The Dreams of My Mother

Onyeka Obi loves her name. It means “who is greater than God” in her mother’s native language of Igbo, one of nine major languages spoken in Nigeria.

Born in Southern California, Obi is proud of her Nigerian name, but it also makes her anxious when she has to introduce herself. Sometimes, she said, she feels as though people are looking down on her.

“People are condescending towards it sometimes,” she said, “but it makes me feel a connection to something I’ve lost because I wasn’t born in Nigeria; I was born in America.”

Obi honors her ancestry, and like many second-generation immigrant daughters, understands her mother’s sacrifices and her own aspirations.

“My mother had to scrape by,” Obi said, and she tried to instill a sense of perseverance in her daughter.

“Failure is not an option,” Mabel Obi said. For her, coming to America is a tremendous opportunity to live in “the greatest country in the world.”

But getting used to America is not easy. A second-generation daughter’s search for identity is often confusing, especially when so many of her peers don’t share their experiences, some experts say.

“A lot of children feel ashamed of where they come from; they want to be a part of the 'big pie,' they want to be American,” said Ana Nogales, a psychologist and founder of Casa de La Familia, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that provides culturally sensitive counseling. “They were born here, and don’t know anything about [their parents’] countries.”

On top of the struggle to identify and connect with their native country, America isn’t always fair in its reception of immigrants, especially women, according to a recent study conducted by Arizona State University professor Cecilia Menjivar and researcher Olivia Salcido.

“Immigration law, which on its face appears gender neutral, actually contains gender biases that create barriers for many women trying to gain legalization within the current immigration system,” the report said.

This has a lot to do with the common view of women as “dependent on men,” said Nogales. “A lot of immigrant women were brought up to be dependent on others, because of their own countries where there aren't the same opportunities for women.”

This cultural belief not only affects women’s upbringing, but their access to different types of immigration visas when coming to the United States.

“Immigrant women are often presumed to be 'dependents' while men are looked at as the primary breadwinners, which results in women and men having different experiences when they go through the legalization process,” according to the Arizona State University report.

Those differences in experiences extend to educational attainment.

“For every country of origin, we see a difference, with men being more likely to have graduated from college than women among the immigrant population,” said Hans Johnson, director of the Public Policy Institute of California’s Higher Education Center (PPIC). He attributed this phenomenon to a lack of educational opportunities, tradition and gender relations in their country of origin.

Gender bias aside, the number of immigrant families in the United States is only expected to grow.

As of 2012, second-generation Americans made up 11.5 percent of the population, and that percentage is expected to rise to 18.4 percent by 2050, according to Pew Research Center projections. Children of immigrant families nationwide represent the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. child population, according to the Child Trends databank, and in California the proportion of foreign-born residents is the highest in the country, according to data collected by Kidsdata.org.

Sara Suprasta said she was kept in the dark about her family’s immigration status. “My mother kept immigration very secretive towards me. I don't know if she was embarrassed about it… but she just wanted us to continue our lives as if she was a citizen here.”

Now 21, Suprasta said she sees why her mother made that choice.

“I guess my mother didn’t want to put that fear upon me, knowing my parents were illegal. She kept it very vague.”

Onyeka Obi said she couldn’t figure which box to check on the census. Her biggest challenge throughout school was reconciling her “Nigerian-ness, her American-ness and her Black-ness.” She felt like an outcast because her classmates did not understand or relate to her Nigerian background.

Pew Research surveys of Hispanics and Asian-Americans—the groups that comprise the bulk of the modern immigration wave in California and in the country overall—find that roughly 6 in 10 second-generation adults consider themselves to be a “typical American,” about double the share of immigrants who say the same.

Still, most who are in the second generation also have a strong sense of identity with their ancestral roots. A majority, the report said, identify themselves most often by their family’s country of origin (i.e., Mexican, Chinese-American) or by a pan-ethnic or racial label (i.e., Hispanic or Asian-American).

Some 37 percent of second-generation Hispanics and 27 percent of second-generation Asian-Americans said they most often describe themselves simply as “American,” according to the Pew survey.

“I’m the first generation [in my family] to identify as Chicana,” said Brenda Montaño, whose parents were born in the town of San Jacinto in Jalisco, Mexico.

“I found myself in what a lot of Chicana scholars call 'The Borderlands': being of Mexican descent but growing up in the United States. As I began to form my own political identity, I started to find more history about how this land was Mexico before, then it became the U.S., but before all that it was always indigenous,” Montaño said.

“To be Chicana means to hold that indigenous identity close to my heart, and acknowledging these elements of being of Mexico and the United States,” Montaño said.

Onyeka Obi said she sees herself similarly, as a fusion of identities.

“In a lot of ways I do consider myself African-American,” Obi said. “But I still maintain that Nigerian identity. The intersection of those identities is what makes me unique.”

