A reader tells the story of a brave accomplished American:
I saw that you guys are interested in hearing about naturalized citizens. My story is mildly interesting, but my mother’s is amazing (we are both naturalized citizens). This is her story to the best of my recollection.
My mom was born and raised in northern Iran. By all accounts, she was incredibly accomplished, even in her youth. She went to the best university at the time, Shiraz University, and studied horticulture. She went on to get a Master’s in that subject in Iran and later a PhD in the U.S.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. When the Shah came to visit her hometown, my mom was chosen as the town’s ambassador to greet him at a young age. When she was in high school, my mom competed in what is essentially the Miss Iran contest, wherein the contestants had to tailor their own attire for one part of the event—another talent she has. Although she did not win, she was a finalist (apparently it’s all political).
During her university studies, my mom married a dapper basketball player who later became my father. The marriage was against the advice of all her family, I am told. My father became addicted to gambling and drugs. In Iran, as you may know, it is quite difficult for women to get divorced from their husbands. Once I was in the picture, Mom was focused on getting a divorce so she could safely get me out of Iran.
Her undergraduate training had been in English, and she and my father had lived in San Diego in the late 1970s (having moved back to Iran, sadly, just prior to the revolution). So my mom felt comfortable with English and figured out a way to get funding to pursue her PhD in the United States. The only trouble, then, was the divorce. It’s a long story involving having to get my father’s signature on a form wherein he admitted wrongdoing. She eventually managed to get that and the divorce, and we fled Iran in 1985. I was five years old at the time.
We landed in Florida, where my mom had a friend from college and hoped to have financial support for her PhD. Unfortunately, the professor she had arranged to meet with was not able to provide her support.
So my mom was alone in the U.S, with a five-year-old child and little money. However, she had previously been admitted to Iowa State University (and declined), so we traveled there to see if they would admit her again. As you’ve gathered by now, Mom is a resourceful woman. We met with the professor who went on to become her PhD advisor, and he agreed to support her! The only downside was we had to wait a few months. Luckily, Mom had a cousin who was living in the Bay Area at the time, so we flew out there and stayed with her for a few months before going back to Iowa.
Having a PhD myself now, I cannot imagine going through it alone, in a new country, with a young unforgiving child. But she did it, completing her horticulture PhD in four years.
After her post-doctoral studies, we moved to California, where I remained until just a couple of years ago. Only then could we apply for Green Cards, because prior to then she was on a student visa. We got these when I was 14, and shortly after that mom made her first trip back to Iran. (I couldn’t go because I was in school.) Once we had our Green Cards, we applied for citizenship, which obviously takes several years. We eventually both took our citizenship exams and became proud citizens when I was 22.
Going through the naturalization process was a bit bizarre for me, as the questions you have to prepare for are simpler than those on the AP U.S. History test I had taken in high school. Having come here at such a young age, I was pretty much an American taking an American citizenship test. Mom is an avid reader, so she didn’t have much trouble either.
The day of the ceremony we were so impressed by the number of people gathered together swearing their allegiance to their new country. For us this meant many things, including the freedom to travel the world. I had spent a semester in Paris in college and watched enviously as all my classmates traveled all over Europe. Since this was before the EU and before we became American citizens, I had to remain in France. I was, therefore, acutely aware of how many more opportunities I would have with my new American passport. After all these years, we finally proudly became citizens of the world’s most important democracy.
I went to the University of Southern California with a full-tuition scholarship and studied biomedical engineering and French. From there I went to Stanford Medical School and later on to residency in general surgery and a PhD in education. I am now an assistant professor of surgery at Washington University in St. Louis. I’m attaching a picture from a recent trip we took to South America, at Iguazu Falls.
As I said at the beginning, mom’s story is amazing. And in the current political climate, I fear we are losing what it means to be American.
Sunday was the 44th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, and the following day, as one of his first acts as president, Donald Trump reinstated “the Mexico City policy,” a rule that bans U.S. funding to foreign family-planning organizations unless they agree not to promote abortion. In the new GOP-controlled Congress this month, Steve King of Iowa introduced the Heartbeat Protection Act, a bill that would prohibit an abortion if an ultrasound detected a fetal heartbeat.
In The Atlantic today, Moira Weigel traces the origins of ultrasound and how the technology has been increasingly used by pro-life advocates to persuade women not to have abortions. “Of course, ultrasound technology has been a crucial component of prenatal care, too,” Weigel notes. “Imagery obtained through ultrasound can alert doctors to potentially serious problems in a pregnancy—such as placental issues or congenital defects in the fetus.” The following reader can relate—in agonizing detail:
My views on abortion have always been pro-choice. However, when I actually had to live through the experience myself, I was torn.
