NEWS AND VIEWS: Immigrants' culture shock

NEWS AND VIEWS: Immigrants' culture shock - then and now

by DMZ

On a recent visit to Toronto, I was given a hand-out by my relative's neighbor in the lobby of St. Demetrius Church. It was a set of 8 1\2 by 11 sheets of paper, neatly stapled, which I folded and stuffed in my bag. The giver, pursuing her cause, encouraged me to read the material carefully. My return flight home was delayed, so to pass the time I took the hand-out from my bag and began to look through it. It was a series of neatly clipped newspaper articles, chronologically sorted with names and dates of the publication, reduced at time of copying to fit the page then stapled together to make a set.

I thought of the woman who gave it to me. What a project it must have been for her to gather all the clippings from different publications, arrange them, make notes, then make copies of course at her own expense - financed by a pension check. Remarkable how our senior citizens can still find causes for which to fight.

Some clippings I already had read in Svoboda, the others were new to me since they were from the Canadian press. The whole matter pertained to the writings of new immigrants or visitors from Ukraine who harshly criticized the "old" immigrants. And there were letters to the editor in defense of the "old" immigrants. It seemed like everyone was getting very excited - the whole Ukrainian-Canadian-American scene - over a severe case of culture shock.

One thing sure about cultural shock is that all who come, be it to America or Canada, to various degrees experience it. Ukrainian immigrants are not alone. I remember how we experienced it, just about 50 years ago, when my family and I came to the United States.

First of all we did not like the food. Oh! What my grandmother said about the bread! "Vata (cotton)," she would say, "it is not bread, it's vata!" Dill, parsley root or even beets were nowhere to be found. Who could eat pickles in vinegar or ham with pineapple? The butter was salted and the milk would not sour as it did back "home." And the mushrooms! Oh, those wild European mushrooms were nowhere in sight. Yes, I remember, we did not like the food.

Clothing, as seen in the stores and on people, also did not please us. A bit gaudy, my mother said. When she bought her first nice dress in America, she spent half the night removing the red piping that was sewn around the pockets and collar from the solid navy dress because red was considered "loud."

I still can see myself as a little girl in pigtails, in high brown lace-up shoes and tan cotton stockings held up by a garter belt, in my UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency) dress, a bit altered by my mother. I spoke no English. I just stood and looked at the American girls in their bobby socks and saddle shoes, in rolled up jeans and men's shirts all crispy-white with shirt tails hanging out, their hair all set in bobby pin curls. They were just sitting on their front steps playing jacks.

We criticized the housing, too. Why such low ceilings we wondered. Sometimes I heard my mother say that it would be better to have one large room than these four little boxes. The dark and narrow halls of the apartment buildings, the ugly fire-escapes and the high brown brick walls depressed us. But the windows - well I think we never did get over the window. Who ever invented windows that you had to fall out of in order to wash them, windows facing a brick wall or with a protective grid, like in prison? Then there was the absence of architectural individuality - block after city block of sameness that often helped us become lost.

We missed house gardens and the aroma of linden tree blossoms. Over and over I heard, "How beautiful a summer evening was back home," as we sat out on the fire-escape on a hot and humid summer night.

Culture shock was most felt in the workplace. My mother, who studied music, played the piano beautifully and never did much hard labor. She got her first job in America pealing steamed tomatoes in a cannery with her lovely piano hands. At 35 cents a basket, she pealed Allegro as she adjusted to piece work. My father, a lawyer with a good classical education, was happy when a banker friend from Chortkiv got him a "position" washing dishes in a company where he, the banker, was a janitor. Shortly a third friend, a judge also from Chortkiv joined them in the same company as the cook's helper.

Asked one day to clean up the large caterer's kitchen, the three worked very diligently in washing all pots and utensils. Their old country frugality persisted, however, when they decided to wash the kitchen floor with the dirty water they found in a pot on top of the stove. Culture shock was well felt all around the next day when the chief cook began to search for the pot of fish stock that he had prepared the day before from some very expansive fish, and was going to make clam chowder. Upon discovering that it was the stock that gave the kitchen floor its unique sheer, the head cook demanded that the "dumb" foreigners be fired. After many apologies, things were written off to ignorance and cultural differences. The "Ukrainian immigrants" were glad to have kept their jobs. That incident prevented my father from ever tasting clam chowder, a soup that I very much enjoy today.

I must admit that culture shock did not affect me too much, since I was a child and was not set in the old culture as deeply as my elders. I learned English fast enough, my mother finally gave in and let me wear blue jeans, and my friend cut my hair "just for fun" so I almost looked American.

But for my parents, relatives and others of the same "wave" - I must admit - it was a bit harder. With time, economic improvement, increased command of the language, things got better. And yet there were times that I found amusing, but left my father very bewildered.

Once while riding the subway in New York, my father sat next to a man reading the New York Daily News, a paper my father considered to be poor journalism. Father could not control his urge to educate and enlighten the poor fellow worker, so he told him that he would get more significant news reports from The New York Times. The man gave my father a stare, got up and asked my father who was going to win "the series." Caught of guard, my father said that he did not know. The man then threw the Daily News onto my father's lap and said "read this and you'll know." With that he got off the train. My father, bewildered, turned to me for an explanation of the term "series." "A baseball game" I said, noticing my father's embarrassment and a touch of humiliation. His advice was wise and well-meaning, but we both learned then that America is a country where you live and let live.

Another time we walked together along Ninth Street in New York City. Just under the Third Avenue train elevator, a bum was looking for cigarette butts. My dear father, in a gentlemanly gesture, took out a pack of Winston cigarettes and offered it to the bum. "Na-a-a, thanks, I'm looking for Chesterfields - hate filters," came the reply.

Only in America.

Culture shock, indeed, can be trying. So I folded my hand-out neatly. I'll save it as a keepsake. I feel deeply for my fellow Ukrainians who have so much to get used to. My parents and I had the war, but they on the other hand had a lifetime of political indoctrination. It takes time to alter dreams, adjust illusions and condition the spirit.

The article above is an entry from "the diary of a Ukrainian housewife," who writes under the pen name "DMZ."

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