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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to your calls. If you or your parents immigrated to this country and you're over 40 on generational differences. Losea in Ridgewood, Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi there. Did I say your name right? First of all, is it Losea?

Lolise: Oh, sorry, it's Lolise.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, I'm so sorry.

Lolise: Hi, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Hi.

Lolise: Oh, no worries.

Brian Lehrer: It was spelled the wrong on my screen. Go ahead. What you got for us?

Lolise: I was just telling the screener that I came here when I was 18 and I feel like I'm parenting myself in a way and learning American ways. It's a little bit difficult for me. I came of age intellectually in the US. It took me a long-time to be an artist, and I feel some guilt around that because it puts me out there. It's really [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: That's okay. Give me some basics here. Where did your family come from? Roughly how old are you, and what do you think the generational differences here that you say you've had to reparent yourself?

Lolise: I'm from Botswana. Generational differences is that I'm-- Sorry, I'm drawing a blank because I'm so nervous because I listen to your show every day, but I feel like getting off the air because it's also something, a cultural difference you don't put yourself out there in that way. I guess it's more these are the things that I'm always fighting with, trying to have a voice and put it out there that something culturally we don't do in Botswana.

Brian Lehrer: You didn't tell your family at first that you were an artist, is that one of the things?

Lolise: Yes. Actually, yes. I came out with an album. I didn't tell my mother. I have a whole album that's dedicated to her, almost like a conversational letter to her that I'm not going to talk to her about. Also the religious aspect, she woke up thinking that I was a devil worshiper because of some of the imagery that I was using. Also, Christianity has flooded Botswana or the evangelical type of Christianity. That's also a different way that we express ourselves.

Brian Lehrer: That's heavy. Good luck. Thank you so much for calling in. Thank you for being brave and call us again. Okay?

Lolise: Thank you. I love you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Lee in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lee.

Lee: Good morning. Brian, I love your show. I wanted to let you know I'm 67 years old. My father passed away at 89. He was from Panama, Central America. His interest was in real estate. When my sister graduated Morehouse School of Medicine, he sold the house and paid off her medical bills from school.

Brian Lehrer: That's great.

Lee: That was a hobby of us as a family, purchasing real estate in the United States.

Brian Lehrer: Very American, or I don't know, maybe it's very global wherever there's private property.

Lee: It's wonderful.

Brian Lehrer: Is that a similarity that got passed down, or what would you say about similarities and differences?

Lee: Absolutely. I'm now a landlord and have real estate in Florida, Atlanta, and Brooklyn as well as Panama.

Brian Lehrer: Lee. Thank you very much.

Lee: [unintelligible 00:04:22].

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very, very much. Anna in Brooklyn, you're on w NYC. Hi, Anna.

Anna: Hi. Thanks so much for taking my call. I am a child of one immigrant. My father immigrated from Sweden. He came here for college and then he never left. Became a citizen as soon as he could. Interestingly, he's one of three boys, all of them left Sweden but he's the only one who actually changed his citizenship. The others are elsewhere in Europe. He, I think, has always seen immigration and nationality as a very black and white thing. He's American and he's very American in his thinking. By now, he's been American for the majority of his life. He just turned 80.

He, I think, has always been a little puzzled by particularly my identification with and interest in Sweden. I've spent a lot of time there and this is a family. Even when I graduated with my master's, one of the things that-- Because of the school I went to, people carried little flags. I had an American flag and a Swedish flag. Afterwards, when we met up, he was like, "Why do you have a Swedish flag?" I was like, "Why do you not understand [chuckles] why I'm carrying a Swedish flag?" He just sounded like--

Brian Lehrer: You're from there.

Anna: Yes, [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: I brought this up yesterday, but we didn't really get to it with any of the callers. Do you think that this is a function of the times we're living in where people might be more aware than in the past of their particular heritages in this country? I think the typical story for many generations of immigrants was the parents wanted to hold on to traditions from the old country, and the kids growing up more wanted to assimilate. Now maybe there's this more negative connotation with assimilation, and the younger generations are getting more interested in knowing more about the country of origin. Do you think you're part of a pattern like that?

