Book Review for Homesickness: An American History by Susan J. Matt

              

In a nation that’s been around for over 200 years, a surprising number of Americans still trace their ancestry to the countries where their families immigrated from before they came to the U.S.  Among the many persistent myths of U.S. immigration, is the one of eternal optimism and relentless enthusiasm despite the hard work and formidable distances from home.  Yet few likely consider what their ancestors went through emotionally when leaving behind their birthplace and all things familiar to them to make a home in the United States.  Historian Susan J. Matt discusses this in her book Homesickness: An American History. Matt chronicles how Americans from the early settlers to the present have long missed home – even as, in more recent centuries, they encourage dismissing this feeling of persistent longing.

Matt documents how the reception of the word “homesickness” has fundamentally changed, not even coined as a word until the eighteenth century.  Before the seventeenth century, the word “nostalgia” did not even exist, but through well-documented accounts throughout the book, one can read the painful emotions of longing and sadness associated with the term as we know it today.  As one migrant, Enos Christman, described in a letter to his fiancée written in 1849 as he traveled from Pennsylvania to California:

My feeling and emotions on leaving my friends and my native land can better be imagined than described. I left all that is near and dear and turned my face toward a strange land, expecting to be absent two or three years hoping in that time to realize a fortune… Often memory carries me back… and were I of a desponding temperament I should wish myself back again… (63).

Though he had no word for it, what he was experiencing was homesickness.  As the perceptions of rugged individualism, ambition, and enterprise increased, so did the accounts of homesickness.  These declarations became so widespread that doctors began to take note of it as a serious medical condition plaguing soldiers and civilians though they were uncertain as to how to regard and treat it. Some were compassionate while others viewed it as a sign of moral weakness particularly contemptible in men.  

Home Again
Dominique Fabronius, after a painting by Trevor McClurg
Printed by W. Endicott & Co.
New York, New York; about 1866
Lithograph
Library of Congress

By the time large waves of immigrants came to the U.S., homesickness was a concept largely recognized as part of the travails experienced in immigration. Matt notes that “between 1871 and 1920, 20 million immigrants journeyed to America” (141). The inventions of the steamship and the international railroads along with poor economic opportunities in home countries hastened the increase in new arrivals. According to Matt’s research, many expected to return.  Some did, but for others returning was not an option if it meant returning in shame or if they simply could not afford the return fare. Despite harsh labor conditions, many immigrants thrived in America starting businesses of their own, and as Matt notes, starting families of their own which helped to overcome their longing and establish America as a home (151).

But as the modern industrial economy developed and technology has enabled frequent, cheaper, and faster communication among families, Matt finds that to speak of homesickness has become taboo, even disgraceful, going against the grain of perceived advancement. Those who remain at home are thought to lack drive, curiosity, and an entrepreneurial spirit. Excessive coddling and helicopter parenting are discouraged. All this to say, that despite the advances in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, homesickness cannot be stamped out, easily eradicated. As Matt writes “born of mobility and modernity, this sense of not quite being a native of anywhere was to be increasingly the norm for Americans, both immigrants and native-born” (175). The grass is always greener somewhere else. In fact, from the perspectives offered in this book, homesickness is a part of the American identity, a human experience uniquely tying us to each other from those who recently arrived to those who arrived 200 years ago.

               

Reading this book, one is impressed by the sheer amount of documentation that suggests how far we have come and continue to travel as a nation to feel at home. Homesickness as a concept and emotion doggedly persists, and as it does, it connects us to our distant past and present, and in that way, gives Americans a sense of common home not in spite of, but precisely because we are a nation of immigrants.

Additional Resources:

• Start Immigrant Stories with Yourself: If you want to appreciate what our new generations of immigrants will contribute to our nation, consider doing a check of your own family “roots.”  This activity can enrich classroom and dinner table conversations about immigrants and immigration while deepening understanding and context. 

• Familiarize Yourself with Immigrant Stories Past and Present:  Our book reviews cover a range of geographic, historic, and ethnic immigration stories to the U.S. for all ages. Before you buy for yourself or your classroom, consider browsing a few of our favorites including The Arrival, Enrique’s Journey, Green Card Stories and Americanah.  We welcome reviews written by teacher and students.  Email us at teacher@immcouncil.org for submission details.

We offer free lesson plans, resources, book/film reviews, and grants to #teachimmigration. Stay connected! Follow us on twitter @ThnkImmigration and our blog Immigration In and Out of the Classroom.

“Unified Worldwide” Through Poetry and Hip-Hop

-- contributed by Justin Schell

 

For this piece celebrating the contributions of immigrants, specifically our refugee population, we asked Justin Schell, director and producer of the independent film “We Rock Long Distance” which chronicles three popular Minnesota immigrant musicians’ artistic and geographical journeys, to share the fascinating story of Tou SaiKo Lee, a musician and Hmong refugee, with us.

