Immigrating, Part 2: Conversations

Conversations

Conversations (Immigrating, ep. 2)

This is State of the Human, the podcast of the Stanford Storytelling Project.

I'm Cathy Wong.

Each episode, we take a common human experience, like imagining or breathing or healing, and bring you stories that explore and deepen our understanding of that experience.

This episode is part two of our series on emigrating.

Part one was all about individual stories of emigrating.

But in this episode, we're bringing you people in conversation.

So we have conversations about emigrating, and then actually emigrating itself as a kind of ongoing conversation, whether that's across history or language or even generations.

Sometimes two people are just so different that it seems like there's no point in trying to talk across the divide.

So we found two people who are incredibly far apart, like they do not agree with each other, and then they're also literally miles apart.

And we asked them to exchange letters, like pen pals basically, but out loud.

Grace and Justin are students.

Grace is at the University of Houston and Justin is at Stanford University.

Hi, Grace.

Hi, Justin.

I'm recording this right now from my dorm.

This is actually like my 20th recording.

It's about eight o'clock in the evening or so.

Don't really know anything about you, so hopefully within the next couple weeks we'll get to know each other a little bit better.

I've never done anything like this.

I'm currently attending the University of Houston where I just finished my second year.

My citizenship is from Mexico, but my parents are actually from Guatemala.

My mom, she was seamstress and my dad was a dental technician.

And my dad wasn't satisfied with the life that he lived in Guatemala, so they both decided that they needed to leave.

I am an illegal immigrant.

I was brought to this country 15, yeah, 15 years ago.

I've been here, you know, ever since.

I guess I should start by telling you about my background.

So I'm a junior, philosophy major.

I'm from New York.

My mom is from Malaysia.

My dad grew up in Taipei in Taiwan.

They both came here in the 1980s for education purposes.

You know, I'm the son of two immigrants.

It's not like I'm anti-immigrant.

That's ridiculous.

I'm not against my parents, but you know, my parents also came here legally.

And I guess the way they came to this country, the way they became Americans, full stop, is different from how a lot of people are coming to this country today.

I think it shows disrespect for the law to treat those two experiences identically.

I think this is something that I'm always going to believe.

Hi Justin, this is Grace.

Today is Tuesday, May 23rd.

Hi Grace, this is Justin again on a Wednesday evening.

I'm currently recording from the closet in my room.

Just came back from a dinner with some friends and now I'm recording my third audio letter to you.

So let's get into these prompts.

Hi Justin, today is May 30th.

It's around 9.30 in the evening.

It is very quiet in here, but you might hear the AC in the back.

Just had a long day, had a bunch of essays to write.

Class has ended late, but I'm glad I get the chance to record this and have another very interesting exchange.

So, I think today what we're talking about according to this.

So in high school, I had this friend and she was a great friend of mine who I loved very much, but she often pointed out certain things in me that apparently seemed very foreign.

But every time she pointed out certain words that I pronounced weirdly, weirdly, I felt very un-American, I felt like this foreigner.

I don't think I've ever felt less American than when I was around her.

You reminded me of something in your letter about how you get self-conscious around pronouncing certain words.

I don't think I mentioned this last time, but I grew up in a town in New York more than 40% Asian-American, but I always felt there was a contrast between me and most actually of the other Asian-American kids.

You know, my Chinese wasn't as good, it still isn't that good, but when I studied abroad in China, I thought I'd go there and maybe occasionally I could pass as Chinese, but no way.

Even before I spoke, they could tell.

About a month or so ago, my parents had friends from Mexico come and visit us.

They came over and they would often talk about, you know, specific foods or TV shows and pop culture and singers and actors.

And these were all things that I did not recognize whatsoever.

I did not recognize any of the things that they were talking about.

They asked me if I would ever go back to live in Mexico.

Especially, you know, Trump being in office and one of his campaign promises was that he would deport all illegal immigrants.

They asked me if I would ever go back willingly or if I was deported, if I would stay over there.

