Normality and Culture Fusion
January 30, 2023
Moving on into everyday life, second-generation immigrants live in America and consume the resources provided by it, however a connection between the two strides a fine line of actual attachment or indifference.
“I engage in it because it’s the culture I exist in right now, very specifically, very broadly. I eat at American restaurants most of the time, I learn everything in American, I consume American media more than I consume Chinese media,” said Wu, “I don’t feel like I do it because I’m connected with it, but because it’s what surrounds me.”
America is simply a location. But it is also a melting pot of cultures as one of the world’s largest superpowers and first-world countries, and it has its own unique circumstances that will differ from those of other regions. For some, it is an integral part of their identity and they are expressly patriotic, but for others it’s more so, again, just a location. It is the place where they are currently residing.
“I feel like I lean more to my Indonesian culture because that’s who I started off as. I spoke Indonesian, I was introduced into their culture first, I ate Indonesian food right, and I go there every summer, so I feel like I’m really connected to my Indonesian culture,” said Tjoar. “The only part of me that’s really connected here is that I go to school here everyday, but besides that everyday I go home to my Indonesian traditions and cultures so I feel like I’m more connected to that.”
For others, the story is different and some people don’t feel as connected to their culture as they are to America because of the distance between them and their traditions, language, and faraway family.
“I feel like I learn more towards my American culture because for the majority of my day, I am surrounded by the people who were raised in America. I’m surrounded by American things and people, more than I am by Vietnamese people,” said Pham.
Again, it once more comes back to the subject of identity. Being American and then also having another culture is unique in that they can’t ever really be truly one or the other. There is always the other side, and it’s difficult to choose if where one lives currently is more integral to their self, or their histories and traditions from thousands of miles away.