smith campus.

Europe in the 1930s was quickly becoming a place where danger lurked in any political or religious dissidence, a climate so volatile that Smith parents wrote letters expressing concern for their student planning to travel and the school was eventually forced to cancel the Junior Year Abroad program due to the perceived “imminence of war.” As an increasingly hostile Germany completed its conquest of Czechoslovakia and surrounding territories, Jewish individuals and political critics, particularly those vocal against Fascism, fell subject to Nazi hostility and oppression. Yet, not unlike today, the world was largely unreceptive to the idea of helping refugees. Data from a survey about changing immigration quotas, for instance, showed that 83% of Americans were opposed to the idea of allowing refugees into the country.

The chapel where President Neilson’s Monday talks took place (Box: College Archives Exhibits)

One vocal opponent to this pervasive mindset was Smith president William Neilson, who described the persecution of intellectual minds by Fascist governments as “intellectual suicide.” Active in efforts both to overturn quota laws, which severely restricted the number of immigrants permitted to enter the United States, and to bring rights and resources to refugees, Neilson assumed an active role targeting the injustices which plagued the world of his time, and encouraged Smith students to the same. “We realise our responsibility for turning out students who are well aware of the problems of their epoch,” Neilson stated, “and we think it is our duty to teach them how to find out the facts concerning social order…” Every Monday morning for over a decade, Neilson hosted obligatory “chapel talks” dedicated to discussing current world affairs. Students were expected to reflect on information they had read in the New York Times or the Herald Tribune, which he made sure were delivered to each house on campus. In an oral history interview, Betty Royan ‘35 credits President Neilson with providing her with a new knowledge of politics, expressing that his “ability to transmit an understanding of what was going on in the world to all of us in Chapel…started waking me up to the fact that there was a wider world than…Northampton.”

Representatives of the International Relations Club (Smith College Yearbook 1939)

Spurred to action by these talks, a new student committee associated with the Joint Peace Commission began advocating for a campaign at Smith to prompt action in “the alleviation of the pressure against Jewish and liberal students in the Reich.” After gaining approval from the administration, the group joined with representatives of the International Relations Club and the Student Christian Association to launch a fundraising effort among the student body to create full scholarships for refugee students. Without arranging a specific monetary goal, the students aimed to enable as many students as possible to come to Smith.

A headline in The Sophian (December 14, 1938)

In December of 1938, the campaign began with the full support of President Neilson, who presented the project in Chapel as a chance for Smith students to demonstrate their concern for the events they had been learning about. With contributions collected from every house on campus, students collectively raised over $1500.

Agreeing that full tuition and living expenses would be offered to as many refugee students as funds would allow, the Committee on the Selection of Refugee Scholars was formed and began evaluating potential candidates.

Evemarie Winkler (Smith College Yearbook, 1941)

One student who benefitted from a scholarship drawn from the student fundraising campaign was Evemarie Winkler, a refugee and eligible college Junior living temporarily in New York City. College records make clear that Ms. Winkler would not have been able to continue her education without the support of Smith, stating that she was “devoid of all funds” and “supporting herself and in part herparents by painting cheap jewelry at $10.00 per week for a 44-hour week.” Once approved by the selection committee, Evemarie was granted full financial coverage of tuition, room and board, as well as an additional $100 stipend for “incidental expenses” for the 1939/1940 academic year. A later document reveals that Ms. Winkler’s strong academic performance at Smith had earned her another full scholarship for the following year.

Admitted with Evemarie Winkler was Lore Salzberger, the daughter of a German rabbi who had escaped to England. A letter from the chairman of the Committee on the Selection of Refugee Scholars, Walter Kotschnig, reveals that although Ms. Salzberger had previously received a full tuition scholarship on academic merit alone, she was unable to obtain the student visa she needed to benefit from the award. In addition to providing financial support, the committee resolved to help Ms. Salzberger enter the country, expressing a willingness to collaborate with personal friends and pull strings in order to bring her to the United States either under a student visa or as a “non-quota immigrant.”

Marianne Liepe (Box: Office of the President William Allan Neilson)

Although direct funding was limited, the committee also made alternative efforts to welcome refugees. Another student highlighted by the committee was Marianne Liepe, a strong student and athlete who, due to her prior completion of undergraduate study in Germany, would enter Smith as a graduate student and therefore could not receive a refugee scholarship. Supported by Ms. Liepe’s impressive file of accomplishments and letters of recommendation, Kotschnig in another letter proposes that the necessary funds be drawn instead from offering her work in the Physical Education department “in exchange for her fellowship,” a suggestion which Neilson later approved and encouraged.

