Lixl. Carolinian Immigrant Memories

MEMORIES OF CAROLINIAN IMMIGRANTS:

HISTORICAL AND LITERARY PERSPECTIVES

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Department of German, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese Studies

Web exhibit supported by a grant from the

The web exhibit forms part of the Carolinian Immigrant Memory Project (CIMP) and presents research in more than two dozen archives, leading to the collection of more than 80 autobiographical accounts written by immigrants since 1700. The broad focus of the exhibit aims at disseminating historical texts, photographs, audio-visual records, and autobiographical accounts of immigrants in the Carolinas . The project highlights historical and literary perspectives, which include the retrieval, preservation, digitization, and dissemination of documentary materials that illuminate North and South Carolina’s immigrant legacy.

This online exhibit is based on research for a book anthology entitled Memories of Carolinian Immigrants: Autobiographies, Diaries and Letters from Colonial Times to the Present. Lanham: University Press of America, 2008.

Memories of Carolinian Immigrants

Click on the illustrations and the blue links to see memoirs, archive texts, and cultural history in the table below

Memories of Carolinian

Immigrants:

A Web Anthology

from

Africa

from the

Americas

from

Asia

from

Europe

Colonial Times

1663-1776

Illustrations

Olaudah Equiano. Slave Immigration. An African Account (Charleston, SC.)

John Rutherfurd. The Importance of the Carolina Colonies to Great Britain (Wilmington, NC)

No texts from Asian immigrants

Immigrant History of Greensboro. Center for New North Carolinians (Raleigh Bailey. Greensboro: Gateway to the World, ppt file) and North Carolina History (State Library)

Lord Proprietors. Colonial Land Grant Issued by King Charles II (Carolina Charter)

Christopher Graffenried. The Founding of New Bern (NC)

August Spangenberg. The Moravian Bishop’s Diaries (Winston-Salem, NC)

Janet Schaw. Journal of a Lady of Quality (Scotland to NC)

Revolutionary to

to Civil War Times

1776-1865

Illustrations

Omar ibn Said. Autobiography of a Slave in North Carolina (Wilmington, NC)

Loreta Velazquez. Civil War Exploits and Travels (Throughout the Carolinas and Virginia).

Chang and Eng Bunker. Family Letters from the Siamese Twins (Wilkes County, NC).

Christiana Teulon. Petition of a Revolutionary War Widow. (Abbeville, SC). In S.C. Historical Society Magazine 1985/1

Jewish Immigrants. Memories. (Charleston, SC)

Era of

the New South

1865-1938

Illustrations

Nicholas Said. Memories of an African Muslim (Charleston, SC)

Immigration to the United States, by Region of Origin, 1821 to 2000 (Millions, by decade)

Cartoon against Chinese immigrants in 1880

Video Trailer. Down Home. Jewish Memories. (NC)

Waldensian Trail of Faith. French-Italian Immigrants (Valdese, NC)

Constantin Geraris. Life of a Greek Restaurateur (Elizabeth City, NC)

George Mehales. Greek Dixie Lunch Memories (Spartanburg, SC)

Modern Times

1938-2005

Illustrations & Audio

Kwame Dawes. A Jamaican Father Remembers (Columbia, SC)

Seira Reyes. An Artist’s Journey

Crossroads. Voices and Current Issues of New Carolinians (NCHC)

Kanwal Rahman. Southern Oral History Project (Chapel Hill, NC)

Audio Files of Asian Immigrants. Embracing the American Ethic of Independence. (Chapel Hill, NC)

Hidden Voices. Speaking Without Tongues. Women’s Accounts (Chapel Hill, NC).

Max Heller. Memories of a Greenville Mayor (Greenville, SC)

To see an online-interview with Max Heller, click here (4 minutes)

2005-Present

Testimonials

My Life before and after Coming to the Carolinas

Illustrations, Audio & Multimedia

The Story of African Immigration. Library of Congress online exhibit

Jaime Farrugia. My Immigrant Story (Greensboro, NC). See Text III below.

