Fifty Years in the United States (an Immigrant’s Perspective)

In 2013 I participated in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge for the first time, with no theme at all. In 2014, while on sabbatical in Germany and England, my chosen theme was Traveling Light; in 2015, A Printer’s Alphabet; in 2016, Bringing Me Joy; I missed 2017 and 2018, but took up the challenge again in 2019 with a theme of Migrants, Refugees, and Exiles. This year my theme will be Fifty Years in the United States, from an immigrant’s perspective.

It was February 6^th, 1970 when, at age 15, I arrived in the United States with my mother and sister to join my father who had arrived the previous fall. Now here I am at age 65, trying to make sense of the past fifty years. America has changed a great deal in that time, and as an immigrant I look at that change as an insider-outsider. That is what I propose to do during the month of April, in a series of personal recollections that I hope will both capture a little of the flavor of the changing times and help me take stock of a half-century of my own life.

I’m looking back on: the anti-(Vietnam) war movement that was raging when we first arrived, the Women’s Movement, that was beginning, the anti-nuclear movement that I was immersed in for seven years; life as a high-school, college, graduate student; as a householder, empty-nester, senior citizen; work and professional life; the changing climate on American college campuses; food cooperatives and experiments in group living; life in New England and, in an enchanted sojourn, New Mexico; family, close at hand and across the world; marriage, motherhood and beyond; nine U.S. presidents; too many interventions, occupations and wars to count; deaths, too many to count; my own aging. Love, Friendship, Hope.

I wish I could give you a little taste of what my posts will look like, but the theme has yet to take shape, even in my mind. The list of topics above suggests grand(iose) ambitions, but I’m not going to attempt anything on that scale. In this harrowing time of coronavirus, I’ll  be aiming for a series of snapshots—more of a family album than a set of encyclopedia entries.

All the best to my fellow-bloggers! I look forward to our sense of community, especially at a time when many of us worldwide are having to practice social distancing.

Tell Me Another (Contents to Date)

Chronological Table of Contents