For the remainder of his tenure at Smith College and beyond, President Neilson continued to work both personally and through the inspiration of his students to ensure that refugee scholars would continue to find “their strongest allies in academia.” Beyond identifying with and advocating a moral obligation to help those in need, Neilson often spoke to the talent that would be left untapped if refugees were to be barred from education. “There is so high a proportion of skilled, learned, and artistically gifted among them [immigrants],” he wrote, that, “they are infusing new life into our universities,…and will do so more and more if we are wise enough to permit them.” Today, with organizations like HERS and others, Smith students continue to promote the basic rights but also the unique contributions of immigrant and refugee students, emulating the efforts and beliefs of their forebears.

References

College Archives Exhibits, Smith College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. Material collected for exhibition “The Strongest of Allies in Academia.”

Office of President William Allan Neilson, Smith College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. Correspondence with the Committee on the Selection of Refugee Scholars (1938-1940),” Box 410, Folder B47F7.

President’s Report 1933-1939, Smith College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. “October 20, 1939 Report.”

Presidents—William Allan Neilson, Smith College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. Miscellaneous Activities: Refugee (1940-1941), Box 348, Folder 645.

“Responses to the 1930s Refugee Crisis.” Facing History and Ourselves, Accessed 19 Oct. 2017.

Rose, Peter Isaac. The Dispossessed: An Anatomy of Exile. UMass Press, 2005.

The Sophian Newspaper 1938-1939, Smith College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. “$1508.11 Raised Here for Refugee Students,” December 1938.

“Student Activist Group Aims For Smith Scholarships For Refugees in Northampton.” The Sophian, 30 Sept. 2016.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Figures at a Glance.” UNHCR, Accessed 19 October 2017.  http://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html.

 

Amanda Carberry ’21 is a prospective Government major with a strong interest in languages, the World War II era, international human rights, and the study of history as it relates to foreign policy today.  She hopes to travel and study abroad in the near future. She is also an avid writer, having self-published a novella, and looks forward to having the opportunity to refine her writing abilities during her years at Smith.

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Fall 2017 Issue X: Immigration

Engaging with Today’s Refugee Crisis

The video above documents the Smith College Refugee Consortium, which met in the spring of 2017 to discuss Smith’s efforts to organize and implement effective initiatives in service to Northampton’s immigrant and refugee community.  As the video conveys, a number of groups—faculty, staff, and students—engaged in the project of welcoming refugees to the Northampton area.  A student group, HERS (Higher Education for Refugees at Smith) founded the previous year, was actively involved.  The following interview with the two student leaders, Rachel Cooke ’20 and Vivian Nguyen ’20, highlights the  interest Smith students have shown in supporting refugees in our community as well as the continuity between past and present engagements.

A member of HERS greets students at the Fall 2016 Organization Fair (The Sophian)
  • What has been the result of your efforts to create scholarships thus far?

We are very pleased with the Marianne Ejier Olds ’47 Scholarship, which was announced last semester (https://www.smith.edu/news/scholarship-for-refugee-undocumented-students/). We have been working with outside organizations such as Books not Bombs to further decide our next steps in making a Smith education accessible for refugee students.

  • Has the scope of your work evolved since the inception of your group?

Our mission has always been twofold: to educate the community on the refugee experience and to directly support the Northampton refugee resettlement. The latter we try to adapt to what the current refugees need most urgently. For instance, last winter we spearheaded a successful winter clothing drive and ultimately collected over 700 articles of clothing. This year, with the influx of child refugees, we plan on organizing a school supply drive for them, in addition to other events and services that help meet the needs of Northampton’s refugees.

  • How has the Smith community as a whole embraced your efforts?

The Smith community has been very supportive of our efforts. The administration, especially, has been so receptive to our concerns in ensuring Smith education is possible and affordable for refugees. As of right now on campus, we are the sole organization attending to the needs of refugees but we always welcome other organizations who are interested in collaborating to reach out. Any race, gender, sexuality, and identity can be a refugee, which is why inclusivity in organizing is so important to us.

  • Do you feel that increasing the presence of refugees at Smith, in addition to helping the individual refugee student, has the potential to foster important intellectual contributions that might otherwise be lost?  

Yes, increasing refugee education fosters important intellectual contributions that might otherwise be lost- most significantly, their narratives. Ensuring that the experiences and history of refugees is not lost is exactly why our organization exists. Refugee stories, like Viet Thanh Nguyen’s (who won the Pulitzer for The Sympathizer last year and just this past month was named a MacArthur Genius) are important- not in just changing public perception and helping to not repeat history but as a testament to their strength and courage. Further, giving refugees the necessary tools to help uplift themselves will drive them to help the next refugee generation. I say this from my own experience as the daughter of two refugees, who, from their own education, have been able to devote their lives to sharing their story as being child refugees during the Vietnam war and help make America home for today’s refugees.

  • My recent research in the archives for Global Impressions has uncovered a student movement of the 1930s to raise scholarship money for refugee students endangered by pre-World War II instability in Europe. In 1938, for example, an event created by several student groups encouraged each Smith house to run a fundraising campaign, a movement which collectively raised nearly $2000. Do you recognize any immediate similarities between these events and the work of your organization today?