Latino Initiative. A series of National Public Radio

Xiolan Zhuang. My Life before and after Coming to the Carolinas (Seagrove, NC). See Text II below.

Website of Asian-American Professionals in NC

Gisela Hood. Cold-War Bride (Oak Ridge, NC). See Text I below.

The Immigration Debate. Audio and Multimedia files from National Public Radio

MEMORIES OF CAROLINIAN IMMIGRANTS:

HISTORICAL AND LITERARY PERSPECTIVES

Essay Collection: “My Life before and after Coming to the Carolinas”

Text I. Gisela Hood. Cold War Bride (2005)

North Carolina’s foreign-born population increased by more than 40 percent between 2000 and 2008. During that period North Carolina gained over 160,000 immigrants, bringing the total number of foreign-born residents in the state to more than 600,000. See also Immigrant Demographics and Ethnic Groups in North Carolina. Center for New North Carolinians, UNCG.

The author of this essay immigrated during the height of the Cold War as the bride of an American soldier stationed in West-Germany. Born and raised near Stuttgart, Gisela Hood witnessed her country’s reconstruction after World War II, and the deep impact American democracy and popular culture exerted on her young generation which embraced the 1960s as a watershed experience. Americans represented a free-spirited nation with a strong sense of confidence and independence that many baby boomers in Western Europe admired. This stood in stark contrast to the more conformist and cautious cultural attitudes that prevailed at home. Gisela’s decision to join her husband Dan in South Carolina in 1976 reflects an adventurous and pro-active spirit similar to that of millions of European immigrants who had come to these shores before. Gisela Hood established herself as an accomplished foreign language educator teaching German and focusing on internationalizing the Guilford County School System. She wrote down her memories in 2005 as part of an autobiographical essay project at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro entitled “My Life before and after Coming to the Carolinas.”

As I attempt to summarize the time period from July 1976 to July 28, 2005, the day I started to write about my so-called immigrant experience, all I can think of is where has the time gone? 29 years ago I came as a young bride to the Deep South, to be exact, to Charleston, South Carolina. Never having been there before, it quickly became a reality as to where I was. When the door of the airplane opened, a moist and hot and humid air welcomed us despite it being midnight. The climate should not be the only culture shock that I would encounter in the New World.

I would call myself a “Cold War Bride” who followed her American husband who was stationed in Germany to the United States. Dan was serving his country as a helicopter pilot in the Army. Prior to meeting him in 1971, I had had the opportunity to travel to the United States twice. The first time was when I worked as an au-pair for a family in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The second time I was an exchange student at Albion College in Michigan on a scholarship for a semester from my university in Germany where I studied to become a teacher. America had fascinated me since I started to learn English at the age of ten. Our textbooks contained great stories and information about the US and I knew that I wanted to travel there, but live?

Dan was admitted to Graduate School in Clemson and we lived there in our first apartment until 1980. Clemson to me was in the middle of nowhere, no stores, no cafes, but a lot of kudzu. What love can do to you! Following your man to the jungle, or at least I thought of it as the jungle. I tried to get a job as a teacher again, but the state of South Carolina did not recognize my German teaching certificate. I ended up going to Graduate School at Clemson too, to make up for classes which had not been offered at my German University.

To make ends meet I worked in the university’s library while going to school. We lived at poverty level and we ate lots of hot dogs. To have more income I took a job in 1978 as a translator for Michelin Tires since I spoke also French. 1980 brought the birth of our first child, Daniel. A move followed to Simpsonville, South Carolina, and we were on our way to the American dream of buying our first home there. It was big enough and since we did not have enough furniture we made do with “box furniture” by using old boxes over which I draped clothes. I returned to work since Michelin offered me the opportunity to work in Greenville, South Carolina. for MARC, Michelin’s Research and Development Division as the Manager of Production. There I was, a German girl, working for a French company in the United States.