And I did not hesitate to say that I would not because, you know, America is my home.

I found myself relating to you a lot in this past letter that you sent.

You know, the people that I grew up around were almost all immigrants.

They celebrated Mexican holidays and they cooked Mexican food and pretty much anything that you can associate with Mexican culture.

My parents had lived in two different countries before moving to the United States.

I didn't have any of those traditions that the people around me had.

You know, even if I was, quote unquote, Mexican, I always felt, you know, out of place.

Thinking about myself moving to Mexico felt like me moving to a foreign country.

You know, I do speak Spanish, but I don't know anything else about, you know, about Mexico, really.

Well, that's all I have for now, so thank you for listening, Justin, and I look forward to your next letter.

Hi Grace, this is Justin again.

I'm recording this right now for my room.

It's about 9 in the evening.

Hi Justin, this is Grace.

For this letter, so I guess I'll just jump right to it.

Hi Grace, this is Justin again.

For something that I...

It's about 10 p.m.

right now.

I feel like I can't tell my parents, because their parents aren't...

That story was produced by me, Cathy Wong, and Kate Nelson.

Our next story is a conversation with the past.

We're taking a look at one of the origin myths of American history.

But this time we're asking, who really connected America?

In 1969, thousands gathered in Promontory, Utah, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Central Pacific Railroad.

John Volpe, the Secretary of Transportation, praised the hard-working laborers who had laid out the tracks.

Who else but Americans could lay 10 miles of track in one day?

Who else but Americans could dig these tunnels?

Who else but Americans?

He went on and on about Americans.

But it wasn't built just by Americans.

He wouldn't mention the fact that 90% of the labor was Chinese.

Hilton Obenzinger is a researcher at Stanford University.

The history books have one single line, right?

The Chinese helped build the railroad.

You have one image or a photo of a shadowy man with a big hat on, and you don't get to see who the face is, and you don't know who the names are.

Barry Fong is a documentary filmmaker.

He's been recording the voices of the descendants of the Chinese railroad workers.

In the mid-1800s, Chinese immigrated to the US by the thousands.

They came from a region called Guangdong, fleeing opium wars, ethnic conflicts, and overpopulation.

Many were teenage boys, desperate to find a better life, and came to California, where the railroad companies were laying tracks to link the East with the West.

American workers were too few or did not want to undertake the dangerous work.

They're not willing to pay higher wages.

They kept on complaining that they couldn't get white workers to work for them.

But that's only because they didn't want to pay them.

Workers labored through some of the worst winters in recorded history.

The ground was icy across the Sierras.

Snow-blocked tunnel entrances and avalanches claimed many lives.

They drilled and blasted through mountains covered deep in snow.

It took kegs of explosive powder to blast even the smallest chunks of solid granite.

They had to hang from ropes in order to set explosives to open up areas so they could then dig.

Fifteen tunnels, amazing tunnels, including the summit tunnel dug by hand in black powder.

Once through the Sierras came the hot Nevada deserts.

In scorching heat, workers built ten miles of track in one day.

Over twenty-two hundred tons of materials were laid down.

I always imagined it to be a straight line, ten miles.

No, it had to curve, which meant that they had to bend the rails.

They literally had a giant-like anvil, and people would press against the rail to bend it.

Chinese workers were poorly paid, charged for food and lodging, and had to buy their own tools, whereas white workers were not.

This went on for years.

Demands for higher pay and better working conditions were met with silence and inaction until one hot summer day.

Thousands of workers just put down their tools and went back to camp and didn't work.

So we're talking about a lot of miles.

More than twenty miles, twenty miles of railroad.

An incomplete project left by workers who all at once, they just stopped digging in tunnels, grading, doing all kinds of work.

They would just put their tools down and sat in camp.

In retaliation, the company stopped delivering food and supplies, leaving them stranded.

Basically trapped them, starved them.

Charles Crocker, railroad executive, confronted the workers.