Smith is a really expensive institution, but luckily, it is need-based. We realize that there are many hidden costs to attending, such as travel, dorm supplies, books, and clothing. That is the gap that we are hoping to close in future efforts through item donations.

 

Interview Conducted by Amanda Carberry ’21

Temar France ’18 is a digital media scholar and Student Fellow of the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute for the 2017-2018 project War. Temar is an Africana Studies major driven by a curiosity in Womanist theology and African American spiritual practices. She co-hosts the podcast Marginalia, where she explores topics of gender and the legibility of global blackness. After graduation, Temar plans to travel abroad and pursue her graduate studies.

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Fall 2017 Issue X: Immigration

Chameleon

I was born in Chicago. When I was three years old, my family moved to Okinawa. Two years later, we would move to Tokyo. I spent two years in Tokyo before moving to South Korea, where I lived for a year. For the summers, I lived in China with my mother’s side of the family. It wasn’t until right before I turned nine that I found myself in the United States again, though I never returned to Chicago. The Pacific Northwest has been home base for several years now. At one point, I also lived in the American South (which is a rather long story of its own). I will never forget my formative years in East Asia.  I was always slightly confused about where I was and who I was. Was I an immigrant? An emigrant?  An international traveler being dragged from country to country by my parents?   What I did know and remember was having to cross linguistic barriers on a day-to-day basis. Translation was something I couldn’t live without; it was a natural part of my every day need to communicate. It wasn’t until I came to Smith that I was finally able to see the artistry in translation and how it brought together different cultures and languages.  Before, I had perceived it first and foremost as a tool for survival.

In Okinawa, I was homeschooled. In Tokyo, I attended three different schools–a Japanese kindergarten, a Catholic Montessori school, and a school on an American military base. In the first space, I had to communicate in Japanese, in the second and third spaces I communicated in English. However, I spoke more Chinese at home than either English or Japanese. During the summers in China, I went to a Chinese school, where I spoke only Chinese. I knew a smattering of Korean, but it never quite reached the same level as the other languages, because I only spent a year there and was homeschooled. Only after I came to the United States, did English become my language of highest proficiency, simply because I was now required to use it the most in everyday conversation.

Being half-Caucasian and half-Chinese, moving to Japan, and then to South Korea, required me to be constantly aware of the customs, culture, and languages around me.

I remember strangers staring at me as I walked down the street. They cast curious glances at me and my parents as mixed race couples still weren’t a very common sight in the various places where I lived back then. It seemed that everyone assigned me to a different category based on my features. When I spoke Chinese in China, I didn’t have an accent, and this startled many people. Still, I passed as a Caucasian person, despite being half-Chinese. And in mostly Caucasian spaces, I was simply Chinese, despite being half-Caucasian. The latter was most evident when I was living in the American South where I was the only student with Chinese heritage in the entire school. Looking back on it all, I was constantly considered someone who did not fit in any of the pre-determined categories, someone who was something of a question mark in almost all spaces. I had to learn how to blend in linguistically- speaking Japanese, Chinese, and English, all with varying levels of proficiency. I was a jack of all trades, adapting as needed to constantly changing environments. Like a chameleon that changes color, my appearance never seemed to be truly static in other people’s eyes. Yet this mobility–immigration, migration, emigration, each move across a cultural or linguistic border–shaped my identity.  I now have a passion for language, travel, and bringing communities together. Most importantly, growing up among various customs, cultures, and languages, I’ve learned the value of being a global citizen.  

 

Kela is a junior with a major in East Asian Languages and Literature. She also has a concentration in Translation Studies and a minor in Neuroscience. She is interested in doing research on how the brain processes linguistic information.

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Fall 2017 Issue X: Immigration, Uncategorized

Changing Small Habits in Another Culture

When my language course at Goethe Institute in Germany first started, I felt bewildered by the fact that I could no longer easily bring my coffee to class because the cafe downstairs only provided coffee in porcelain cups that had to be  returned to the self-help desk — unless I crossed the street and went to the nearest Starbucks. And after school when I went to supermarkets, I realized plastic bags were not an option in most shops — not even for purchase. I had to bring one of my own, or spend on a relatively expensive cloth bag at the store. And I was surprised to see everyone actually  bring a cloth bag with them everywhere. Such an inconvenience! Why do they do that, I wondered ?

In my host family, I was asked to separate plastics from the other garbage, and to make sure that I switched off all the lights when leaving each room and shut off water when shampooing my hair or brushing my teeth. The wash machine and even the dishwasher were used only once a week when both were completely filled up. There was no dryer and the laundry could only be put up on racks to air-dry. The refrigerator was painfully small partly to save energy. At the university, most buildings had no air-conditioning and our teacher was required to open the windows to let the fresh — and freezing — air in every 60 minutes.