To be honest, even when I talk about my second pregnancy now, I still refer to what happened as a miscarriage: I lost my baby, rather than terminating my pregnancy.
It was fall of 2011. I was 23 years old, married to my husband for two years, and we had a beautiful one-year-old daughter. We wanted a big family and were excited when I found out I was pregnant again. I was a high-risk pregnancy with my daughter, so it was no surprise that I was sent to a perinatologist.
That first visit with her would forever change my life. It was my husband, my daughter, and me in the room, and we were so excited to have my daughter see her new little sibling. A few minutes into the ultrasound, the nurse practitioner paused and stated she needed to get the doctor’s opinion on something, so she stepped out of the room. I was confused.
A few moment later, the doctor came in and resumed the ultrasound. Then she told us: The baby had anencephaly. The baby’s skull had not fully developed and parts of the brain would be exposed. She stated that this condition was fatal, and if I carried the baby to full term, my baby would either be stillborn or only live a few hours or days.
I was heartbroken. I was terrified. In those few moments, I felt like a failure. I had failed my child. Somehow I caused this.
After speaking with my OB, the decision to end the pregnancy was made. My procedure was schedule for two days later. Walking into that clinic was extremely hard. I wanted my child, and I wanted more than anything for the doctors to be wrong. But another ultrasound was performed that day and again my baby’s condition was confirmed.
I sat in a shared room dressed in only a hospital gown, around other women. Listening to them speak was hard. Some of their stories will haunt me forever. I felt alone.
The whole procedure itself took less than 30 minutes—but I can’t be sure. Shortly after it was done, I was wheeled out. My baby was gone. My baby had been taken from me. I went home and cried for days.
I made what I thought was the best decision for my family and for myself. I did not want my child to suffer nor give birth and lose my child moments later. I have come to terms with my decision and am extremely grateful that I had the option to choose.
Just about three months later, I became pregnant again. In August the following year, I gave birth to healthy, beautiful, identical twin girls. I love my girls. They are my life.
As a construction laborer, I find that one of the funniest misconceptions about my job is that Hollywood and pretty much all TV show producers seem to think that all construction workers have Brooklyn or Bronx accents from the 1950s. Even when they show construction workers in LA or Dallas, the workers all seem to have Brooklyn accents.
But more seriously, I’ve had people literally tell me that I do “unskilled” or “brainless” work because I’m in construction. Yes, the construction industry is one of the least credentialed industries; you literally do not need a high school diploma. But once you enter the industry, you are expected to learn on the job—and quickly.
This week, I’m putting in a concrete footer/foundation underneath a
120-year-old brick house. That doesn’t require academic credentials, but it does require skill. Guys in my neighborhood have been killed because they did the process wrong.
Many people seem to think that strength is the best quality for a construction worker to have. Actually, even when it comes to the hard laboring jobs, the biggest and strongest guys are often the worst workers. They often get outworked by older, smaller, and/or skinnier or fatter guys. A man who likes to work or has a good attitude towards work can easily outwork a lazy muscular guy.
I had a relative by marriage who ended up disabled after a number of years in construction after episodes of showing off how much he could lift. He’d show up all the other guys on the job site by carrying two of whatever everybody else carried one of, after bragging he could out-lift everyone on site. All this resulted in delays in work followed by multiple back surgeries. I’d bet that some of the men who refused to engage in his petty contests kept their jobs a lot longer than he did.
So far we’ve heard from a minister who gets exasperated when parishioners treat her differently outside the church and a reader in the biotech field who cleared up a common misconception about cancer. This next reader, David, runs through several misconceptions about his work as a preschool teacher:
You’re so lucky. You get summers off.
Many teachers work in the summer. They don’t make enough money during the school year. More than a few teachers have to pay for supplies for their own classroom. They are not given a big enough budget by the school.
You’re so lucky. You get off work at 2:30, right?
Faculty meetings, prep for the next day’s classes, emails and phone calls to parents ... you get the picture. It is 8:30 pm as I write this, and I’m taking a break from preparing for tomorrow’s school day. I’ve only taken time off for dinner and a short walk since the kids left.
You’re so lucky. You get to play with kids all day.
This was said to me by a parent—and preschool teacher too—at a parent conference. For the youngest children, play is work. And in these days of Common Core and the Every Student Succeeds Act, preschool is pre-high-stakes testing. Five year olds have work to do in their handwriting workbooks. After that, they work on what number combinations make 5. Morning meeting lasts at least a half hour. And all this is before any recess.
