By Nazila Fathi
Feb. 1, 2020—
Children of immigrants face their own set of challenges, especially if they are of Iranian background.
A few months ago, my 16-year-old gave me a box of stuff he no longer needed. Inside were some toys, several fidget spinners, story books and old clothes. There was also a notebook on which he had scribbled a few pages.
“I am excited for my 18th birthday because I can move across the country to California or Arizona,” my son wrote at age 9.
He continued, “And I will no longer hear my mother speak Iranian. I can do anything I want and my mom cannot make me speak Iranian anymore. I look forward to my 18th birthday. I want to be away from my mother who speaks Iranian. I will be an adult!”
By Iranian, he meant Persian or Farsi. And yes, California and Arizona are far from our home in Maryland.
My son and I both laughed when I showed him the notebook. As the kid of immigrants, he had come a long way. It had started seven years ago one day when he surprised me at his new school. “My name is Shayan but please call me Jack,” he announced to the assistant principal who was showing him to his class.
I was dumbfounded.
For Children of Immigrants, a Name Is More than a Name
My daughter, Tina, who is a year younger than my son, immediately began calling her brother Jack as if the name-change also mattered to her. Perhaps as the kid of immigrants, she felt something too.
A week later, I got a call from my son’s teacher. Jack had stopped responding when anyone called him Shayan.
My husband and I debated the idea and decided not to fret over it. My son had complained several times that his friends and teachers could not pronounce his name. One boy had decided to call him Chad at his old school instead of Shayan. So, I blessed the new name. Why did the name matter if it helped my son’s immigrant identity? To show that we respected his wish, my husband and I began calling him Jack in front of his friends.
In private, however, we called him Shayan. He never objected.
But I felt like I had screwed up.
I knew there were other reasons behind my son’s identity crisis and I had failed to address as an immigrant parent.
For an entire year, we had listened to our local NPR station for a half-hour on our way to school during which there was almost a daily reference to Iran’s nuclear program. This was 2012 when the Obama administration had intensified economic sanctions on Iran. The Iranian regime, in turn, had notched up its nuclear activities, spiking fears that the country could have a nuclear bomb.
It was clear to me that both my kids wanted to distance themselves from a country that was constantly depicted as a pariah state. It was natural for them to be eager to blend in and to be like other kids. My daughter was lucky that her name, Tina (which means flower in Kurdish, an ethnic Iranian group), did not single her out as an Iranian.
For me, this was painful.
To me, Iran is more than its current regime which has sent millions of Iranians into exile. Its behavior is a source of shame and terror for many more inside and outside Iran. To me, Iran is its culture and history; it is the land of poetry, a place that nurtured Muhammad Khawrazmi, the man who invented algebra without which the Internet and the information revolution central to our children’s lives would not exist. To me Iran is the country that celebrates the rotation of the earth around the sun, the most logical constant in our lives.
I wanted my kids to be aware of that heritage. So, I resorted to the only thing I knew best as a journalist: storytelling. I wanted to show them, not tell them, that we could be proud of so much.
Research Shows Stories Provide Life Skills
As immigrants, we are shaped by our culture and history. No matter where we come from, our identity provides us with self-esteem and coping skills. Feeling positive toward our culture makes us feel more confident. As a parent, I want to nurture resilience in my kids to equip them with skills they need to overcome life challenges. The connection between culture and resilience in kids is clear. Numerous studies on indigenous people have found correlations between their positive affiliation and engagement with their culture and their mental health.
Our immigrant kids are severed from Iranian culture and history, especially if they do not travel to Iran. They study very little about the Persian civilization at public schools outside Iran. I felt like I had screwed up in filling that gap.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not against changing one’s name and I embrace my immigrant identity. I cherish the fact that I had the opportunity to live two lives and was able to give my children the good fortune to grow up in a free land. But I believe we can assimilate without self-alienation. Our Iranian culture can be our toolkit in our quest for continuity.
What Do Scholars Say?
Louise Rosenblatt, a widely known scholar of literature, said in 1938 that we understand ourselves through the lives of characters in stories.
Therefore, through stories for young children, I hope to show how Iranians have contributed to human civilization. Scientists believe storytelling is not just a childhood pastime. Stories are crucial in brain development and they stay with us throughout adulthood as a means of defining us. In fact, stories we hear as children nurture positive traits in us. Parents can help their children build a positive sense of self indirectly by sharing stories that speak of values and traditions.
Professor Andrea Breen at York University said identity is constructed through childhood stories. “Those stories both communicate who we are but also help construct our own understanding of who we are,” she said.
She believes storytelling makes a difference in child development. “Kids who come from families where there’s lots of storytelling tend to be stronger in terms of their language, relationships and emotional well-being,” says Breen.
In addition to developing children’s literacy, stories convey values, beliefs, attitudes and social norms which, in turn, shape children’s perceptions of themselves and of the world. According to Peggy Albers, Professor of Language and Literacy Education at Georgia State University, children can learn how to think and act through the characters they meet in stories.
“Stories help children develop empathy and cultivate imaginative and divergent thinking – that is, thinking that generates a range of possible ideas and/or solutions around story events, rather than looking for single or literal responses,” she said.
I hope my books reach Iranian and also non-Iranian kids. An increasing number of scholars are calling for kids to be exposed to stories of immigrants in order to change negative perceptions about them.
We live at a time when children are exposed to negative narratives about immigrants. People from certain countries and religious backgrounds are stigmatized. I would argue that the need for children to read, see, and hear global stories that counter and challenge those stereotypes is even greater than ever
