We are come to rest and push our roots more deeply by the year. But we cannot push away the heritage of having been once all strangers in the land; we cannot forget the experience of having been all rootless, adrift. Building our own nests now in our tiredness of the transient, we will not deny our past as a people in motion and will find still a place in our lives for the values of flight.

In our flight, unattached, we discovered what it was to be an individual, a man apart from place and station. In our flight, through the newness, we discovered the unexpected, invigorating effects of recurrent demands upon the imagination, upon all our human capacities. We will not have our nest become again a moldy prison holding us in with its tangled web of comfortable habits. It may be for us rather a platform from which to launch new ascensions that will extend the discoveries of the immigrants whose painful break with their past is our past. We will justify their pitiable struggle for dignity and meaning by extending it in our lives toward an end they had not the opportunity to envision.

—Oscar Handlin in The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People

The life of the immigrant was that of a man diverted by unexpected pressures away from the established channels of his existence. Separated, he was never capable of acting with the assurance of habit; always in motion, he could never rely upon roots to hold him up. Instead he had ever to toil painfully from crisis to crisis, as an individual alone, make his way past the discontinuous obstacles of a strange world.

But America was the land of separated men. Its development in the eighteenth century and the Revolution had set it apart from Europe; expansion kept it in a state of unsettlement. A society already fluid, the immigrants made more fluid still; an economy already growing, they stimulated yet more rapid growth; into a culture never uniform they introduced a multitude of diversities. The newcomers were on the way toward being Americans almost before they stepped off the boat, because their own experience of displacement had already introduced them to what was essential in the situation of Americans.

—Oscar Handlin in The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People

The old folk knew then they would not come to belong, not through their own experience nor through their offspring. The only adjustment they had been able to make to life in the United States had been one that involved the separateness of their group, one that increased their awareness of the differences between themselves and the rest of the society. In that adjustment they had always suffered from the consciousness they were strangers. The demand that they assimilate, that they surrender their separateness, condemned them always to be outsiders. In practice, the free structure of American life permitted them with few restraints to go their own way, but under the shadow of a consciousness that they would never belong. They had thus completed their alienation from the culture to which they had come, as from that which they had left. —Oscar Handlin in The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People

Bulgaria: Horo Dancing with Portland’s Bulgarians, 5/3

• Friday, May 3, 7:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m.
• Podkrepa Hall, 2116 North Killingsworth St, Portland, Oregon
• $5 suggested donation and finger-food potluck

Come and join us for a fun night of dancing and learning.

Poland: True Life Trio, 5/4

• Saturday, May 4, 7:00 pm
• Polish Hall/St. Stanislaus Church, 3916 N. Interstate Ave., Portland, Oregon
• Tickets: $10
• Band website and Facebook page

Polish Music @ Polish Hall presents True Life Trio, an evening of Polish and Eastern European Songs. True Life Trio weaves sumptuous vocal harmonies and sultry rhythms from Eastern Europe, the Americas & beyond. This innovative trio explores the creative possibilities of cross-fertilization of different traditions with unlikely timbres connecting Bulgaria to the Bayou.

Czech/Slovak Republics: Hospoda, 5/7

• Tuesday, May 7, 6:00 p.m.–close
• McTarnahans Taproom, 2730 NW 31st, Portland, Oregon
• Free

The monthly gathering of Portland’s Czech and Slovak community. Guests welcome.

The Balkans: Kafana Klub, 5/7

• Tuesday, May 7, 7:00 p.m. dance lesson, 8:00 p.m.–10:00 p.m. live music
• Al Forno Ferruzza, 2738 NE Alberta St., Portland, Oregon
• $3-$5 cover

Join us for the unbeatable combination of live Balkan music and great Italian food. See you there!

Bulgaria: Iliana Bozhanova and Todor Yankov, 5/8

• Wednesday, May 8, 7:30 p.m.-10:00 p.m.
• Chalet, 7045 SW Taylors Ferry Rd., Portland, Oregon
• $8
• Event flyer

We’re delighted to announce an evening workshop with Iliana Bozhanova and Todor Yankov in Portland. $8. Iliana will teach Bulgarian dances (and sing) with accordion played by Todor. Fun!

