On Becoming an American

Book Review: Russian Tattoo: A Memoir by Elena Gorokhova

With rare exceptions, we are a nation of immigrants. It seems to be part of the American consciousness that we conveniently forget that fact within a generation or two.

We forget how our grandparents or great-grandparents struggled to learn a new language, a language full of secret idioms and unspoken meanings. We forget how they worked to fit in with a new and different culture that is itself a mixture of many cultures. We forget how they labored at menial and poorly paying jobs, no matter what their education might have been, because the language and cultural differences threw up walls against them.

Elena Gorokhova's Russian Tattoo serves to remind us of those things that we have chosen to forget on the road to becoming Americans. The twin barriers of language and culture mark the immigrant as clearly and visibly as a tattoo, a label of difference and strangeness that closes the doors of opportunity. Coming to America has given all of us a chance to start our lives over, and that is exactly what is required. Whoever and whatever you were before you arrived: a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist - is largely wiped away and you will find yourself washing dishes or waiting tables, trying to learn English from people who speak louder and slower to make you understand.

Russian Tattoo is the story of this American rite of passage as seen from the inside. Elena Gorokhova's journey is the journey that our own immigrant relatives took, as much as we want to deny it. OUR forebears learned English immediately, and were tax-paying contributing members of society within a month of getting off the boat - or so our romantic notions would have it. The fact is, my immigrant great-grandfather worked in an auto factory, was a truck driver, and English was a second language to his native German. His son - my great uncle - was a United States Marine who served in the Ardennes in World War One. Sometimes it takes a generation or two to achieve American-hood.

With each new wave of immigrants, those of us who are already here inevitably push back against the would-be new arrivals. Russian Tattoo lets us see that from the viewpoint of someone who was on the receiving end; not as a search for sympathy but simply understanding. The road to becoming an American is not an easy one, getting here is only half the battle. We all have our own tattoos, maybe it's time to acknowledge them.

(ed. This review was originally published January 25, 2015)