The feeling of inconvenience arose due to many small things, but for people living in Hamburg, where I was now spending a year, it is part of their daily life, and these are their habits — eco-friendly habits. The green movements starting in the early 1980s most likely contributed to the adoption of these habits. And the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 triggered an awareness that then further encouraged a  movement calling for an environmentally friendly style of life. Twenty years later,  an entire generation in Germany and many other places in the Europe have grown up with an awareness of how interconnected and fragile our environment is.

Good policies that provide incentives for energy conservation and innovation as well as more practical reasons like high electricity price can all help explain why Germany leads the world in energy efficiency. But it was still striking and also illuminating to witness and experience how big a role resource-conscious habits play in this country. There are many things that we can see: for example, how friendly this city is to cyclists with the orderly arranged bike lanes all over the town. And there are also many energy-saving attempts that are hidden from our eyes, such as low- or zero-energy buildings, energy-saving home appliances, and organic food supplies. What is most important is that everyone seems to seriously care about the energy usage, and energy conservation is an indispensable part in everyone’s daily life instead of an empty talk of some “elite environmentalists,” or worse, a “hoax” made up by competing nations.

The aggregation of common personal habits reflects values of a nation’s culture. “Grab a drink and run,” for example, is so common in the U.S. that many people walk around a city or a street with plastic cups and straws in their hands, although it is totally unnecessary to keep hydrated all along the way. A reusable water bottle can reduce so much waste. In Starbucks in Germany, ordering a drink “for here” means, by default, receiving your coffee in a china cup. Even baby steps toward the goal of ecological sustainability are worth praising, such as the Grab-and-Go 2.0 project at Smith. To be sure, there is still plenty of space for further progress and remedies, and the public education of environmental awareness must be coupled with right incentives and pragmatic considerations, in order to realize the desirable and far-reaching effect among people across different areas.

It is always easy to label oneself as environmentally friendly while it is not so simple to change the small habits rooted in one’s life. We adapt to the environment while the environment cultivates our habits. Habits and the continuous practice of them make lives easier and this is how the so-called comfort zone starts to build up. The exchange semester in Living in Germany forced drastic changes in my own comfort zone.  The habits that I was not even conscious of manifested themselves when discomfort caused by the loss of them began to disturb me. I suddenly understood that the grocery stores in the US that kindly double-stacked my plastic bags and the restaurants or cafeterias that offered disposable utensils were in fact indulging my  natural tendency to over-consume, to waste and to be blind to the near future of ultimate depletion.  It took a year living in Germany for me to observe the habits of people in another culture, to feel annoyed at the inconvenience of having to change my “comfortable” ways, and then to adopt new habits wholeheartedly.

 

Tianhua Zhu ’18  is currently a Senior, majoring in both Government and Linguistics. Looking at the intersection between the two majors, she is interested in the politics of language and seeks to understand the language of politics. She participated in the Smith Program in Hamburg in Spring 2017 and took advantage of the great opportunity to travel around several countries in Europe. Originally coming from Shanghai, China, she would like to accumulate more international experiences and bring together distinct perspectives echoing through the East and the West.

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Fall 2017 Issue X: Immigration

Waiting for my Number

About a week ago, I stood in a crowd of over a hundred people outside the Kreisverwaltungsreferat, or KVR, the German registry of foreigners and nationals. It was almost 7:30am and the doors were about to open for the day. I looked around me—I saw curly hair and straight, tall figures and small, big puffy jackets and the sleeveless arms of those impervious to the early fall chill. At the top of the stairs before me, I heard the doors open and felt the inexorable lean of the mass into the building. My feet began to inch forward, several small steps before each rise of the stair, as shoulders crowded in about my ears. The doorway acted like a dam, and we the torrent of water breaking through it.

Once inside, the knowledgeable broke away from the inexperienced, racing to their respective wings for housing registration, background checks, and work permits. I was there for the last of the three, in search of a right to live and work in this country that is not my own. As I waited in line for a number, then waited for my  number T16 to be called, my memory called out to me. In March of 2016, I had been in a similar situation in Rome, needing to declare my presence to the Italian government and receive my permesso di soggiorno. As a researcher affiliated with an institution, the declaration felt like a formality rather than a necessity. I did not understand the value of the permission I sought. That morning over a year ago, I traveled to the Italian immigration office with a laptop full of articles to read and a cavalier attitude. But my sense of security lasted only until I arrived at the lonely building on the outskirts of Rome.

As I sat in the German waiting room last week, my mind recalled the chaos outside the high, chain-link fence of its Italian counterpart. I remembered the sickening sensation of being escorted past the exhausted and the desperate. Crowds of migrants and refugees clustered along the fence line, pleading with their voices, their gestures, their eyes. The urge to give up my scheduled appointment, not having fully realized its import until that moment, was nearly uncontrollable. But a part of me held back. I couldn’t give up my place: it would not be given to one of the undocumented migrants crowding before me. And perhaps in that moment I glimpsed the depth of my privilege and I coveted it, suddenly fearful of my own tenuous status.