Anna: It could be. It's interesting on my mom's side, they immigrated much further back. It was my great-grandparents. Although they identified culturally, there was no discussion. My grandmother didn't know anything about her parents' life prior to coming to the US. I don't know if that was a product of you really had to leave. You couldn't go back because there were no planes and whatnot. It was really this before and after in your life. I don't know if my dad, even though he physically has gone back many times to visit family and whatnot, it's almost like it's still that idea of that was then, this is now.

Again, I think the other issue is being American is a way of thinking versus ethnic or racial background. It's not as much of a cultural identification. We certainly had cultural things growing up, food and how we celebrated holidays and whatnot. Here when you're in elementary school and it's like, "Oh, my mom's family is Irish, and my dad's family's Jamaican," or whatever,-

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you one more question.

Anna: -he didn't think about it that way.

Brian Lehrer: Do you happen to have kids? Do you see the progression of what you've been describing going onto the next generation if you do?

Anna: I do have kids, but they are adopted and that's a more complicated story. Their identification is more of a curiosity, but they have their own racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Brian Lehrer: Anna, thank you very much. Loos in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Loos.

Loos: Hi, good morning. I'm not going to take too much. I was born in Colombia in South America. I came here a few days short of being 18. I did the prepare thing. Got married, had children. Yet, even though I was at home, I grew a lot listening to the radio, WOR. Every W that I could that they had a talk show, and I really got an education and understanding. I have to tell you that I taught myself to read and write English because I did not know a word. I took a dictionary and took him a course magazine from the very beginning. By the time I finished the magazine, I knew how to read English. Danny was practicing and they still cut that part out.

My children, I have three. They all went to college. They all graduated. At 48, I enter college so that I could graduate and I became a nurse and I retired [laughs] 3, 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic. At that time, I'd have made supervisor. I have been a head nurse and a supervisor in a New York City hospital. Now, from that my children really were guided by everything we learned. They grew up to education was important, friends. My youngest daughter married a guy from military.

He graduated from West Point and they got married the very next day. She travel a lot in the United States. Last night, we went to a dinner in the middle of this hurricane thing in order to celebrate that my granddaughter, the third of her children received a scholarship to Fordham University, a full four years because she's going to become a neurosurgeon for pediatrics.

Brian Lehrer: This is all such a wonderful, wonderful family story. Is there anything you would add about anything that you see in your grown children that make you think, "Wow, that's really different from me."?

Loos: Actually, that they're free and that they're not held down by beliefs and mast and whatnot. They're very open-minded. They have to search, they have to. They investigate. They have a whole different outlook and that is the United States. I would have never been able to get an education at the age that I enter. That was forbidden. Women, your mental growth and their aspirations, the way that they are giving to others, that's the United States. I am so sorry that I am seeing it disappear the last four years of the commander-in-chief that we had. I was so horrified that that was going to finish.

Brian Lehrer: Loos, thank you for your wonderful story. I'm going to have to move on if I'm going to have time to get one more caller in. That was so wonderful. Please call us again. Nora in Mount Olive is going to get our last 90 seconds or so here. Hi, Nora. You're on WNYC.

Nora: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. Loos's story is so inspiring to me. Brian, what I wanted to share was that I am an immigrant from Honduras. I came when I was 16. We immigrated to New York. What I'm different from my parents was because I decided to work and study and marriage was not in my equation. Honduras is so important for a young girl to get married. I was just infatuated with New York and I still am. I have my kid when I was 41. Something that I'm very much like my parents--

Brian Lehrer: It's gender roles again. Yes, now you want to say a way that you're like your parents. Go ahead.

Nora: Like my parents, I'm very strict. I'm very tough, I'm very loving but I'm very strict and education is a must. What I'm different is that I don't spank. I don't believe in spanking. My child has never been kicked and I see how he's more confident than I was as a child. I think it's because he's more free to be himself than I was when I was a kid because I was afraid that I will get a spank when I made a mistake.

Brian Lehrer: That tale and I have to leave it there. Nora, I apologize with that tale of not spanking her children [chuckles] and so many inspiring and wonderful calls. Thank you all for chiming in on this two-day call-in intergenerational about similarities and differences in immigrant families.

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