He threatened violence against them.

They had no choice.

After eight days, they went back to work.

The workers began to see some improvement.

Eventually, their wages were almost comparable to that of white workers.

And more importantly, One thing that was certain is that the railroad workers could no longer be regarded as docile, submitting to their bosses willingly.

Finally, the railroad was complete.

For some, the end of the work meant going back to China.

Others stayed to create lives and families in the US.

They continued to work labor-intensive jobs, like agriculture and mining.

There is this mentality, basically underlying it all is this racial superiority.

They had no rights, could not testify in court.

If they witnessed a crime, it did not count.

They couldn't testify.

They could not own property.

They could not vote.

In the late 1800s, America was in a deep recession, and a panicked population pointed to the Chinese community, blaming them for tough times.

In response, the government created the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first major law that targeted a specific group of people from entering the country.

The law stayed in effect for 60 years.

Even after the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943, only 105 Chinese immigrated to the US in the following decade.

In 1969, at the 100th anniversary of the Central Pacific Railroad, Philip Choi was there to watch.

A third-generation Chinese American, Choi had done his own research and was the president of the Chinese Historical Society in California.

The group planned a separate mainstage ceremony to honor the Chinese workers.

20,000 people came to watch the reenactment of the Golden Spike driven by Stanford, but only 100 people showed up to the celebration of the Chinese workers.

Enraged by the silence of history, Choi became a vocal activist for the Chinese American community.

He gathered documents and records and taught one of the first Chinese American history course.

He also established the Asian American program at San Francisco State University.

That's one of the big sparks in developing the Asian American movement, saying we're not being acknowledged for what we have done.

And they campaigned for years and years to bring us to people's lives.

Today at Stanford University, yes, the Stanford that drove this spike, historians, archaeologists and researchers are compiling the stories of Chinese railroad workers.

We're in contact with scholars in China who are able to investigate the villages where the workers came from, what the culture was like.

We're dealing with historical archaeologists who have all these artifacts.

2019 will be the 150th anniversary of the railroad.

And once again, there will be celebrations.

This time, Chinese railroad workers will have a page in history.

That story was produced by Yue Li.

Salma Sharif is a poet and teacher who moved to the US from Iran when she was.

Young.

Or I feel just behind or just outside of what is happening around me.

And I'm just outside of my body.

And that tends to be how I usually just feel.

At the core, at the very core of the displaced life, something in you is dead.

You grow up learning all the things you're not supposed to say, and all the ways you're supposed to contain or conduct yourself in certain spaces.

All the things that you could get in trouble for.

None of that seemed to apply in a poem.

And so a poem always felt like it was that private conversation and the one space where you could not only could you do that, you're supposed to do that.

You're supposed to actually move toward the things that remain unsaid, the things that remain improper taboo and name them and celebrate them and sing them.

Deception story.

Friends describe my disposition as stoic, like a dead fish an ex said.

Distance is a funny drug, and used to make me a distressed person, one who cried in bedrooms and airports.

Once, I bawled so hard at the border, even the man with the stamps and holster said, don't cry, you'll be home soon.

My distribution over the globe debated and set to quota.

A nation can only handle so many of me.

Ditching class, I break into my friend's dad's mansion and swim in the Beverly Hills pool in a borrowed t-shirt, a brief diversion.

My body breaking the chlorinated surface makes it momentarily.

My house, my division of driveway gate and alarm codes.

My dress rehearsed doctrine of pool boys and ping pong and water delivered on the backs of sequined sparklet's trucks.

Over here, Dolly, an agent will call out then pat the hair at your hot black dome.

After explaining what she will touch, backs of the hands of the breasts and buttocks, the hand goes inside my waistband and my heart goes dormant, a dead fish, the last female assist I decided to hit on.

My life in the American dream is a downgrade, a mere draft of home, correction.

It satisfies as drag.

It is snarling what I carve of it alone.

I can tell you the origin story of my life as I have heard it and I remember it.