As an American and an academic, I am privileged to view a permesso or a blaue carte as a formality. My education allows me, as many of us, to be a citizen of the world. Germany is a very different place from Italy: German nationals are as plagued with visits to the KVR as immigrants and temporary residents. The experience is more communal, subsuming the assumption of ‘us’ versus ‘them.’ But that hint of desperation still lingered, hanging in the silent waiting room of the KVR. The search for belonging—and the proof of that belonging—consumes us all as we wait for our number. T13… T14… T15…

 

Erin Giffin (’08) is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the field of art history at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany. After completing her degree at Smith College in Art History and Italian Studies, she went on to a master’s and PhD from the University of Washington in Seattle, WA.

 

 

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Fall 2017 Issue X: Immigration

Je suis comme je suis…in which we discover, and find solace in, poetry

Each morning when I bring le petit garçon to school, I stretch our 10-minute drop-off window for as long as I’m able. I surreptitiously scour his classroom, searching for new drawings, writings, anything to get a sense of what they’ve been up to. I know that linguistic and cultural barriers inhibit my full understanding, but I think it’s also something about the way they operate, gates closed and locked except during these brief, monitored periods, that lends a sense of opacity and mystery to school here. I know they dance on Tuesdays, and they draw a lot, and they’re learning cursive. I know the lunch menu. We received a note asking us to please bring a book about Egypt if we have one. But not a lot of detail, not the kind I’m used to from our old school, where we all had the code to the observation room and could watch for as long as we wished, or felt welcome to hang out and help in class any time.

So it comes as a complete surprise when, a couple of weeks ago as I’m standing at the stove stirring pasta and he’s talking playfully with The Frenchman, he asks — Can you tell me about Jacques Prévert? … and then like a magician starts reciting lines from one of his poems.

Did I just hear what I thought I heard? I ask for a little more, and then begins to spill, out of this 5-year-old child’s mouth, a flow of words …


En sortant de l’école
nos avons recontré
un grand chemin de fer
qui nous a emmenés….

I am a lover of poetry, and especially memorizing poems, so that I have access to them at any moment. And here, my favorite person on all earth, has learned a poem! By memory! I had no idea he had this in him. I scramble to look it up, and then with just a few prompts he recites the entire fifty lines. It’s about children leaving school — maybe for the day, maybe more metaphorically to become adults — and all the strange and wonderful things they discover.

If you don’t know Jacques Prévert, well, Bienvenue au club. As I have quickly learned, the prolific Prévert, a poet and screenwriter, is a household name here, and every schoolchild studies his poems. FranceTV has a whole section on his work on their education site. You’ve probably seen his picture before, maybe in one of Robert Doisneau’s photographs. Prévert’s simplistic style makes him accessible for children — and, as it turns out, me. He speaks to their capacity to dream.   

 I discover other poems, this next one published in 1945, so short and sweet and fitting with its straightforward language, plus it involves coffee. An unadorned description of a morning routine… deceptive in its minimalism, no doubt.


Déjeuner du Matin
Il a mis le café
Dans la tasse
Il a mis le lait
Dans la tasse de café
Il a mis le sucre
Dans le café au lait
avec la petite cuiller
Il a tourné
Il a bu le café au lait
et il a reposé la tasse
sans me parler…

He poured the coffee
Into the cup
He poured the milk
Into the cup of coffee
He put the sugar
Into the coffee with milk
With a small spoon
He stirred it
He drank the coffee
And he put down the cup
Without speaking to me…

Turns out, le petit garçon and his classmates are securing other ditties to memory too. Another evening he recites a playful song consisting of people’s names, which rhyme with the activities they do. I catch him humming his favorite line as he’s having a pee before bed: “Brigitte — s’agit, s’agit”.

I listen and smile. It occurs to me that this bilingual thing is like having a bigger playground. You reach into your cabinet of tools to describe life’s myriad emotions and experiences, and you have so much more to choose from. In this case, how much better it sounds in French, how much more playful — “Brigitte, s’agit, s’agit” — versus “Brigitte bustles about, bustles about” or worse, “Brigitte tosses restlessly, tosses restlessly”. Well over twenty years after my time living abroad, I still encounter moments when a certain Norwegian phrase says it just so, in a way I’ve never found in English. There must be so many examples.

Admitting I had no idea who Jacques Prévert was is a little embarrassing. But how can you be something other than what you are? As another poem begins:  Je suis comme je suis / je suis faite comme ça. To be able to be this, imperfect — and the potential for such discoveries — is precisely what brought me to France. You don’t know Jacques Prévert? Really? Here. Here you go. Turns out you needed him.

