A rundown of my immigrant fears

Shakira Sison

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The pressure to assimilate is great for Pinoys who have been immersed in American culture all their lives

I was afraid of revolving doors. I was afraid that I couldn’t time my entrance with the previous person’s exit and I would slam into them, or worse, that I’d get crushed between glass panels, or crush someone else. I was horrified. I was scared that my tragedy involving a spinning glass column with dividers would be the proof everyone needed for me to be found out. They would say, “Hey you, foreigner! You don’t even know how to use a door!”

I was afraid of loud voices and confident statements that often proclaimed nothing. I was afraid and envious of teenagers whose perfect American accents made them look like they were smarter than their TXT-friendly acronyms.

IDK! I was silly being scared of many things. I was afraid of the homeless lunatic in the train who threw a 5-gallon plastic bottle at me when I walked away from his blabbering. 

I was scared of turnstiles and getting in the wrong train or missing my stop. I was afraid that someone would call me out on pretending I could blend in, and laugh at my theory that I could adjust quickly as an adult in a new environment.

I was scared of ordering food, of saying things wrong, of being dumbfounded when I couldn’t understand what they were asking. It reminded me of an aunt who, when asked what kind of bread she wanted for her sandwich, said, “Tasty.” 

It never occurred to me that Americans were also capable of not speaking clearly, or that they also had accents you weren’t always expected to understand. I didn’t realize it was okay to say “Sorry? Say that again?” without looking like a clueless immigrant who did not speak English, because I knew that did. Quite well, actually.

In fact, isn’t that the one thing Filipinos liked to brag about, our command of the English language? Although I spoke and wrote in English all my life before moving to New York, and was probably a bit better at it than my peers, it didn’t occur to me until I left Manila that it wasn’t English I needed to use. I had to learn how to speak American.

That included idioms, expressions, and the use of “I’m, like,” when describing speech or thought. It involved the casual incorporation of expletives in speech which I still have a hard time doing to this day.

People with different ethnic backgrounds come and go in New York and I know some who have lived here for decades but can’t distinguish between the words “sauce” and “source,” or between “did well” and “did good.”

But the pressure to assimilate is great for Pinoys who have been immersed in American culture all their lives (or at least their idea of it from TV and movies). It was a badge one carried around, the ease of kneading oneself into the US and developing some sort of comprehensible twang.

Although I did pretty well, I still had difficulties along the way. I put accents on the wrong syllables, I said names wrong. A lady gave me the dirtiest look once for calling her dog uh-TEEK-uhs instead of its name Atticus (AH-tick-uhs). I looked up the name and noting its Mockingbird origins, promised to never forget. (Not that I ever met another Atticus again, but I treated multi-syllabic words with more respect after that).

I’ve calmed down quite a bit with my need to assimilate. A decade of this life has given me some kind of immigrant cred of knowing the ins and outs of public transport, banking, health insurance, real estate, job markets, green cards, and other newbie essentials. For one, there are newer FOBs (new immigrants, or “fresh off the boat”) I can give tips to, like to always zip up their jackets, and to wear scarves and hats in the fall and winter.

I’ve become an undeserving example of immigrant assimilation, having moved between jobs and industries in search of a meaningful career, all while keeping my legal status. So I tell the new ones how to be braver and wiser about moving to this strange country we’re already expected to know. I tell them that having papers trumps any career move and makes for a much more convenient and peaceful life, even with the stress of constantly chasing legal status. I tell the new Fil-Ams to be smarter with money because there are so many traps here to fall into a life of debt.

And I give the difficult warning that just because you meet someone who is a fellow Filipino, it doesn’t mean that they are to be trusted or that they are automatically your friend.

But I seldom get a chance to tell them I was once afraid, and that it’s totally fine to be scared and to admit that everything is not quite as they imagined. As years passed my fears became crowded by the things I learned and became confident doing. I became less obsessed about doing things right because I was just busy living.

Every morning I still walk through my work building’s revolving doors and feel a brief panic at the timing of its spin. I still can’t credibly curse in English, or get into a fight with a store’s customer service desk and win, even just by having the louder voice.

But I can order food with confidence and even ask questions, no longer cringing when I am asked to repeat what I said. Like revolving doors I enter, I can now choose to spin, linger, or exit in some kind of a dance. I’ve learned to engage this world and its details just like an exciting doorway, and no longer a room where I am stuck without a map. – Rappler.com

 

Shakira Andrea Sison is a Palanca Award-winning essayist. She currently works in finance and spends her non-working hours watching fellow immigrants in subway trains. She is a veterinarian by education and was managing a retail corporation in Manila before relocating to New York in 2002. Her column appears on Thursdays. Follow her on Twitter: @shakirasison and on Facebook.com/sisonshakira. 

 

 

 

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