1983 brought change. Dan, who had worked as an engineer for a company called Sirrine, took a job in Greensboro, North Carolina, with Paul N. Howard Construction Company. This left me as a lone mother with a three year old during the week and Dan coming home on weekends. In July we learned that I was pregnant with our second child. I was sick constantly and really fortunate that Dan came home every weekend though he found me lying on the sofa being sick all the time. The plan was to sell the house in Simpsonville and Dan was looking for a residence in Greensboro. For me it meant many trips to my nurse and midwife in High Point for doctor’s appointments.

We finally moved to Greensboro on February 28, 1984, Daniel’s fourth birthday. We rented a furnished apartment while our house in Oak Ridge was under construction. In June we moved into our brand new house out in the woods. At that point Dan was traveling a great deal on business and there I was with two small children in the middle of the woods. No street lights. When it was dark, it was dark. I decided to stay at home and raise our two children and became actively involved in the community. I became a member of the Oak Ridge Elementary PTA, chairing various committees and also became the PTA president. From 1993 to 1994 I served Guilford County Schools as their last PTA Council President and was involved in the merger of the Greensboro City system and the High Point System. I conducted language classes for children in Oak Ridge and Summerfield. Also, I established myself as an interpreter and helped Dan with the firm he established, HICAPS, Inc. In 1994 I started to teach at Northwest Guilford High School and became the first teacher to use the North Carolina Information Highway to be connected with High Schools throughout Guilford County as well as with counties outside to teach German language classes. As of now, in a few days, I will start a new school year and teach young people the German language and culture. Our children are grown. Daniel graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2002 and is currently stationed in Schweinfurt, Germany, after a year of deployment in Iraq. Karoline, our daughter, is excited to start her Firstie year as the senior year is called at West Point Military Academy. She will follow her brother in the Long Gray Line and serve this country, also my homeland now, as an Environmental Engineer when she graduates in May 2006. I do not see any “box furniture” in our house in Oak Ridge and we were fortunate to build a beach home on Figure 8 Island where we love to spend our weekends now.

So, here it is, a story with a happy end, for a girl from Germany, the American dream really has come true. The time to show my love for my adopted country, the land with unlimited possibilities, came in January 2006 when I became a United States Citizen. Receiving the American citizenship, after 30 years of being here as an alien with the infamous green card, completed my journey. After all, I have now lived here longer than I had lived in my native country of Germany.

Source: Hood, Gisela. “My Life before and after Coming to the Carolinas.” Carolinian Immigrant Memory Project Collection, 2005. Department of German, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese Studies. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

MEMORIES OF CAROLINIAN IMMIGRANTS: HISTORICAL AND LITERARY PERSPECTIVES

Photographs, Audio Files, Podcasts, and Databases 2000-Present

· Photos & audio files: Since 2005, the Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF) organization in Durham, NC, produced documentaries on immigrant laborers in the region. Summer interns and fellows in a program entitled Into the Fields create web-documentaries featuring audio-stories, pictorials, and testimonials of the farm workers they met. Online SAF audios, photos, and text files exhibit a unique spectrum of Carolinian immigrant memories: 2007 Landscape of Stories | 2006 Voices from the Fields | 2005 Reflections

· audio files: Oral History Interviews with South Asian Immigrants in the Triad Area in North Carolina. Complete Audio File (MP3 format, ca. 81.0 MB)

· Podcast: New North Carolinian Voices. Episode 1 – Citizenship This episode explores the topic of citizenship and its significance to immigrants in North Carolina. The episode presents personal stories and testimonies of newcomers reflecting on the benefits and struggles involved in obtaining their citizenship papers. Download (mp3). Source: Center for New North Carolinians, University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Submitted 2008.

· Database: North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories provide a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada (by subscription)

Text II. Xiaolan Zhuang. My Life before and after Coming to the Carolinas (2006)

The author of this autobiographical essay was born in 1970 in the Zhejiang province of the People’s Republic of China. In 2001, while she was a graduate student at Zhejiang Normal University in Jinhua, Xiaolan participated in a study-abroad program at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, Great Britain, where she trained for a career teaching English back home in China. Before she completed her doctoral program, however, Xiaolan met and married her husband, Robert Saxby, who proposed that they move from England to the United States, where he had citizenship status. When Xiaolan applied for an immigrant visa, she encountered major difficulties submitting the necessary documents and papers. After filing several applications, Xiaolan managed to receive a marriage visa that permitted her to enter the United States as a legal immigrant. In 2005, the couple settled in Seagrove, North Carolina, where Robert worked as a potter with fine art ceramics, and Xiaolan advanced her career as a foreign language educator. She taught Chinese Studies courses at Randolph Community College in Asheboro, North Carolina.