 

A recent transplant to France from Salt Lake City, Utah, Una Pett is visual artist, teacher, and writer. Her adventure as an expat began in summer 2016 when she and her small family — comprised of French-born Lou, who had pretty much lived in the US for the previous twenty-five years; and Luca now six, who attends public school and loves soccer — embarked for Toulouse, which lies in the southwest near the Pyrenees, happily equidistant-ish from the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts.

A lifelong student of the human figure specializing in portraiture, with frequent forays into landscape painting and drawing, Una earned her MFA in painting from the New York Academy of Art’s Graduate School of Figurative Art. She also studied at the National College of Art & Design in Dublin, Ireland and the Gage Academy of Art in Seattle. She taught for many years at the Visual Art Institute in Salt Lake City and has taught at the University of Utah; Utah State University; Appalachian State University and Caldwell Community College in North Carolina; and at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She earned her BA in Studio Art from Smith College (1994).

Una works out of her home in Toulouse and blogs at http://trouveenfrance.blogspot.com.

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Fall 2017 Issue X: Immigration

Full Circle: My Return to Romania

I am an immigrant but not in the way most people expect. I originally came from Orphanage Number One in Bucharest Romania and, unlike thousands of other children in the same circumstances, I was adopted by an American couple. Shortly after my arrival in America, I became a naturalized citizen.

I am an immigrant, and I have come full circle.

This past summer I returned to Romania to work for a non-profit called Romanian Children’s Relief–Fundatia Inocenti.  My relationship with this organization began at birth during my time in Orphanage Number One in Bucharest. I directly benefitted from the early intervention and therapeutic services offered by Romanian Children’s Relief. They made a huge difference in my life and did their very best to ensure my mental and physical well-being. They currently have multiple programs throughout the country, offering support and programs to abandoned or at-risk children.

I worked in a variety of settings, including a hospital, two schools and a placement center. In my daily work, my  responsibilities ranged from assisting in therapy sessions, to helping with early intervention programs and grant writing. I also painted a series of murals for the after-school program in Secondary School n. 31 in Bucharest.

The hardest part of my summer was working in the placement center in the Transylvanian town of Bistrita. This institution was reserved for children who are incredibly disabled, Thus making unlikely candidates for foster families. Romanian Children’s Relief  occupies offices on the second floor of the building, where they offer many services designed to improve the health and quality of life for the children in the placement center. The domain of the state resides on the first floor; these offices provide a bleak contrast to the joy and colors upstairs. When I would take children up the flight of stairs to our offices, they would eagerly take our hands and their faces would light up.

It was challenging to see suffering bodies, especially those of young children. I could see expressed in their faces the need to communicate and to simply be held. However, for many of them this was not always an option. Some children would be restrained tied up due to their violent tendencies to harm themselves or others. Some would merely lay in bed, day after day, staring at the ceiling. When I would walk past their cribs, hands would reach between the bars and try to grasp my clothes. More often they grasped air. Crying, yelling, or moaning would accompany these bids for freedom. To complete this dire picture was the smell of sickness—stagnant and overwhelming in the summer heat.

Many of the children, regardless of their age, could not speak. Therefore, an entirely different language was spoken within the center. Biting, grasping and crying were some of the common modes of communication. Within the walls of the center, communication and culture collapsed, replaced instead by  a regimented and clinical life. Day after day, the same routine. Some children wouldn’t leave the center to go into town for weeks on end. Others will never get that chance, given their fragile conditions.

For me, originally coming from this context, it is important to recognize the reality of life in modern day Romanian institutions. I will use both the positive and negative memories I formed there as motivation to dedicate my life to fighting against a system that does not benefit nor serve Romanian children in state care. Despite the sad reality of Romanian state institutions, the staff and volunteers at Romanian Children’s Relief-Fundatia Inocenti work relentlessly and with passion to make this reality better for thousands of children. They sacrifice all of their time and energy to make each child smile. Having once been one of these orphaned children, and now, having the privilege to speak from the perspective of a staff member, I am grateful for the opportunities this non-profit granted me to help move forward—crossing both physical and mental barriers—in my own life’s journey.

 

Madeleine Greaves

Madeleine Greaves is a senior graduating with a double major in Art History and Italian Studies as well as doing an honors thesis. She just returned from her Junior Year Abroad in Florence and completed her summer Praxis work in Romania. She has a range of interests and seeks to look beyond the traditional bounds of her studies.

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Fall 2017 Issue X: Immigration

Shifting the Perspective: From Host to Guest

“But what do you want over there? Why do you think you have to be there in order to ‘find yourself’ ?” 

This was an initial response by one of my friends in 2015 when I told him that I wanted to go abroad for one or two semesters. At that point, I didn’t even know about Smith or Northampton, I just had this  adventurous idea and a dream. Yet being the first one in my family, and one of two people in my immediate circle of friends to plan on attending university, every topic that was even remotely related to it was treated with a sense of distrust and skepticism by most of those in my close environment.