Hosted by Ciganski Igraci Balkan dancers and Kyklos International dancers. For more information, contact Jeanne Gibson, 503-233-1322, folkdance@comcast.net or Sonia Connolly, 503-334-6434, sonia@sundownarts.com.

The Balkans: Krebsic Orkestar, 5/10

• Friday, May 10, 8:30 p.m.–midnight
• Mississippi Pizza, Portland, Oregon
• $8, at the door; 21 and over
• Event page

Join us for another installment of Gypsy BrA$$ Dance Party with the incomparable local Balkan characters Krebsic Orkestar and our very special guest DJ Global Ruckus just to keep the BrA$$ a boomin’all night!!

Since [Eden], is there anyone who does not—in some way, on some level—feel that they are in exile? We feel ejected from our first homes and landscapes, from childhood, from our first family romance, from our authentic self. We feel there is an ideal sense of belonging, of community, of attunement with others and at-homeness with ourselves, that keeps eluding us. The tree of life is barred to us by a flaming sword, turning this way and that to confound us and make the task of approaching it harder.

One one level, exile is a universal experience.

—Eva Hoffman in “The New Nomads”, in: Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language and Loss, Andre Aciman, ed.

I had come here doing what all exiles do on impulse, which is to look for their homeland abroad, to bridge the things here to things there, to rewrite the present so as not to write off the past. I wanted to rescue things everywhere, as though by restoring them here I might restore them elsewhere as well.

I wanted everything to remain the same. Because this too is typical of people ho have lost everything, including their roots or their ability to grow new ones. It is precisely because you have no roots that you don’t budge, that you fear change, that you’ll build on anything rather than look for land. An exile is not just someone who has lost his home; it is someone who can’t find another, who can’t think of another. Some no longer even know what home means. They reinvent the concept with what they’ve got, the way we reinvent love with what’s left of it each time. Some people bring exile with them the way they bring it upon themselves wherever they go.

—Andre Aciman in “Shadow Cities”, in: Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language and Loss, Andre Aciman, ed.

• “The Rise of Gay Marriage and the Decline of Straight Marriage: Where’s the Link?” by Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, April 4, 2013
• “A ‘Whom Do You Hang With?’ Map of America” by Robert Krulwich, NPR Blogs, April 17, 2013 – “These are the first maps that are trying to paint us the way we actually are.”

The Book Stack

• Andre Aciman, False Papers: Essays on Exile and Memory, New York: Picador, 2001 – BUY NOW
• Salman Akhtar, Immigration and Acculturation: Mourning, Adaptation, and the Next Generation, Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson, 2010 – BUY NOW
• Dominika Dery, The Twelve Little Cakes, New York: Riverhead, 2004 – BUY NOW
• Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut, Immigrant America: A Portrait, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006 – BUY NOW
• Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past, Washington, D.C.: Columbia University Press, 2000 – BUY NOW

Do you have any recommendations for readings about America, immigration, or Central/Eastern Europe? Please share in Comments.

[W]anderers to the wide world often yearn toward the far direction whence they have come. Why even the birds who fly away from their native places still hasten to go back. Can a man feel really happy condemned to live away from where he was born? Though by leaving he has cut himself off and knows he never will return, yet he hopes, by reaching backward, still to belong in the homeland. —Oscar Handlin in The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People

A much-maligned depiction of an Eastern European by
The Economist magazine

Rather than getting into where stereotypes come from* or how stereotyping operates, let me tackle the problem of dealing with negative stereotypes, since positive stereotypes are much less detrimental to optimal immigration experience. In addition, rather than just coping, which implies an internal, psychological process, let me examine how to combat negative stereotypes.

Three basic strategies come to mind.

Anti-stereotyping strategy #1: Ignore

Ducks spread a waxy coating on their feathers during preening that ensures their underlayer remains dry at all times. Likewise, you the immigrant can build a wall around yourself that bars any stereotypes from harming you.

Ignoring stereotypes may work as a survival strategy in the short run. But similar to Chinese water torture, in the long run the impact of the stereotypes accumulates and can drive you to respond in unhelpful ways. While the psychological pressure cooker gathers force, ignoring stereotypes may do nothing to help your situation. If you do nothing to even try to alter Americans’ perception about ‘your kind’, you will continue to suffer from the stereotypes.