Tou SaiKo Lee came to the United States as one of thousands of Hmong refugees who fled the aftermath of the Vietnam War in the 1970s. After fighting for the CIA in Laos as part of the Secret Army, Hmong families crossed the Mekong River (with mothers often holding their children just above the surface as they swam across the dangerous waters) to refugee camps across the border in Thailand. From the refugee camps, these families spread out in a global diaspora: Australia, France, French Guiana, Germany, and the United States. There, they made homes in places like Fresno, Sacramento, Milwaukee, and, perhaps more than any other place, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Estimates of the Hmong living in St. Paul are above 60,000, making them the largest urban Hmong population in the world.

One of these families that came to St. Paul included Tou SaiKo Lee, who was born in a Thai refugee camp before coming to Providence and, eventually, to Minnesota. Along with his brother Vong Lee, he started one of the first Hmong hip-hop groups, Delicious Venom. He’s collaborated with Hmong artists around the country and the world, addressing issues such as police brutality, gang violence, women’s rights, and much more. To watch a video of Tou SaiKo Lee and his brother Vong performing at the WRLD premiere, please click here.

Yet perhaps Tou’s most important collaboration is with his own grandmother, Youa Chang. His grandmother, or “G-Dog” as she’s sometimes known, grew up chanting kwv txhiaj, a complex Hmong poetic practice many generations old but one that has at its core an incorporation of not only much older dialects and events, but also improvised passages built on the everyday life of the practitioner as well. In one of his grandmother’s poems, a stanza speaks of life under the Chinese, something her own grandparents experienced. The final stanza, however, speaks of the necessity of voting in America. More than 300 years of history span these stanzas, as well as multiple languages and dialects.

Tou sees in this art form a forbearer to his own spoken word and hip-hop. “My grandmother’s an MC of her generation,” he says in my film We Rock Long Distance.

Tou’s relationship with his grandmother was one of the first things that attracted me to his story, along with that of the other two artists in We Rock Long Distance: Manifest, originally from Ghana, and Maria Isa, a “Sota Rican” (Minnesota Puerto Rican) who was born on the West Side of St. Paul, but traces her roots back through the Puerto Rican diaspora of New York’s Lower East Side back to the island itself. My film intertwines each of these three artists’ lives and music through generation and geography, connecting to families, friends, and artists in Minnesota, where they “originally” came from, and many points in between.

Tou often shares the stage with his grandmother, her doing her kwv txhiaj, Tou doing his spoken word and hip-hop. To watch an inspiring video of them on stage together, please click here. This connection allowed for greater understanding for both of them: Tou better understood the immense talents that Hmong elders like his grandmother possess, while his grandmother gained a greater understanding of her grandson’s own poetic practice.

Still, language remains a barrier between them, especially Tou’s attempts to learn kwv txhiaj. The art form is often thought to be an endangered one, with the few younger practitioners only memorizing already-existing poems, rather than creating new ones. Even memorizing these poems, however, is extremely difficult, as Tou found out when he attempted to learn a poem by his Aunt Joua (his grandmother’s daughter), who lives in northern Thailand. Tou and I spent a great deal of time with his aunt while we were there shooting the film, and she performed a number of poems for us, many on the topic of Hmong rights in Thailand. For his aunt, this was a practice learned as if by osmosis, one she grew up doing as a teenager, along with many others in her village.

For Tou, his own poetry was created in the very different context of artists like Tupac and Biggie, and until our trip to Thailand, he hadn’t written a hip-hop song in the Hmong language. That changed with Ntiaj Teb Koom Tes, or “Unified Worldwide.” Tou wrote the song with his cousins Pao and Pha, and got further advice for his own verse from his aunt. In the verse, Tou speaks about his desire to greater connect

They say that we Hmong don't know how to love.

Keep killing, fighting, arguing, beating,

Must let go of hate from long ago

Right now reaching out for each other with voices of joy.

At the end of the trip, Tou performed “Ntiaj Teb Koom Tes” for his family in Thailand, and the performance ended with another kwv txhaij from his Aunt Joua. In the film, this is the piece of poetry that sends him on his journey back to Minnesota. However, his body of work continues to connect the many parts—and generations—of the Hmong diaspora through music and poetry.

Justin Schell is a digital humanities specialist at the University of Minnesota.

Additional Resources:

• Listen to and view clips from the film “We Rock Long Distance” – Music is a wonderful way to build community in the classroom and to explore immigrant heritage. Have students listen to some of the film clips found on the website and explore the contributions immigrants have made to music in the U.S. Some questions you might ask students include: What kind of music do you listen to? What kind of music do your parent(s) or family members listen to? What are its cultural roots? How is music connected to time and place? These questions are great opener to a close read of a poem of the immigrant experience.
  
  

• Read engaging books about the refugee experience – Some title we recommend include Living as a Refugee in America: Mohammed's Story, Outcasts United, What is the What: The Diary of Valentino Achak Deng. To learn more about the process of becoming a refugee as well as data on the U.S. refugee population, please read the American Immigration Council’s Refugees: A Fact Sheet.

We offer free lesson plans, resources, book/film reviews, and grants to #teachimmigration. Stay connected! Follow us on twitter @ThnkImmigration