However, actually going abroad shouldn’t have been that exotic and outlandish for them since they all knew my friend Kelly, who, coming from New York City, had lived with me and my family in Germany for about six months as part of her internship in Hamburg. Having Kelly living with us added a layer of realism to the prevalent image most people have—myself  included—of the United States: Hollywood, McDonald’s, patriotism, the first Black president, Miss Liberty, the greatest economic superpower. (Some elderly people might have added Texas, the Grand Canyon, and ranches to that list of typical “American” associations.) For me as the host, I hadn’t needed to adjust a lot. I loved speaking English with Kelly, no matter how often I was told that she had to practice her German with me. I learned new things and also formed a great friendship, which encouraged my dream to somehow make it across the pond in order to get my own impression of her country.

Fast-forward two years: I enrolled at Universität Hamburg with a British and American language and literature major, the Black Lives Matter movement was in full swing, America elected the angry orange president and I somehow earned a scholarship and a place in the AMS graduate program at Smith College. My teachers told me that I had picked such an “interesting” and “exciting” time to visit the US, to which I responded with a smile, thinking how much “ fun” it would be to visit America during this chapter of openly-expressed white supremacy, misogyny and racism. I knew that in America, it was of greater importance that Kelly was African-American, and that I now had to face issues of race and identity that differed from home.

It would be my first time visiting the US, travelling alone, and being away from home for so long. I was curious to explore the USA from the inside, and to see the apparently opposing realities and worldviews Americans held. Moreover, I was interested to see what would happen to me as an individual, being somewhat isolated from family, friends, and the cultural and political environment in which I was raised. But with the current tensions, I was also worried: how would I be perceived as an alien, a woman, a German? What would be the appropriate behavior to deal with racism as an outsider? And as I approached my departure, what would it mean to be labeled as “White” in the US without the identifier “American” coming after it?

I have to disappoint the reader by remarking that I am not yet able  to provide answers at this point of my journey. I just shifted my perspective: being born and raised in Germany without an immigrant background, I used to be the host, not only to Kelly but to millions of people, who had at some point left their country of origin. But now I am a guest on American soil. I’m not an immigrant. My role is the one of a temporary resident, who has “the privilege of not being immediately recognized as such,” as Kelly once put it (at least until I opened my mouth to speak ). But I do realize that the color of my skin and my gender have an impact on how people treat me over here, something I haven’t really experienced at home. Often, I feel more vulnerable and sometimes, simply lost. But overall, I remain curious and I’m determined to find some answers and insights to these issues of identity.

 

Born and raised in Hamburg, Germany as the youngest of four children, Lucy became infamous for talking too much and always writing “the next J.K. Rowling book” whenever there was a writing task in class. Studying abroad at Smith for a year as part of her American Language and Literature major, she takes every chance to pursue her great passions: Writing, movies and chocolate.

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Fall 2017 Issue X: Immigration

Tongues

When I think of language, I think of foreignness. I think of who gets to decide what is foreign and what is domestic. What is foreign? I am foreign. I am foreign because of the dark tint on my face. I am foreign because of my last name, of only six letters, that causes a raucous of confusion for messy high school librarians with an inclination to call anything different weird.

They ask, over and over again:“Kay-yir-uh? Kai-year-ah? Key-air. It must be Key-air”  

I am foreign because of my parents’ strange English or thick accents, as some might say. Yet, that thickness and strangeness remains unbeknownst to me.

I want to yell at the girl my sister invited over to our house. The girl stomped on the olive branch my sister extended.

She whined in her sing-songy voice: “I have to spend the day with your parents? But it’s so hard to understand them.”

I want to yell at her, but that would be impolite so the Cheshire cat of Keene holds my tongue. And so begins the narrative of a foreign girl in a Western land.

When I was four-years-old, my family departed from the orange-clay dusted roads of Malawi. You cannot trust my narration as the days of my first four years flicker like a tiny flame fending off wild winds. The memories remain submerged in the deep Indian Ocean of my subconscious. On and off. On and off.

Yet, I remember the threads of our departure. We, my mom, sisters, and I sat on tan leather cushions of a van. I held a smile across my lips, bemusing my aunt, who sat across from me.  She asked: “Patience, what are you smiling about?”

My reply flutters away like a bird in migration. The car morphed into a plane, and the plane became Heathrow airport, where I begged my mother to buy me a British doll with curly blonde hair. Eventually, Heathrow transformed into a first-level Victorian-esque apartment in Worcester, Massachusetts, yet the airport never left.

44 Lawrence Street. At night, a ginger tabby cat hid underneath the porch. My four-year-old self would speak to the creature in an invented tongue of “let-me-entertain-myself-by-talking-to-the-cat.” Yet, talking to cats in broken English proved not to be ideal. From early on, my parents lectured me and my two older sisters on the value of English.

“Practice speaking English to each other. Speak up! Be a leader and not a follower.” These were some of the many lessons our sponge-like minds absorbed, almost too well.