She said she found validation and understanding of her identity through her studies.

“In my senior year, we read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and that book really affected me a lot,” Obi said. “That village that was written about is where my dad is from.”

Having the place where her family came from reflected in her coursework helped her feel a deep connection between her identity and her education, which she said is a big part of who she is.

Education is often the clearest path to success for second-generation daughters, but can be influenced by the economic needs of a family, researchers have found.

“If [the mother] had the ambition to study but had to work, she might have the ambition for her child to study and not work. If she was starving and didn't have a penny for anything, she might have the ambition that her children will grow up and contribute to the family,” said Nogales, the psychologist.

Statistically, the push to succeed academically occurs most often in East Asian families, according to a 2011 study by sociology professors Nancy Foner and Joanna Dreby at Hunter College.

Lisa Emery and her mother Yong Emery, who immigrated to the United States from Korea in the early 1980s, know this dynamic well.

“I decided I have to work hard for them,” Yong Emery said of her kids. “My goal was for both of my children to graduate from college.” She got her wish when her daughter Lisa graduated from California State University Long Beach in 2016.

“I’m so proud of her already. But I wish she would get her master’s degree and then get a professional job,” she said.

Lisa Emery said she wants the same.

“I do want to go to grad school and fulfill that dream for her… At the end of the day, I don’t think it’s a burden to fulfill the dreams of my mom and go to school and get a nice job…It would be nice to live that life for her.” Lisa Emery said that this sentiment is important to many kids of immigrants. “We want to do this, we have to do this, because our parents gave up a lot for us.”

Shilpa Bhongir has also worked to fulfill her mother Lakshmi’s educational aspirations, even when their goals don’t align, she said.

“I had to have a conversation with [my mother] and say I want to work for a few years before I get my master’s…because she had gotten her master’s right after she did her bachelor’s, it was almost a given that I would do that as well,” Bhongir said.

Lakshmi Bhongir’s own cultural norms influenced the importance she placed on education in her family.

“I see youngsters working a lot here, where in India, they've finished their master’s and then they look for a job,” Lakshmi Bhongir said.

Even today when Lakshmi Bhongir talks about her daughter Shilpa’s education, it is clear how proud her daughter’s achievements have made her.

“Shilpa grew up, she did very well, especially in English, writing and reading and writing, especially with her professor in high school. She was well recommended, and she got good grades,” she said.

Nogales noted an opposing attitude about education that she sees especially in the Latino immigrant community.

“Some parents expect their children to participate at home, to work….Some parents even ask their kids to drop out of high school and work instead, because they need the support,” Nogales said.

Education, she said, especially for daughters, is often seen as something to do only if you absolutely must.

Whether mothers encourage their daughters or not, their own educational background has an effect on their child’s education.

“In the United States the single factor that is the strongest predictor of whether a child goes to college or not is whether their parents went to college. And that’s true whether you’re an immigrant or not,” said Roberto Suro, a professor at the University of Southern California and director of the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute.

According to the PPIC, among first-generation immigrants age 57 to 66, 36 percent have not graduated from high school, compared to only 8 percent of second-generation descendants in their children’s age cohort.

Not only does education provide second-generation daughters with the skills and credentials necessary to pursue higher-earning professional careers, it often helps them to learn more about who they are and who they want to be.

Breena Nuñez, the first in her family to attend a four-year college, said that the culture at San Francisco State University helped her to express herself through her art.

“There’s some need to connect to my people, especially to young folks of color, to young Afro-Latinos, since our narratives aren’t always in comic book form,” she said.

Because of her education, Nuñez, whose mother is from Guatemala and whose father is from El Salvador, has been able to find support among her peers.

“I still continue to build community with people that graduated with me,” she said.

Building community seems to be an integral part of the process of self-understanding for second-generation daughters.

Obi said that joining the Black student union at her school helped her to understand her background and to feel like she belongs.

“Now I feel I am included in the African-American narrative,” Obi said. “I feel connected. I identify so much with the struggle and with a lot of the feelings that African-Americans get.”

“Daughters born here in the U.S. have other role models outside the family. They build their ideas not only from what they learn at home, but from what they learn at school, from friends, from the parents of friends, from teachers, from the media, from music, from movies, from whatever else is around,” Nogales said.

Not only are many daughters of immigrants surviving, they are excelling.

“The fact that as many succeed as they do, is really a measure of success,” said Suro, the USC professor. “The fact that [their parents]... can raise children who get bachelor’s degrees is quite extraordinary.”

Obi, who is preparing to continue her education in the fall at Williams College, thanked her mother Mabel for the sacrifices she made to get her where she is today.

“Everything that you sacrificed for your children has been amazing,” she told her mother. “ I love you so much for everything that you have done for us.”