Born in a Village and Working in the City

In my wildest dreams, I would never ever have thought that I would marry an American and live in Seagrove North Carolina. In fact, before I came here in April 2005, I didn’t even know where North Carolina was, let alone Seagrove. I came from a small village in China which is about the same size as Seagrove. My village is called Huangnitang which translates in English as “Yellow Mud Pond.” The differences are that all the houses are built together in one little area and the fields are divided into several pieces, one owned by each farmer going out from the village. In Seagrove everyone seems to live on a piece of land with the fields around them. Due to China’s history, people use every piece of land to grow crops. They grow rice, wheat, cotton, vegetables and fruits, etc. All of the work is done by hand, which I hated to do.

In China about 20 years ago you were either registered as a “farmer” in the countryside or as a “worker” in the city. It is changing today, you can work and live in the city but it is still difficult to register in the big city without education. If you are born of a farmer, the only way to become a “worker” is by education. It was my destiny to be a farmer but unlike my brother and sisters, I was a scholar at school. This enabled me to go to different schools and to the university. So my registration became “worker” and I was allowed to live in the city. After graduation I was assigned to be a teacher in one of the city schools. I loved my students and I enjoyed my teaching job. I was devoted to my teaching career for the rest of my life, if I hadn’t been offered a place to study for my Masters degree at the University of Central Lancashire in England.

The Hardest Time of My Life in England

I love England, and I miss England. It was the first time I had been far away from my parents. I had both the pressures of studying to get my degree and making money for my living expense. I was the first and the only Chinese person in the Education and Social Sciences Department of the University. They have very high demands of their students in the English language program. Though my English has been good in China, now I have to take my masters degree in English, which is like an American studying in China using the Chinese language. Listening to the tutor in the class, reading books in the library and writing essays in the room I lived in were much harder for me than for my classmates who were natives. I had to spend most of my time studying. My learning curve was very quick and I believe “if there’s a will, there’s a way.” I received my MA degree in Education with merits, and was top of the class and offered a place for a PhD.

As I mentioned before, I came from a small village in the Zhejiang province in China. There was little or no money for my parents to provide me. Everything in England was much more expensive than in China. I had to get part time jobs. I didn’t want to waste time waiting for the better job opportunity. Whatever job was available, I took it, whether I liked it or I didn’t like it, so I could make some money to live on. I had worked 20 hours a day during the Christmas holidays and I traveled everywhere by bicycle even though it was cold and rainy to save money on bus fare.

Every time I spoke to my parents on the phone, I couldn’t help crying. The only hope was that I could go back to China as soon as I finished my studies which were the only thing that kept me going. It had been the hardest time of my life. By chance I met my future husband on a boat ferry to France. While I was going to Amsterdam with international students, Robert was going to France shopping for Christmas, which was the beginning of my journey of coming to America.

The Visa Journey to the USA

“Xiaolan, I love you. I would like you to come to America to live with me,” Robert said, after we met each other several times. “I will prepare a visa for you to visit me during the Easter holiday of 2002, to see whether you like it or not. I will send applications to the American Embassy. You will get the visa in two weeks.” The refusal letter came one week after sending out the visa applications. I was fine with this news as I had to finish my studying anyways.

After graduation, I was offered a place in a PhD program and got a three-year extension on my student visa in England. I had enough documents to show that I would come back to England for my PhD program after visiting the United States. But the same happened again as it did the first time. I was so disappointed to hear that. We knew each other well enough to get married but we didn’t want to do it in England as we didn’t have anything there.