A daughter of a teacher adds:
I stopped visiting my parents over Christmas because my mom was WAY too busy to do anything with me while on her winter break. Much better to go in late July or early August, after the prior school year was put to bed, but before it was time to start setting up for the next year. (And she usually still coerced me into doing prep work for her :)
Another teacher is a bit miffed that “people perceive teachers as being ‘secular saints’—and that we are expected to be: mother/father, nurse, social worker, psychologist, and a host of other things to our students that go above and beyond our job description.” Another reader looks through a gendered lens:
Teaching went from a male-dominated career to female vocation. Once that occurred, it was considered an almost pastoral calling for unmarried women. They were expected to take jobs for almost no money because they were just so moved to nurture children and were waiting to get married.
This expectation left a residue. People expect perfect nurturing and caring for their kids and to be asked nothing. Meanwhile, classrooms have gotten more complex and challenging. What could go wrong?
This next reader gets a little political:
According to the Tea Party types, teachers are just a lazy and incompetent bunch of (unionized) people that are doing their best to “ruin” the youth of our nation, while feeding off the public trough, via their taxes. Nothing could be further from the truth, at least from what I see of the tremendous work that is being done with students at the public school where I work, in an inner city neighborhood.
Update: Some pushback from a reader:
The way I understood it, the complaint [among Tea Party types] wasn’t that teachers were lazy and incompetent, but that lazy and incompetent teachers could never ever be got rid of. They’d simply go through the nod-wink process of sitting in “rubber rooms” all day, with full pay and benefits, for months or years while their cases were being “reviewed.” This kind of feather-bedding is very galling to private-sector citizens during economic downturns.
This is one reason why I feel I made the right decision to put my kids in a charter elementary school. We had a couple of sub-standard teachers along the way, but they didn’t last long.
Here’s one more reader, who works as an English teacher:
Having to defend why my job is important is a little frustrating. Here are some reasons why English is important:
Media literacy (i.e. discerning what is fake news, what is good journalism)
Reading novels helps us learn empathy and ethics. We are able to relate to what a character is thinking and feeling, which helps us examine our own morality. Also, if a character is in a situation similar to ours, it can both make us feel better and help us solve it.
Writing helps us be able to articulate our thoughts clearly. Communicating in written form (as well as spoken form) is key for success in many occupations.
Imagination! Creativity! Exploring the world of books helps cultivate these things, which are extremely important for innovation and problem solving.
Books can serve as warnings for human nature and world development. Think Nineteen-Eighty-Four.
Being able to analyze text helps strengthen one’s critical and analytical thinking abilities. Look at the president-elect. The man has probably read very few books in his life and clearly has a very limited understanding of the world. He doesn’t appreciate nuance or complexity of issues. He is completely incurious, which, as you can see, is dangerous. The more one reads and learns through reading, often guided by an English teacher, the more one is able to see multiple sides of an issue and address it with the seriousness and thought it deserves. Furthermore, look at his vocabulary. Had he read more, he would be able to express himself in more sophisticated language.
Update from a math teacher at a private school in NYC:
This is my seventh year teaching, and I’ve taught at two different schools (one fancy, one decidedly unfancy). I have some disagreements with the picture painted by teachers in this post. One wrote:
Many teachers work in the summer. They don’t make enough money during the school year.
Many teachers work in the summer because we want (or need) more money. Many don’t. That’s the whole reason why summers are a great perk: You get to choose. Teachers talk often about how “summer isn’t vacation,” but in my opinion this is nuts. I know teachers who vacation, and others (like me) who try to teach summer school.
Faculty meetings, prep for the next day’s classes, emails and phone calls to parents ... you get the picture. It is 8:30 pm as I write this, and I’m taking a break from preparing for tomorrow’s school day. I’ve only taken time off for dinner and a short walk since the kids left.
One of the crazy things about education is that there are incredibly different working conditions for teachers of younger vs. older students. Elementary teachers teach more of the day with less planning time; we middle and high school teachers have many many more planning periods throughout the day. I still find myself working sometimes at night (marking papers, planning for first period, writing report card comments, etc.) but it’s manageable. The other thing is that more experienced teachers eventually find ways to work less at nights, I think, for obvious burnout-related reasons.
