Chaplin, Purviance in “The Immigrant”
Fourth of July
It’s difficult to feel entirely celebratory about the 4th of July this year, what with thousands of children trying to crash the border while American nativists raise a hue and cry. Some members of the GOP are actively talking about deporting the so-called Dreamers as well, those people who crossed the border as children years ago and who know no other country than this one.
It’s a wrenching drama but hardly a new one. Many of those Americans who are now comfortably ensconced as citizens had forefathers and mothers who were similarly spurned. If we don’t want waves of immigrants from Latin America, then we need to support those countries so that their people don’t have to leave. Barring that, we must be as humane as we can. Fanning the flames of xenophobia creates nothing but toxicity.
Here’s a poem by a Malaysian-Chinese immigrant that reminds us that those who come here, if allowed to stay, will come to love America just as we who came earlier have come to love it. This process is what we celebrate today.
Learning to Love America
By Shirley Geok-lin Lim
because it has no pure products
because the Pacific Ocean sweeps along the coastline
because the water of the ocean is cold
and because land is better than ocean
because I say we rather than they
because I live in California
I have eaten fresh artichokes
and jacaranda bloom in April and May
because my senses have caught up with my body
my breath with the air it swallows
my hunger with my mouth
because I walk barefoot in my house
because I have nursed my son at my breast
because he is a strong American boy
because I have seen his eyes redden when he is asked who he is
because he answers I don’t know
because to have a son is to have a country
because my son will bury me here
because countries are in our blood and we bleed them
because it is late and too late to change my mind
because it is time.
