Quetzal | Maucci

There are around 20 million adult, American-born children of immigrants living in the United States. I am one of them. I am the daughter of two immigrant mothers from Peru and Argentina. My roots are not directly below me, beneath this ground that I stand on, but instead reach to many parts of the world. I grew up in San Francisco, moving constantly from house to house, sometimes in homes filled with other families. I quickly learned to adapt. I became a traveler, just as my mothers are, and just as many immigrants are travelers whose wandering feet and thoughts are never still.

Technically, I am an American, but that label doesn’t quite seem to fit. For much of my childhood I felt tension between the culture I was immersed in at school and the culture that my mothers kept alive within our home, the one I returned to each night. I ate milanesas and lomo saltado, while my friends at school had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and spoke about their excitement for a holiday I never celebrated, Thanksgiving. I spoke Spanish until I felt too different from others. When I began primarily speaking English, people were shocked whenever they heard a pale girl say, “yo soy latina.” That’s when I started to feel neither South American nor North American. I was stuck in an uncomfortable in-between, a place from which I am still trying to free myself.

In discussions about children of immigrants, scholars often deal with statistics, but rarely with the actual individuals who have their own voices and ideas of identification. We are more than numbers, more than the reports that analyze our educational attainment and economic standing.

This continuing portrait series is inspired by conversations I’ve had with children of immigrants over the past two years. The people I met talked about their childhoods and how they defined American culture. They reflected on self-identification and the imbalance of cultural identity. And they looked at how the label "children of immigrants" affects the members of that community.

“A lot of the time, being a child of immigrants means constantly having to defend your place as an ‘American,’” said Alex Santana, a Spanish- and Dominican-American. By deconstructing our cultural identities, our childhoods, and the ways in which some people misrepresent us, we are reclaiming our individuality.

“I place a large emphasis on cultural identity in my life. I feel very comfortable and am proud to call myself Indian, but I think it is very easy to lose touch with your roots when you don't have a community. I have personally experienced that, being a queer, masculine-presenting South Indian person. The number of friendships I have personally cut off due to a fear of rejection, the number of family members I have kept in the dark about my identity, the tension I feel when I step into a Hindu Temple in New York only to have every pair of eyes following my every movement, bewildered by the shaved sides of my head and the patterned button-down I am sporting. I have been able to salvage a connection to my culture by enjoying its food, speaking its language, and playing its music. But as someone who craves human connection, it is difficult to stomach my inability to find accepting community.”

"Something that I haven't been able to call my own lately is my last name, just because I feel like I haven't earned it. I feel like religion was lost on me because I ate meat and could never speak my parents' native language, and that was always hard growing up with. I was kind of the black sheep of the family."

“I am exceptionally proud to be the child of immigrants and I feel that we are all children of immigrants in some way. It saddens me that this term would ever carry negative connotations and I have been fortunate enough to never truly experience that form of hatred. I think it's difficult being a child of immigrants and staying connected to your roots- but this is exacerbated when you're from war-torn countries, like myself. Having a multi-national heritage and growing up somewhere different from where either of my parents are from has left me with an unwillingness to fully accept one cultural identity. My identity is that I don’t really have one. I have no real sense of nationalism, as I see the world as one, and I consider myself a part of one world and one human race. I think people my age tend to have identity crises and feel lost. Be what you feel, accept what you are and realise that the choice is yours. I think the world would be a far better place if everyone spent more time understanding that we are all members of one human race sharing one planet. Not only am I a child of immigrants, but a family of immigrants, emigrants and expats.”

"Funny enough, most of the kids I grew up around were of Russian descent. And oddly enough, I felt a much bigger disconnect with them than I did with any of my American friends. Growing up, I always felt like the Russian kids didn’t have as much respect for their heritage as I did. I found much more solace being the Russian one among my Puerto Rican, Italian, Polish, Ghanaian and American friends. The amalgamation of cultures and backgrounds made for such a richer experience."

—Sasha Kazachkova at 19 years old. She is the daughter of Russian parents who migrated to the United States.

“When others ask, ‘Where are you from?’ I tend to respond with ‘New Jersey.’ Usually, they are never satisfied with that answer because for them, it does not explain why I have the last name I have, why my hair is so conspicuously curly, why my skin is brown, and why I am able to speak Spanish. A lot of the time, being a child of immigrants means constantly having to defend your place as an ‘American.’ It is impossible to not acknowledge that our society is deeply rooted and informed by the experiences of immigrants. The narrative of immigration is such a crucial part of the U.S. national imagination. It took me a long time to truly feel comfortable in my own skin. A lot of the time, it is an alienating and exhausting existence to live between cultures, and the only way to kind of make sense of all that is to try and hold on to what feels right. As long as I always know who I am, then I am satisfied. I hope to never lose that comfort.”

“I am the daughter of a conservative catholic, Asian family. I always tell my parents how I would have loved to speak their native tongue. Their response was that they always wanted me to be American and to speak English. To them, that was an upper hand that most immigrants would want to have. I grew up eating a lot of typical Filipino dishes with Chinese influences. My grandpa would always go down to the farmer’s market to buy a chicken and kill it with his bare hands, so we could have fried chicken or adidas (chicken feet) for dinner. My parents were very strict with family time and my roles within the household. I learned how to do laundry and clean the house by the age of 7. I always tell my mother how much I wish I grew up in the Philippines, and how I wanted to speak their language and cook their food. I fear by the time I have my own family I won’t have any stories to tell my children like- ‘back in my day, I walked 7 miles to get to school in flip flops.’ When I think of my parents, I feel like I have something very special that my children won’t have the knowledge to understand or grasp. I fear that my children won’t have that culture to feel rooted in.”

"Growing up was definitely a mix of two worlds, Indian and American. At times, I have felt caught in the middle of the two, but it’s one of those things that you learn to find your way through ... It definitely takes mental fortitude to know where you stand and what you want to stand by. I can now stand for more than one thing."

—Taher Hassonjee at 22 years of age. He grew up with Indian immigrant parents in the United States. He is seen here in his bedroom in New York.

“By virtue of being a child of immigrants and by virtue of being an immigrant myself at the young age of 6, I grew up trying to bridge gaps in culture and understanding. And there are quite a few of these gaps. Historically, the countries and cultures that I come from were actually at war with one another. And still, aspects of these different cultures and value systems, Indian, British, American, do clash and come into conflict with one another quite a bit. So, to build these bridges and reconcile these differences wasn’t necessarily always easy. It took time, and required me to ask questions and to really look for and try to see the beauty in the similarities and differences that exist between cultures, between people, between the kinds of lives that different people lead and the values they hold to be true. I think that where you are at the present is the most important, but at the same time it's essential to not let go of where you've been. You should not have to let go of your roots to be a part of American society."

—Avnee, photographed when she was 22 years old in her bedroom in New York. Her great-grandparents and grandparents immigrated from India to Kenya. From Kenya, her grandparents and parents immigrated to England, and in 1998, her family immigrated from England to the United States.