And while I hear the “it’s not fun to be around children’s play” line, being around children and learning is absolutely something that’s great about the job, and it’s why so many of us put up with a degree of professional ridiculousness. We like working with kids and that’s a great part of the job. Right? This seems obvious to me, but I think for rhetorical reasons teachers like to play up the negative aspects of teaching. We forget that so many of us stick around teaching because the work is meaningful.
President Obama told The New York Times that reading books like The Three-Body Problem and The Underground Railroad helped him “slow down and get perspective” during his eight years in the White House.
This week, we asked our Politics & Policy Daily readers to share which books inform their daily lives and help keep things in perspective. Here are some of our favorite responses.
The story of how French citizens faced so much difficulty during the Nazi occupation is relevant today when we talk about ISIS and how they took over cities in the Middle East. I’m sure many of those citizens didn’t want to take in the soldiers but were forced to do it in order to protect their families. We are so far removed from this kind of suffering that it can be difficult to imagine, and understanding it more makes me appreciate how small our problems in America are by comparison.
Gail Driscoll enjoys Barack Obama: The Story by David Maraniss, Jon Meacham’s American Lion, and J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy—which she says “exposes the complexity of the problems facing much of the Rust Belt.”
I found that after I read it, I filtered everything I saw on the news or on Facebook through the insights I had received from reading this book. I joined my local chapters of the NAACP and SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice). The name of SURJ is somewhat counter to what Coates says about race being an artificial construct of oppression which originated as a child of racism rather than the other way around, as most people believe. But SURJ is a resource for positive activism in a city that is predominantly populated by people who are known as “white.”
Coates’s book—coupled with Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, about our tragically cruel treatment of this country’s Native population—are two books that will continue to inform my life by requiring me to always question the American dream, its shameful history, and the need to wake up from it, as Coates says. From these two books, I have learned to question constantly the assumptions we make about our country and our world and the roles we expect ourselves and others to play in them.
Paul Poletes also holds special appreciation for BTWAM:
Although I now live in a diverse neighborhood in Fairfax, VA, I grew up in South Dakota in the 1970s and 1980s. I can (literally) count on one hand the number of non-white kids I went to school with. Coates’s childhood in an all-black part of Baltimore—a neighborhood where everyone lived in fear of both street gangs and the cops—had about as much in common with my childhood as kids growing up in Karachi or Moscow. As a child my friends and I had almost nothing to fear—especially not the police, whom we saw as kindly, well-meaning protectors. Sioux Falls was probably more diverse in the 1980s than Coates’s childhood neighborhood, but barely (my neighborhood, on the other hand, wasn’t—it was all white). Only after I moved to Minneapolis for college did I meet people really different from me—one of my college roommates was black, while another was Muslim.
I’ve thought a lot about Between the The World and Mesince November 8, especially when I hear the ubiquitous talk of liberal elites living in their coastal and big city bubbles. Between the World and Me reminds me that everyone lives in their own bubble—urban, poor, rural, gay, Vietnamese, black, evangelical, Jewish, white, rich, Lutheran, Baptist, etc. How many bubbles do I live in now? I have no idea, but at least I’m better able to understand everyone else’s bubbles too.
And lastly, Neel Lahiri picked The Book of Awesomeby Neil Pasricha, writing:
For all that is wrong with society, it pays off to keep the small but important joys of life in mind. Reading a page a day is pure catharsis, and helps me remain calm even when the world is not.
I hope it’s not too late to point out the perfect track for Inauguration Day. For so many reasons, it just has to be Leonard Cohen’s exhausted but hopeful “Democracy,” recorded 25 years ago [yesterday] and still inspiring—and, let us hope, prophetic.
Cohen died just a day before Donald Trump was elected president, so we’ll never know his reaction. But we can still glean wisdom and hope from his lyrics:
It’s coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It’s here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it’s here they got the spiritual thirst.
It’s here the family’s broken
and it’s here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
After months of an election campaign that gave us the feel / that this ain’t exactly real / or it’s real, but it ain’t exactly there, and after years of a rising tide of the wars against disorder / the sirens night and day / the fires of the homeless / the ashes of the gay, Leonard Cohen prophesizes: Democracy is coming to the USA. Like so many of us, Cohen cared about the idea of America (I love the country) but was horrified and revolted by what’s been happening to it (but I can’t stand the scene). [...] At a time when the US is in more danger of foundering than ever before, Cohen’s words are the perfect anthem for these times: Sail on, sail on / oh mighty ship of State, we’re dreading this voyage, not knowing if we’ll we make it to the shores of need / past the reefs of greed / through the squalls of hate.
(Submit a song via hello@. Track of the Day archive here. Pre-Notes archive here.)