I was born in 1983 in Istanbul, Turkey.

I spent my first month in a hotel room in Istanbul, and I was born in Istanbul, Turkey because that's where the US.

Embassy was.

And my parents were really insisting on and trying to get back to the US.

They had been students here, organizing against the Shah of Iran, and they had returned to Iran when he had been ousted.

My dad would go daily, practically, to this embassy for months, and they would say no every time, obviously.

And finally, the officer that had seen him at that point, like dozens of times, was like, look, it's no, and if you come back, we're going to arrest you.

Like, that's it, you're not allowed to, you know.

And so he told the guy, what's your name?

And the guy was kind of like flustered, you know.

He's like, why do you want to know my name?

And my dad said, I want to know the name of the person that's responsible for killing my wife and child.

And there was enough of a break there that the guy then wanted to hear his story.

So I have always been raised with this kind of naive faith in the story and the story being what can determine your life.

But I also resent that, you know, because what if he didn't know to say that?

And also how, you know, then arbitrary it is who deserves to be here and who does not, you know?

And so that's how I fell into the camp of deserving.

Then we ended up in the States.

We ended up in Texas.

From Texas, we went to Birmingham.

From Birmingham, we went to Downey, California.

And then LA, West LA, Westwood, Persian Square, is where I spent most of my middle and high school.

I was expecting to find an Iranian community, an Iranian family, and instead was met with mean girls.

Typical kind of middle school, high school dilemma, but had been compounded by the fact that I had such cultural longing.

I ended up not really belonging with them.

I'm hesitant to actually name or claim a relationship to any one place, because I don't feel like I have that right over any place.

I feel like I am not here, or I feel just behind or just outside of what is happening around me, and I'm just outside of my body.

And that tends to be how I usually just feel.

But I feel anchored in poetry.

My mom exposed me to poetry.

She would read me Song of Myself as a bedtime story, and would censor it, and gave me Dickinson's Collected on my birthday, my 12th birthday, and it was just always there.

I remember very distinctly being seven and taking my mom's typewriter.

Every time I hit enter, and the page would slide up, it felt like this really important moment in my life.

What draws me to poetry is that desire to feel seen or understood, and beyond that, the desire to then give that to somebody else.

I think it's valuable to have a poem stay in the emergency and make alive the emergency in the reader, so that reading that feels, you'll feel something, right?

And that thing that you feel is important and valuable.

The part of you, the part of us that is in that emergency still.

There's one specific time that I think about often, which was when I was getting many petty with a friend of mine, and there was an older white American man that was sitting across from me, also getting a pedicure.

He saw me and my friend, and then started asking where we were from, where we were from.

I value the question.

Like, I want to say, you're wrong.

You know, I want to say, I wanna name all the places that I'm from, so I don't, but some people are asking it, you know, it's like, clearly you don't belong here, so why don't you explain your presence here?

And I did what I usually do, which is, like, I do LA, and then I go back to Downey, and then I go to Burma.

It takes them forever to actually get to the question, or the answer they want, which is you're wrong.

And he said, aren't you glad to be here in the US where you can paint your toes freely?

Aren't you grateful to be here in the US where you can paint your toes?

And I was just like dumbfounded.

And there was something so disgusting about that moment, you know, with his, like, feet exposed and toe jam everywhere, and just, you know, and all these immigrant women, like, bending over him and working on him.

But him asking that question really just called up every time some version of that question had been asked.

I think what I need to start doing is asking somebody who asks me that question why they need me to be grateful and what it is in them that they are hoping I absolve by saying I'm grateful to be here.

You Desired appreciation.

Until now, now that I've reached my 30s, all my muse's poetry has been harmless, American and diplomatic.

A learned helplessness is what psychologists call it, my docile desired state.

I've been largely well behaved and gracious.

I've learned the doctors learned of learned helplessness by shocking dogs.

Eventually we things give up.

Am I grateful to be here?

Someone eventually asks if I love this country.