With each year, the syllabic taste of my mother tongue in my mouth became odd. Do these sounds really belong to me and my lingual history?

At Malawian get-togethers, family friends greeted me with, “Mulu Bwanji, (How are you).”  My palms sweated tears of discomfort as I muttered quietly, “I’m fine.” It became a running joke that “Patience was not patient enough to learn the language.” Speaking English like an American child was not a sin, but forgetting my own mother-tongue was something else.

I grew to resent the title of “immigrant” or  “non-English” speaker. I wanted my speech to flow effortlessly like a ribbon in the wind. When my family moved to Canada, the distance between me and my history grew. Hearing my friends chat about their French grandmothers who urged them to practice their French, I developed a keen interest in French.

In my childlike innocence, I would reply: “Oh, that’s neat. I want to practice my French too.”

My friends would raise their eyebrows and blink rapidly for 15 seconds, reminding me that “French” is not my own language and to stick to my own culture.

Familial fingers across the globe blame my parents. Somehow, that trans-atlantic stream of judgement does not seem fair. Yet what really matters is what is outside the child’s window each morning: the bus stop; the school where children snicker at the African girl’s attempts to recite the Pledge of Allegiance; at soccer practice where someone asks, “If you’re from Africa why don’t you sound African?”; at a friend’s house where a friend asks, “How do you understand your parents?”; at a hipster teahouse where the barista asks, “So where are you originally from?”; and at a library where the librarian says, “Your last name is one of those weird ones, isn’t it?

These experiences repelled me from embracing my mother tongue, a decision that disheartens me each day as I type on my resume, “Patience Kayira, Majors: English & French, Concentration: Translation Studies.” I guess I am not too ashamed to say that I am proud of my shame.

 

Patience Kayira ’20 is originally from Malawi, but she has lived in the United States and Canada for the past 15 years. For the majority of her formative years, she has lived in different places, so she considers herself a global citizen. Patience is currently a double majoring in English and French, and she hopes to pursue a career in journalism or professional writing after Smith.

 

 

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Fall 2017 Issue X: Immigration

Take Off and Fly

Take off and fly

Steel wings carrying you, taking you from the warm weather that made your skin glisten,
Away from the mangoes drenched in lemon and pepper that dripped down your chin.
The airplane took you from pain you didn’t know existed
You were too young to understand what the screaming and the bruises meant.
You could not see that this goodbye meant growth and not destruction,
It was the beginning of your reconstruction.

Winter bit into your skin and your mother’s kisses tried to heal you-
From the wind, from the heartache of missing home.
While you imitated the language that came from her mouth
Word by word you learned the language that your classmates spoke, repeated until the words Rolled off your tongue like clouds

It’s nearly ten years later, your feet have barely left the ground
you don’t want to remember how it feels to fly.
You decide to try.

Take off and fly
To a country that used to be yours but now is a skeleton of a home.
A language that was shed as you tried to forget and
Now you’re scraping at the dust trying to find where you flung it.
Sentences, palabras, and a nostalgic taste are all that’s left.
Everyone wants to know why you don’t speak the language,
The one you learned before the world was bigger than your grandmother’s arms.
You can’t explain the necessity you felt to assimilate,
To whitewash your own skin- paint it over and over until you could imagine yourself as one of them because you thought you blended in,
forgetting that the sun soaked into your skin causing brilliance,
forgetting your heritage was one of resistance.

You were never white enough for them but now
Here you “spoke too white” were “too American”
But your mouth remembers the taste of pupusas and the burning of the coffee still too hot to drink.
Piece by piece you start to remember.
As you soar the skies to go to New York,
To home,
you realize that the sky welcomes you,
It knows you’ve grown.
The clouds wrap around you like the arms of your grandmother
And whisper their see you soon

Take off and fly
A year later and you’re greeting the sky again,
The sun shines and reflects on the metal wings,
Winking and saying “I knew you would come back.”
Citizenship makes this trip a family one.
Your siblings hold the stars in their eyes as they realize
That through the years the love of the family was always being sent,
Fingers tracing your photographs. Praying. Waiting.

You’re scared to go back. How does your ever changing multi layered identity fit into the picture? Will the frame cut off part of who you are?
Afraid your worlds will not combine,
Like oil and water,
It would be one or the other.

But now you see stars in their eyes,
The weathered hands of your grandfather,
The crinkle around your mother’s eyes,
The laughter of your brother,
The taste of lemon and the burst of mango and you know,
One foot in both worlds is the way to go,
One here one there, your identity is a structure.
It is pieces building you up from the ground,
Each brick and stick and muddy palm, each hurt and word are irreplaceable.
Your identity is not an either or, but a constellation that cannot be separated to fit into one world.

 

Alexandra ’20  was raised in Guatemala until she was eight and then moved to upstate New York. There she attended a small school in a very small town. There she became involved in activism that has led her to pursue a degree in sociology.

 

 

 

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