Lunch with Junot Diaz

Yesterday I went to a lunch with Junot Diaz, organised by the International Students Office. Junot is a creative writing professor at MIT, and winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

He mostly talked about what it's like to come to the US as an immigrant (in his case, from the Dominican Republic in 1974). One of his main points was that there isn't one experience that we can say all immigrants have, but he did talk about a few things that I think would be common to many. One was the importance his family places on education. They strongly believe that a scientific or technical education is the way to success in the US, so even after his literary success, they still think he should go back and finish the engineering degree he started. He suggested perhaps teaching at MIT is his subconscious attempt to move closer to their ideal.

Another point he made was that one gives up so much to succeed in a new country. It's not necessarily the conventional idea that one loses one's native culture on integrating into the US, partly because American culture is now so dominant around the world; it's no more difficult to avoid while living here than while in any country in a very wide sphere of influence. Still, by choosing to follow a path of success of some kind (such as studying at MIT), we're choosing to forego other opportunities or experiences. I guess I agree: it certainly would be nice if I could be closer to my family, and academically I've felt I have to take the good with the bad here (relatively speaking). On the whole, though, I think I'm used to the idea that we can't do everything. I made a conscious, and the correct, decision to study in the US instead of taking a perhaps easier path in Australia, and I don't regret the choice or find it difficult to live with.

Interestingly, he was talking to us as fellow immigrants to the US, but I don't feel that way. As far as I'm concerned, I can have a number of homes at a time, and my absolute home is still where my family lives. Happening to live in the US at the moment, though, doesn't make me an emigrant from home. I simply think that I'm prepared to go anywhere in the world to do what I want to do, and at the moment that happens to mean the US. In the future, I suspect it will mean more time in the US, Australia, and most likely Europe. One big factor is that I've never lived in a non-English speaking country. I think I would take a long time to settle into another language, not knowing any at the moment! There, however, I'm still spoiled, because if I stay in the academic world, English will always be my professional language.

I was thinking about whether immigrants to Australia have similar experiences to the ones Junot was talking about. I feel I know enough immigrants well enough to have a reasonable idea, and I think in many cases they did have similar experiences. We certainly have ideas of what parental expectations are like among communities of those who have emigrated from East Asia to Australia, and I think those ideas are true in many cases (although I know enough individuals to understand that there are endless variations on the theme, as well as exceptions). I think it's natural for first generation parents to value education highly, because it is the way to break free from the restrictions those new to a country can often find.

Another challenge he mentioned was the difficulty of being one's own parent! Although this may sound a little odd, I can see where he's coming from. I'm used to my parents being the experienced ones, and learning my way in the world from them. In a lot of cases, children new to a country learn more about that country's culture at school than their parents are able to teach them, and find themselves being required to adapt to the new lifestyle with little help.

Anyone living outside the country of your birth: I'd be interested to hear if you have any thoughts about what your most notable experiences have been.