Anti-stereotyping strategy #2: Defy

A grad school friend who was from Germany told me that most common statements Central and Eastern Europeans attending Central European University said about him were a variation of, “I don’t like Germans, but I like you,” and “Germans are like X, Y, and Z but you are different.” My German friend defied stereotypes his schoolmates held about Germans.

Defiance is simple: take the stereotypes people hold about your nationality, ethnicity, or the entire region you’re from and act unlike, or, even better, completely opposite, any of them. As a Central/Eastern European you may do some of this:

• Don’t drink (that’ll throw Americans for a serious loop).
• Shave your armpits.
• Be gentle and funny.
• Talk philosophy.

In other words, make them say, “All Eastern Europeans are like X, Y, and Z, but not you, you are different.”

The hitch with defiance is that it does little to eliminate the stereotypes. My German friend may have defied stereotypes of Germans, mine included, but those stereotypes persisted. Confirmation bias makes people register information that conforms to views they already hold and overlook or dismiss information that conflicts with what they believe or know. In this way, defiance may reinforce the stereotypes by people discounting your traits or behaviors that conflicts with them and remembering whatever conforms.

Overall, however, defiance can greatly help your struggle to overturn stereotypes about you. Each instance that defies a stereotype adds a little to the mass of other people’s experiences that offsets the weight of those stereotypes. Just like your immigration itself, stereotype defiance is for the long haul.

Anti-stereotyping strategy #3: Amplify

An American saying goes, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” The amplification strategy turns stereotypes against themselves. Like an enlarging mirror that makes a gaunt man into a morbidly obese monster in a carnival house of mirrors, amplification blows up the stereotype and turns it back on the person holding it.

Amplification can be the most fun of the stereotype-fighting strategies. Wearing a furry hat, drinking vodka, and chain smoking can earn you new friends fast. Speaking with a heavy accent on purpose or cracking jokes from communism or about Eastern Europeans, too, can generate interesting word-of-mouth. I don’t advise becoming a gangster.

A variation of the amplification strategy is to simply point out the stereotype in question. Better yet, turn it into a joke or sarcastic remark (my preferred route). Anything that puts a spotlight on the stereotype helps.

For example, a Facebook friend with Czech ancestry wrote:

[A]bout three or four years ago I attended a seminar about fraud. The speaker repeatedly referenced perpetrators of fraud as people operating out of Eastern Europe with accents. I let the sponsors know that could hurt me with my Slavic sounding last name and allergy induced “accent”, could offend some of customers who are Slavic etc. The next time I attended the seminar most of those references were gone.

Or, as Daniel Tilles pointed out in his letter to the editor of The Economist in response to the publication of the above photograph:

Given your newspaper’s determination to accompany any article on social or political affairs in eastern Europe with a photograph of the apparently ubiquitous old lady with a shawl wrapped over her head, I was delighted to find that your recent piece on the gas crisis in the region (“Gasping for gas”, January 17, 2009) carried a picture representative of another important demographic group: the dentally challenged villager. My excitement was short-lived, however, as just a week later it was back to the well-wrapped old lady (“To the barricades”, January 24, 2009). One gets the impression from your coverage of elections that every polling station east of the Danube is populated solely by such characters.

To avoid creating any misleading stereotypes, may I suggest that you widen your range of imagery to better represent east Europeans. Roma using horse-drawn carts on main roads, elderly veterans in Soviet-style uniforms and furry hats and vodka-soaked vagrants would broaden the picture.

What strategies have you used to combat stereotypes? 

Notes

* I suspect Americans’ perception of Eastern Europeans is colored mainly by their perception of Russians and fueled by movies.

Photo by The Economist

Foreigners frequently master the grammar of a language better than its native speakers, the better, perhaps to hide their difference, their diffidence, which also explains why they are so tactful, almost ceremonial, when it comes to the language they adopt, bowing before its splendor, its arcane syntax, to say nothing of its slang, which they use sparingly, and somewhat stiffly, with the studied nonchalance of people who aren’t confident enough to dress down when the need arises. —Andre Aciman in “Shadow Cities”, in: Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language and Loss