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| http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/immigration/tour/ |
Each new generation thinks they have the roughest immigrant story ever. Mass murder? Pshaw! That's nothing! My Chinese Mom caught AIDS and died from your hospitals' bad blood transfusions! That's an actual true story by the way: a Asian bookkeeper I worked with years ago didn't want to believe that my family had any difficulties at all, because I'm "white". She kept repeating how I had a "rent controlled" apartment as an example of my so-called "white privilege", which wasn't actually true at all. I found the listing on Craigslist out of sheer economic need, and it was rent-stabilized when I lived there, which is entirely different than inheriting some fixed rate kind of deal.
My people don't get those kinds of breaks handed to them, ever. But, true to her ignorance, she shut down when I tried to talk her through a tiny (and easily accessible) fraction of my actual family roots. I gave her a brief bit about my maternal New York story; a simple-to-follow story about Italian and Irish immigrants that's easily looked up online or at Ellis Island's interactive computer. Just type in "M-E-R-C-A-D-A-N-T-E" liked I did in five seconds, for my great-grandmother's passage to America. She sputtered and stumbled over that, but's typical for a generic office environment filled with strangers. I may be Ivy, but she sure as fuck isn't, except she doesn't know how many levels my people passed on the way up to get there, because she thinks she's had it tough, and she has. We all have. That's how you become an American.
If she couldn't handle poor Italian farmers and the Irish potato famine, she sure as fuck can't handle the Acadian genocide, or the innate racism behind the hunting and mass destruction of Metis folk, which is anyone of European and Native American ancestry (GASP! "Mixed" races getting along peacefully!!), which pretty much covers my father's early American Dutch, English, and French Canadian ancestry. I felt bad for her, but not so bad that I didn't remember that my grandmother told me she cried every day for years walking home from school, because people shouted "Guinea!" in her face as a little girl, or that people spit at my grandfather for being a lowly "Mick", as every door in the city slammed itself shut in their faces, when they had to quit school as children of "The Depression" to work in factories to support their entire family.
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| http://cahiersdufootball.net/blogs/teenage-kicks/tag/no-irish-no-blacks-no-dogs/ |
It was so bad for my grandmother, that she changed her name from "Angelina" to "Ann", pretended to forget all of her native Bari tongue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bari_dialect), and removed her kiddie earrings that marked her a "dago"; my mother never got over the stigma behind baby Italian girls with earrings. And so, she has never pierced her ears. I had to go with my friend's British step-mom to the mall at 15, and get it done myself. Or the fact that my great-grandfather never found work again, after refrigeration closed down his job as an Iceman in the city (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_trade), forcing my brilliant grandmother to quit elementary school, which she also cried over for many years, because all she ever wanted was to be a teacher or nurse. That's how much she loved to learn. She also helped him to collect his route's fares by riding up and the dumbwaiters for their fares, as a little girl. But it worked out. She became the MANAGER at her factory job by 20, or something extraordinary like that. I know, because I've seen the old black and white photo of her all dressed up and standing over one of her employees, who sat in a chair beneath her for their work portrait. I'm not even getting to my grandfather's long ConEd experience, or his tours on Vaudeville to earn a buck or for his Brooklyn family, or my Dad's small-time hustles as a shoe shine boy and pool hall player.
I hope you fucking choke on one more true life story from me this weekend, Cindy, as you read these real words about my researched and verified American Immigrant background. It's not some fucking joke I made up to make you feel bad about yourself, you fucking idiot. You worked against me every single day in that bullshit office, while I worked my ass off overtime (and without pay) to cover all of your fucking asses, because I was the only Designer/Production Artist/Art Director in that fucking company with any real skills to earn us money, so that your fucking family, and your teenage kid's illegitimate kid, could fucking eat, because you're a fucking tourist to me, shithead. Choke on it, and if you don't like our hard times here, or our real life coming-up tales of woe, go the fuck back to Communist China. I'm sure they'll work you hard to kill you off in some forced labor camp, because you're one in a billion to them, and as such, easily expendable. Go fucking choke on it, bitch. That's my fucking Lady Liberty in the harbor.
And a "Happy Mother's Day" to you, as well. Bitch.
| http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2011/06/the-distance-to-the-past.html |
for Ann