In between the helplessness, the agents of the nation must administer a bit of hope, must meet basic dietary needs, ensure by tube, by nose, by throat, by other orifice, must fist bump a janitor, must must up some kid's hair and let him loose around the oval office, click, click could be cameras or the teeth of handcuffs closing to fix the arms overhead.

There must be a doctor on hand to ensure the shoulders do not dislocate and there must be Prince's raspberry beret.

Click, click could be Morse code tapped out against a coffin wall to the neighboring coffin.

Outside my window, the snow lights cobalt for a bit at dusk and I'm surprised every second of it.

I had never seen the country like this.

Somehow I can't say yes.

This is a beautiful country.

I have not cast my eyes over it before, that is, in this direction, is how John Brown put it when he looked out from the scaffold.

I feel like I must muzzle myself, I told my psychiatrist.

So you feel dangerous, she said, yes.

So you feel like a threat, yes.

Why was I so surprised to hear it?

Solmaz's poetry collection, Look, is a poetic rewrite of the US.

Department of Defense Dictionary.

Look was published last year and it was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award for Poetry.

That story was produced by Jackson Roach and Jett Hayward.

When we were putting together this series, everyone we talked to eventually said some version of the same thing, which is that immigration is kind of like the conversation you can't stop having.

Between one world and another or the people here and the people there, or who you become now and the person you used to be.

It's not finished just because you've arrived.

Our last story is a conversation between father and son.

My name is Francisco Javier Preciado, senior.

I told my wife our first one, if it's a boy, he's gonna be junior.

This is my son, Francisco Javier Preciado.

Francisco Preciado, junior.

Junior, yes.

I come from Mexico.

I was six when I came here, so pretty much I went out of my school here.

I went to Foothill, Foothill College, and I was working part time.

Two jobs in school.

I was studying to be a teacher, Spanish teacher, but due to financial problems that I had, I couldn't continue the school.

And then I started here at Stanford as a temp, and then became permanent, and here I am.

Yeah, I've been here, what, 36 years now.

And then we had, he's our first son, our first child.

Dad would take me here on campus, and he would show me the fountains.

I used to maintain the fountains at that time.

He told me as a little kid that he wanted me to come here when I grew up.

I told him that he was gonna go here.

And of course I was like, well, I would love to go to a school where my dad is at so I get to hang out with him.

And it wasn't until high school that I realized how difficult it was to get in.

And so I told him, I was like, yeah, it doesn't look like I'm gonna be joining you at Stanford.

And I was like, I don't even think I'm gonna apply because I don't think I even have a shot.

I'm the one that brought that form and told him, fill it out.

He's like, just apply.

He's like, just apply.

And then I did.

Let's see.

I had a feeling to check the mail.

It was kind of a weird feeling.

I was like, hey, why don't you grab the mail?

Saw a big package from Stanford and that's when I was like, I couldn't believe that I was like, big package.

Dear Francisco, congratulations to the class of 2007.

My wife and I were worried about him because he kept pacing back and forth, back and forth.

What's wrong with this guy?

And that's when my wife goes, something's wrong with Frankie.

You better go check him out.

And that's when we found out that he was accepted to go there.

And I go, that's great.

That was a dream come true for my wife and I as well because I wanted him to come here.

Once he was accepted, he goes, well, I don't know if I can still make it because it's expensive.

He goes, we can't afford it.

How are we going to do it?

And I told him, Dan, don't you worry.

Your mom and I, we'll find a way.

I don't think I've seen the inside of a dorm before on campus at Stanford because it was always on the outside.

When I would introduce myself in terms of folks, I would let them know, hey, my dad works on campus.

Have you ever seen him?

I look like him and then it'll say Francisco on his uniform.

Say hi to him.

He's the one that cleans the fountains on Mondays and Fridays.

Because of that, I get to go home and have some home-cooked meal.

So if you ever want to come to the house, let me know.

And then we'll have some home-cooked food.

