Speaking to the first and second generation immigrant kids of Hunter

Walking down the halls of Hunter, you probably see a lot of faces, and science tells us that you make snap judgements about the people behind these face in a tenth of a second. But though a look at a face might only allude to the most superficial details of someone’s character (or maybe just the crazy party they were at last night), behind every face is a story, and behind the faces of the students at Hunter are the culminations of centuries of cultural traditions, and childhoods built upon efforts to live with (or break away from) them.

Joel Perez, for example, grew up the child of two immigrants to the United States, but was always aware of a split cultural identity.

Joel, 20, PoliSci Major

“I’ve always felt like I was kind of different because I was Dominican, though I’ve always been really proud of it. My dad would always tell us ‘You guys are Dominican’ and try to teach us about our history and the Dominican Presidents and why some sucked and why some don’t suck, and it definitely shaped my world and how I viewed myself. I didn’t have this understanding of being American or being Dominican. I just assumed that we were Dominican people living in another country and one day we could go back.”

Joel also said there’s a difference in culture between his Hispanic upbringing and the mainstream American narrative: “Your parents don’t really ever want you to leave the house, they want you to kind of be in their arms and under their protection. I think in American culture it’s sort of seen like ‘OK you’re 18, you’re an adult, you have to grow up, bye,’ whereas in my culture it was more like ‘No no no you don’t know anything, you have to stay with mom and dad.’”

Muneef Halawa was born in Amman, Jordan, and came to America at the age of 26. He said: “We have different customs. I believe in the United States if you turn 18 and you’re still living with your parents you’re looked at as a weirdo or something like that, but it’s common, very common, to be 30 years old and still living with your parents; we don’t look at is so much as you living with your parents, it’s more of a family being together and bonding. No one expects you to move out, it’s just a normal thing.”

“I was very clumsy when I was a kid: I broke my forearms twice. We had a group of bike riders, we were just showing off, you know, in front of the girls. We were teenagers, and I was very good at the stunts, but one stunt went wrong. Twice. So I remember I spent a summer and a winter, full casts.”

Rafaela was born and raised abroad, in Israel, and travelled to the United States when she was 21.

Rafaela, 28, Computer Science

“We all have very serious Israeli names but all go with funny nicknames so my sisters name is Zohar, but we call her Zoey, my brothers name is Benjamin, but we call him Benji, and my full name is Rafaela but everybody calls me Rafa. We all like to eat food and get really mad when we don’t, we go into a state called hangry.”

But not everyone’s childhood narratives were so positive.

Rebecca, 21 , Russian (Concentration in Language and Culture)

“I don’t identify as Russian or Ukrainian because that wasn’t what my parents were allowed to be. Everyone had internal passports in the USSR. Theirs said Jewish. There are people of my generation who do identify as Russian, or Slavic or whatever. But I never really felt that. I’m an Ashkenazi Jew, a child of Soviet Jewish immigrants, an American. Soviet culture was its own thing and definitely prevails, mindset wise. My family is still made up of Soviet Jews. Are you still with me, or very terrified?”

Sarah-Ann, 20, Computer Science

“My parents are from Kerala, India. The culture fosters a deep insecurity and creates emotional avoidance. Plus I’ve been slutshamed since middle school, but at least I grew up with great food? It took me years to work past these things, but the positives are in meeting other Indians and comparing our cultures, since India is so diverse. My friend is from the state next to mine and our cuisine is hella different, our fashion too.”

Emaad Khwaja, president of the MSA

“My parent’s culture is Pakistani in some respects, but I think in an attempt to move ahead (in America) they may have shed some cultural values. If you’ve seen that diagram where culture is represented as kind of like an iceberg, and on top is fashion and on bottom is cultural values, expectations of gender, stuff like that, so the top is kind of nonexistent for my dad, but on the bottom is what he expects of us as children, what he expects of his wife, what he expects us to do at what ages, how hard he expects us to work, those things are still very embedded in him.

“I don’t think I was influenced so much by their culture, I was influenced by their desire to not grow up with their cultural values. People in Pakistan are kind of lazy, the lifestyle there is very sedentary, and they didn’t want me to be like that. They didn’t want me to be someone who would just coast through life and not care, not be active.”

Odysseas, 21, Computer Science

“My parents were Americanized, they probably both speak better English than Greek by now. They spent most of their life here and only grew up in Greece but we do all the Greek traditions here in America. Their parents moved with them so they kinda wanted to pass down what they knew from them to us. When people see me they don’t initially know I’m Greek, but once people get to know me there are definitely different aspects that have influenced who I am.”

Much like the state it resides in, Hunter acts as a cultural melting pot, where everyone you walk past has a story to tell. Next time you talk to one of your fellow Hunterites, stop and ask yourself: “What lies behind the face?”