A Cultural Separation

“Merry Christmas!” I proudly exclaimed to a fellow four-year-old at the local public pool on a hot and humid July day. At the time, I couldn’t speak English, but desperately wanted to communicate and feel included. So, I tried to communicate with the only “American” phrase I knew. Although I don’t attempt to communicate through inappropriately timed phrases anymore, this exchange fifteen years ago is emblematic of my experience as a first-generation American. I am fluent in English now, but still miss the nuance and unspoken rules that are inextricable with successfully participating in American life.

I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. However, my parents and the rest of my family grew up in the former Soviet Union. My mother and my grandparents moved from what is now Ukraine to the US in 1993, making me a first-generation American. They fled their country due to religious persecution against Jews, and settled in a tiny apartment in the Highland neighborhood of St. Paul. They work hard jobs requiring manual labor and save every penny at any given opportunity, all in an effort to give me a better chance at success. According to the Center for Children of Immigrants, nearly one-fourth of children in the U.S. are children of immigrants. Although many in this country share my background, I have become increasingly aware of my status as a first-generation American at Wash U because of how few people I meet here with this family circumstance. The border that guards traditional American experience feels impenetrable to those who are children of immigrants.

My second language at home caused a cultural barrier between my American classmates and me. As a little kindergartener, I remember answering vocabulary and reading questions on the Minnesota mandated standardized test, and bursting into tears after not knowing how to answer questions about a mysterious dish called casserole. I only knew of blini and pelmeni. I brought school lunches of stinky fish that my classmates considered strange; my parents made me wear slippers in the house; I spoke Russian at home. I felt like the odd one out everywhere I went. My superstitious, loud, frugal mom and grandparents with thick accents and broken English were not the typical family my American friends saw on a Disney Channel sitcom.

Throughout grade school, popular culture contributed to a significant separation between my peers and me. I felt isolated from those who grew up with parents who could pass down staples of American culture, like classic movies, music, and books. While my classmates raved to me about an incredible song their parents played on the car ride home from school, I was left wondering why they were listening to some singing band of beetles. The United States presented knowledge of culture as hereditary. As I was left with fawning over old rock stars virtually unknown outside of Ukraine, I had no pop culture references deemed American enough to contribute to daily conversation.

The cultural separation between me and my friends felt insignificant by the time I reached my junior and senior years of high school. As I was preparing for college applications, tangible barriers were now affecting my future. Since none of my family attended college in the United States, I felt that I had to do twice the amount of research and preparation just to know half the information my classmates knew about the application process and college life. This disconnect feels more palpable now that I am actually at WashU, with no one at home to share their experiences with the intricacies of college life.

After nineteen years of living in the United States and nowhere else, I still don’t feel like an included member of American society. Many of the values, especially regarding money, travel, and leisure, feel especially foreign to me. Although my background intersects with being lower class, even across different cultures and countries, I relate to children of immigrants the best. We constitute our own class of experience—children expected to assimilate into American life, but also assumed to retain culture, language, and customs of our countries of origin. Balancing Russian traditions and mindset while striving for success in the U.S. feels unmanageable and contradictory. After a year of being at Wash U and only speaking Russian on phone calls home, I now speak a hybrid of English and Russian at home that only seems interpretable to people stuck between two worlds, like me. Despite these obstacles, I’m learning to take the best of both parts of my identity and create a wholly new outlook towards American life.

However hard it might be to feel like an outsider, I feel incredibly proud of my family, of our customs and traditions, and of my unique Russian-American perspective.

Liza Sivriver ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at lizasivriver@wustl.edu.