They did.

They did.

They actually would take friends over.

So on campus, all my friends and the students, they would be like, oh, you're Frankie's dad.

Oh, how you doing?

You're Frankie's dad.

And every time I would go out and see the workers, they'd be like, oh, you're Francisco's son.

You're Francisco's son.

So it was cool in that way.

It was also because his coworkers knew I was there.

They were also vigilant and watching me anywhere I was.

So I had some all-nighters that came out.

I think I got five in the morning or six in the morning.

And one of his coworkers went and told my dad, like, hey, I saw your son over here at six in the morning.

What is he doing so early?

They were always watching over me.

I did have extra eyes.

At one point, I think it was the winter quarter of my junior year, I was taking 20 units, two jobs, to help buy books, tuition, and housing.

That's what we paid.

But we were in crisis.

We took a loan from our house.

We were on the border of losing our house.

I was scared that I wasn't going to make it.

Don't quit.

I go, because look what happened to me.

I'm over here working irrigation.

I'm over here cleaning fountains.

I don't want that for you guys.

I want a better life, better living.

And it was on Father's Day.

Yeah, so the graduation was Father's Day.

No, I was dressed in a nice suit.

It was good knowing that they were there.

And I remember he came and told me, he goes, Dad, this is for you.

That's when I got emotional.

Because he goes, Dad, this diploma, it's yours.

It belongs to you.

It's so funny, though, because after he graduated from here, he goes, Dad, I'm going to take a break before going to law school.

So he decides to go to San Jose State, and he gets his master's.

That was his break.

Yes, I was working full time as a community organizer, recently married, and then doing the master's degree program at San Jose State in Mexican American Studies.

As part of the labor movement, I've been involved since middle school, since he would take me to the rallies here on campus.

The work that I'm doing now, it's great that I get to represent my dad.

So I'm the executive director for SEIU Local 2007, which represents about 1,200 workers on the campuses at Stanford and Santa Clara universities.

Last year, I passed the bar.

So yeah, he's legally a lawyer now, so that's great.

And believe me, that's made a lot of difference here in the university as well, as far as the union goes.

HR respects us more now that he's there and they know he's a lawyer.

I think their perspective has changed now compared to the one that used to be there before.

What guides me in interactions is you have to respect people, whether someone's providing a service or a service worker or someone's the CEO.

You respect people equally.

The way in which both my parents were treated sometimes wasn't great all the time.

It was like, you're just the help.

You are below me.

You are providing the service.

Don't talk to me or engage in me unless it's related to the work that you're doing.

Even with engaging with me as a child, it'd be like, oh, you're not smart enough to do certain things.

So you should learn how to cut the grass in this way because that's what you're going to be doing in the future anyway.

So let me give you some tips on that.

So it was weird dynamics that was on campus.

So growing up in that experience, I saw the fact that there was kind of two worlds.

I feel like I'm struggling two worlds in many respects.

So whether it's based off of class, whether it's based off of race, I can wear different hats.

I'm here as an alum and as a father, telling my kids to come here when they grow up.

I have a six-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy.

I'm telling my grandchildren already, they're going to come to Stanford just like their dad did.

I'm already telling them.

That story was produced by Louis Lafair and Melina Walling.

This episode was produced by Carissa Cirelli, Noelle Chow, Jett Hayward, Anli Herring, Julia Ingraham, Louis LaFaire, Rosie Lapuma, Yue Li, Jenny March, Kate Nelson, Jackson Roach, Helvia Taina, Molina Walling, Jake Warga, Eileen Williams, and me, Cathy Wong.

You've been listening to State of the Human, the podcast of the Stanford Storytelling Project.

For their generous financial support, we'd like to thank the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, the Program in Writing and Rhetoric, Stanford Arts, and Bruce Braden.

This episode was part two of a two-episode series on emigrating.

You can find part one, as well as all the other episodes of State of the Human, by visiting our website, storytelling.stanford.edu.

Thank you.