Well, we went to register at the city hall office with three Chinese students as witnesses to get married in January of 2004. I tried to get a tourist visa to go on our honeymoon to America. After one week of waiting my husband went back to the USA. So I interviewed for my third visa application. The visa officer was kind enough to give me a suggestion that I should apply for an immigration visa. However, I was denied again and I was totally destroyed by that news. Crying couldn’t help anything, life had to be continued. E-mail once a day or one call a day still can’t stop the misery of missing each other.

We were separated after marriage for two months and one year before I was issued a “K3 Marriage Visa” in March 2005. I was so scared to go to my forth interview, as it was held in the same place that denied it to me three times before. Thank goodness, this time they issued the visa to me. My husband and I were so happy and excited that we shared our happiness and success for one hour on the phone after getting the visa.

My New Life in Seagrove, North Carolina

After I got off the plane at the Atlanta airport, everything was beyond my imagination except our love for each other. I was happy to be with my husband. But everything has changed overnight. It seemed that I lost everything that I had in China and England. No families and friends, no career, especially. I lost my students who were part of my life. I nearly spent 24 hours, 7 days a week with them. We started doing morning exercises at 6 am and spent time together until the evening when all went to bed and I made sure everybody went to sleep.

Certain things are so difficult that they make me dependant on my husband all the time. I couldn’t get a driver’s license for almost one year for different reasons. It seems I have no legs as public transportation is so limited: no buses, trains or even taxi services, which is so different from England and China. In China you can take buses, trains and taxies to go anywhere you want. The same is true for England. When I left England, I took a train to the airport. I was the only one on the train which was a nice surprise to me. It was good transportation.

I have some money in the bank, as I have no other credit. I can’t get a credit card. In my traditional way of thinking, I don’t need one anyway as I don’t want to overspend. I realize, however, that if you live in America you have to have a credit card, a motorcar and a mobile phone.

We live in the country, and my husband has a pet dog. Sometimes we have arguments over it. In China dogs are raised for the table and for food consumption. When I went to the grocery store for the first time to look for the dog food, I didn’t know that there was such a thing as “dog food” for dogs. It was just last week when I was reading a Sunday newspaper with a department store advertisement to sell one of those doggie steps so your dog will find an easy way to get on top of the bed or the couch. If I told anybody in China about those things, they would think I am crazy.

My husband and I overcame all these problems that we encountered. I have lived here for more than one year. I am a permanent resident of the United States of America. I have everything that I need: a driver’s license, a motorcar, a credit card and a job. The most exciting thing is that I went back to my teaching career at Randolph Community College teaching Chinese language courses. Though it was the first time for me to teach Chinese — I taught English in China — my class was so well received. I now teach four classes each semester.

The Bright Future of American Life

Love of my husband and the responsibility for the family made me come and live in North Carolina. It is very easy to make a life here as long as you work. But I need my own career, and that is teaching. I believe that the Chinese language will become more and more popular with the development of China and I will be very glad to develop the Chinese language program here.

Source: Zhuang, Xiaolan. “My Life before and after Coming to the Carolinas.” Carolinian Immigrant Memory Project Collection, 2006. Department of German, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese Studies. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Text III. Jaime Farrugia. My Immigrant Story (2008)

Mr. Farrugia was born in 1961 into a middle-class family in Mexico City. Confounded by traditional family expectations and career options, Jaime decided to explore more adventurous opportunities abroad that would lead him far beyond the place of his upbringing. In his early twenties, he decided to travel to the United States to find a community college where he could attend as a foreign student majoring in computer science. A close friend of his father helped the young Hispanic enroll in a program in the State of Ohio, where Jaime completed an associate’s degree in data processing. What was planned as a two-year excursion, however, turned into a life-changing experience when Jaime met, and fell in love with his future wife Daccari. They got married in 1983, started a family, and settled down together in Ohio. After a summer trip to the mountains of North Carolina, the couple decided to move to the Greensboro area, where Daccari took a position in a legal office, and Jaime accepted a new job as a computer systems analyst. Their efforts to improve the family’s prospects paid off. The couple purchased a comfortable home to raise their three children Nick, Derek, and Paige. The following story was written by the father in 2008. Jaime Farrugia remembers growing up in the Mexican metropolis, and recounts his intuition and motivation to leave familiar surroundings in order to pursue open-ended ambitions. The narrative reflects the difficult decision to part from parents and relatives, but also the considerable pride and determination to shape one’s own destiny. Jaime’s memories are reminiscent of the circumstances of today’s younger immigrants, who arrive with hopes and dreams not unlike his own.