A crowd watches Donald Trump's inaugural address in Washington, D.C., on January 20, 2017,Ricky Carioti / Reuters
In the aftermath of November’s election, many readers who had been shocked by Donald Trump’s victory shared poems that helped them cope with loss and change. Jared turned to “Ash Wednesday” by T.S. Eliot:
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice
Trump’s presidency is actual now, and will be for another four years. For many, after the bitterly fought campaign and the upset victory, his Inauguration Day feels like the turning point between a past marked by loss and a future marked by uncertainty. Maybe that was why, this morning, I found myself looking back at another poem—W.H. Auden’s “Homage to Clio,” the muse of history:
It is you, who have never spoken up,
Madonna of silences, to whom we turn
When we have lost control, your eyes, Clio, into which
We look for recognition after
We have been found out.
It’s a poem in praise of memory and choice, those uniquely human capacities—and in praise of the regret that comes inevitably with them. So far as Clio stands for time and history, her “silences” apply to both the past and the future: She won’t tell you what to do next, and if you look back and beg her to change something, she’s extremely unsympathetic.
What Clio can do, Auden writes, is to remind you of your own power: your ability to act with purpose, not only in the sense of political action or artistic expression but also in the simple sense of recognizing your own regrets and fears and place in history. That power is a privilege and a burden, which may be why Auden closes with a prayer:
Clio,
Muse of Time, but for whose merciful silence
Only the first step would count and that
Would always be murder, whose kindness never
Is taken in, forgive our noises
If you have a poem that brings you hope and comfort, please send it—with a link if you can—to hello@theatlantic.com, and I’ll add it here. Update: Katie recommends “Revenge” by Eliza Chavez:
I’ll confess I don’t know if I’m alive right now;
I haven’t heard my heart beat in days,
I keep holding my breath for the moment the plane goes down
and I have to save enough oxygen to get my friends through.
But I finally found the argument against suicide and it’s us.
We’re the effigies that haunt America’s nights harder
the longer they spend burning us,
we are scaring the shit out of people by spreading,
by refusing to die: what are we but a fire?
In Laura’s recommendation, “Ulysses,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson takes up a similar theme:
Come, my friends,
Tis not too late to seek a newer world. …
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Barry, a member of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Horde, sent us Margaret Walker’s “For My People”—recommended by another Horde member, Dirk:
For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way
from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding,
trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people,
all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations;
Photo of Shiprock, a land formation in New Mexico, by reader Jimmy Rollison for our America by Air series.
Our latest reader contributor, Mar, became an American citizen in 2013 but now has uncertainty about her future in the U.S.:
In 2001, at the age of 12, I immigrated here from Spain with my parents. My father, a veterinarian, had lost his job and was offered a position (and visa) as a researcher at the FDA after applying for an opening online. The FDA benefitted from my father’s labor in that he performed the work of a veterinarian, but because he lacked a license to practice in the U.S., he was paid less than a licensed vet.
The only difference between myself and someone who crossed the border illegally is that I was born to a family with the means of immigrating legally when faced with economic forces beyond our control.
But I believe it’s still unclear to my parents and I if it was a good decision to immigrate here. My father is getting older and will not be able to afford retiring soon. Once he is unable to work full time, my parents might have to immigrate again somewhere where the cost of living is lower. (They do hang an American flag from their porch and watch Fox News.)
As for myself, I have grown roots here and have no plan to leave in the foreseeable future. My bachelor’s degree may turn out to have been a financial mistake, and the cost of treating a chronic condition (although insured!) has kept me from saving a substantial amount of money that could have helped plan for my future better. I consider myself lucky that I am not bankrupt from medical bills like many Americans are. This way of thinking would have been foreign to me had I stayed in Europe.
I have, however, benefitted from living and studying in a diverse environment that has helped me grow immensely. This would not have happened in my homogenous town in Spain. I also benefit from better civil liberties here. A Spanish citizen is currently facing a fine for insulting the king. I just tweeted at Ivanka Trump and will tweet at her dad later when I get hangry. Also, I often have a uniquely American daydream of getting in my car and starting a new life out West. I am grateful for that possibility even if I never take advantage of it.
Whether all this is worth losing medical coverage because of a pre-existing condition once the ACA is repealed, or not being able to retire decently in the future, I don’t know yet.
Fabian and his family overcame the fear and uncertainty of having the wrong documentation:
I was brought to the U.S. in the late ’80s by my parents while I was barely eight years old. We left Uruguay, where I grew up and where my sister was born. (I was born in Argentina for reasons still unclear to me.)
I attended school and ferociously embraced American culture. When I attended college, I was notified that I either had to pay cash or prove that I am a U.S. citizen. My family had gotten a deportation notice in the mail during that time. Although we had been living here for 10 years—which seemed like an eternity at the time—the INS did not recognize my family as having legal status. My father began to suffer from a major depression that deteriorated his health physically. I continued to study and worked three jobs at times.
In 2000, I married the love of my life, a refugee from El Salvador who was a U.S. citizen. We immediately started the process to become a permanent resident. By 2006, I had become a U.S. citizen in LA County. My dad took me to the ceremony himself to make sure I got there on time.
The first person I voted for was myself in a city council election. I lost by three votes in a three-person race in my district.
I am now a U.S. Government and U.S. History teacher. Eventually, my parents were able to become permanent residents through my status as a citizen. Unfortunately, my sister continues to be undocumented because she didn’t qualify for any programs. She is planning to move with her family to Canada due to the Trump presidency and his continuous anti-immigrant rhetoric.
This next reader, Shelly, immigrated to the U.S. from Israel in the late ‘50s:
I came to this country with my family when I was five years old. We actually landed on my 5th birthday off a big ocean liner which sailed from the U.K., where we’d visited relatives and toured London. We came from Israel—a country only a decade old at the time—to help with some of my health issues and so that my father could find better business opportunities. My grandmother, aunt, uncle and their families were already in the U.S. I remember that day as my grandmother met us and brought me my first really beautiful doll.
My parents had been refugees from Nazi Europe in 1938. They met in pre-Israel Palestine and were filled with hope when they came to America.
At age 11, I was naturalized, along with my parents. I don’t remember much about the ceremony, but over the years, being a “hyphenated” American has kept me thinking about the responsibility of being a good citizen. It has made me sensitive to the fact that so many countries do not promise the rights our country does, that many people died to obtain and retain these rights, and that we have a role to play in preserving them.
My parents were able to build a good middle-class lifestyle for us in America. I attended public schools, earned a scholarship to an Ivy League university, and had a very successful business career.
More recently, I was inspired by Hillary Clinton to become active politically. I worked on both her campaigns, and I was a leader in this last campaign in mobilizing thousands of people and raising lots of money to support her—the most qualified presidential candidate of our generation. It is no surprise that she won three million more votes than her opponent but shocking to think that she lost the election due to just 80 thousand votes in swing states.
It won’t surprise you to hear that while I will always stay optimistic about America, I am hugely disappointed in the voters who chose such an unqualified candidate to “shake things up” and brought about this outcome, which will have repercussions for generations to come, including many negative ones for his own voters. I thought Americans were smarter than that.
Zuleyma Peralta, 29, Ph.D. candidate Lives in Sunnyside, Queens; emigrated from Mexico
To me, America really means trying to look for the American dream. When I came here, I came from the mountains of Guerrero. My parents were poor. My dad was struggling; even though he was a teacher, he wanted me to have a better future, so he brought me here. It wasn’t my choice, obviously, but I’m really glad he did, because he opened a world of opportunities here for me. Every day I just wake up and try to make him proud. I’m currently doing a Ph.D. Making sure that their sacrifice, and the sacrifice that they’re still making, is really worth it. And to me that’s what America symbolizes. The fact that you can come here and make something of yourself, even if you come from nothing.
Robin Glazer, 61, Director at the Creative Center at University SettlementLives in Jersey City, New Jersey
America’s strengths are in its immigrant communities, and all the amazing things that they’ve brought to the table and influenced. I was in education for 22 years as an art teacher for a public school system here in New York. And I will tell you that every year as my classes became more diverse and rich, the artwork that came out of that was more diverse and rich. The teachers were influenced by it, the administration was influenced by it.
The best American is somebody who is inclusive of all, respectful of all, curious about all, doesn’t shut anything down—which is kind of an oxymoron in the fact that I really cannot talk to Trump supporters now and I do shut them down in my mind. People felt disenfranchised. They needed somebody to blame.
Darryl Scherba, 68, Architect Lives in Upper East Side, Manhattan
For the last 300 or so years, we’ve been a pretty unique place in the world. Most immigrants, when they come here, they have a better understanding of what America means than most natives. We have an unbridled spirit. Optimism. A belief in the future. A sharing of disparate pasts. And a coming together, unlike most other countries in the world. And I think we’re unique in the sense that we’re a melting pot of so many nationalities.
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