My story is probably not much unlike those of many others who came to this country seeking a higher education, and then decided to stay. As a young college student in the early 80’s, I was attending Anahuac University in Mexico City as an engineering student. I chose engineering because I really didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do with my life at the time, but I knew I definitely didn’t want to be an accountant like my Dad. My fears proved true as I found my major studies to be supremely boring with the exception of a computer programming course that I took in my freshman year. I became very interested in computers and data processing but at that time there weren’t any career programs in Mexican universities that related specifically to computers. As fate would have it, during a chat with a friend of my father’s, who lived in Ohio, he heard of my interest in computers and offered to assist me in attending college there. And so I did. I left my entire family and friends behind to attend a two-year college to obtain an associate’s degree in data processing.

My English at the time was sufficient to act as a foreign tourist – I had traveled to the U.S. on vacation several times before – but it was a totally different ball of wax when it came to attending college and having to function in society. To better my language skills became an all important project. That wasn’t easy. Other than a handful of Latin Americans with whom I associated, no one else spoke Spanish. But the toughest thing to get used to was the weather. Growing up in Mexico City involved three climate related factors that you had to deal with: the mild heat in April and May, the rainy season in June and July, and the temperate weather during the rest of the year. Well, it was a day of reckoning one week after my arrival in Ohio when the wind chill hit 30 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Needless to say, I was woefully unprepared for that in terms of clothing. I had only seen snow flurries once before in my life! And the burning sensation that you feel when you breathe such cold air was something totally unexpected.

During my first year in Dayton, Ohio, I met my future wife Daccari. We became good friends and my fate was sealed when I fell in love with her. I should have told my parents at that time to get rid of my bed, because I knew that I wasn’t coming back. Between my career, my marriage, and the birth of our first son, there was no going back. I was forging my life here in the U.S. as an active participant in the information technology revolution.

Around 1995, our family traveled through Asheville, North Carolina on the way to our vacation in Florida. We had a great time in the mountains and we promised ourselves to come back one day. After fifteen years of living in Ohio with our two sons and one daughter, my wife and I thought it would be exciting to pursue job opportunities in North Carolina. We did so partly to get away from the miserable Midwestern winters and partly because we had greatly enjoyed our previous visit to the Tar Heel state. Most of the opportunities that I found were located in Charlotte, except for one in Greensboro. I traveled there to interview for the position and really enjoyed the place. Most people assume that because I grew up in Mexico City, one of the biggest metropolis in the world, that I enjoy the hustle and bustle of a big city but it’s actually quite the opposite. In my opinion, Greensboro, or better yet, the Piedmont Triad area offers overall a better quality of life than a bigger city like Charlotte; less traffic and crime, better schools, more affordable housing, etc. Maybe there is not as much to do, but that is all right with me. One can always travel to a big city every once in awhile for that. We have lived here now for ten years, and we like the fact that we are only two hours away from the mountains and three or four hours from the coast.

I have just one last word about immigration. We have all seen the explosion in the count of Latin American immigrants to North Carolina in the last ten years. This has not only impacted the census statistics, but it is also a very palpable influence in our everyday lives. Chances are nowadays that wherever you go in North Carolina, you will see young immigrants hard at work. Behind every single one of them there is a story of struggle, I’m sure, and of pain, leaving their loved ones behind and seeking a better future. Sometimes I think to myself that if my struggles to migrate to this country can be measured on a yardstick, theirs must be measured in miles. Regardless of where one stands on immigration issues, let’s at least offer them our sympathies.

Source: Farrugia, Jaime. “My Immigrant Story.” Carolinian Immigrant Memory Project Collection, 2008. Department of German, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese Studies. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.