St. Louis Stories of
Immigrant Experiences
Old Stories in a New Land
Collected by Janet Morey and Gail Schafers
Before entering the United States for the first time and settling in St. Louis, our immigrant students packed up their histories and their memories. We, their ESL (English as a Second Language) instructors, asked them to reach back into their growing-up years to search for stories uniquely their own. The students were thrilled to be able to share recollections from their past lives and were proud to be writing in their new language. As teachers, we were able not only to witness progress in our students' new voices, but also to delight in the unexpected way they expressed themselves in words.
From the dozens of student stories we have collected, here are four childhood reflections.
Paula Jones, Mexico
I was born May 1, 1977, in Mexico City, where traditions mix with daily life. I grew up in Oaxaca, in a family dedicated to work and study. My father was an economist dedicated to his job and personal life. My mother, a strong woman, has been the support for my sister, my brother and me.
Interested in the study of law, I enrolled in the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico, where I attended law school through the seventh semester. I developed an interest in becoming an international lawyer, which required that I speak two languages. Therefore, I decided to move to the United States for six months.
I moved to a wonderful little town named Silverthorne, Colorado, where I met my husband, Joshua Jones. After a year of being together, our lives changed when we discovered that we were going to have a baby. Her name is Sofia.
My parents-in-law offered to help us pay for our school, so we moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where we are attending St. Louis Community College.
My House, My Garden, My Tree
My house was as simple as bread and butter. Two rooms, the kitchen and a little living room were the whole of my house. But the garden was my favorite part of my house. Flowers, small strawberry patches, hens, chicks, roosters and Guicho my dog were the residents of my garden. With its different kinds of trees my garden was the best in town. A few of the trees were too tall for me, and it was impossible to get their fruit. The smallest trees were robust and tipsy like my grandmother. They didn’t have fruit, but they looked nice in my garden.
But one of the trees was my favorite. It was in back of my house. Huge and imposing—the biggest tree in town—it was still a humble tree, and for all its humility, it was a little shy. Its branches were long and strong. Together we spent the afternoons. It was part of my privacy. Given that I had to share my room with my sister, it was like my second room. It was my best friend. It waited for my arrival home from school, and it listened to me. The afternoons did not have an end. Together we contemplated the sunset, which brought with it a heap of furious red ants. The red ants took possession of my tree. More than one climbed up my pants, ready to attack. When they arrived, I prepared my departure to my room.
My Wonderful Parents
My mother was a small woman full of legends: legends that spilled a little of themselves to each generation, legends that pierced time. Sundays in the mornings, with a little delicate puff in my ear, my mother woke me up with a legend. As we lay together in bed, the words went whispering little by little until the legend finished. Afterwards, small and light like an ant, my mother with nimble moves prepared the best breakfast for her family.
My father was a good man. Short and a little fat but very strong, he looked like a brown little bean. His face was like a full moon and his eyes small, like buttonholes. The soles of his feet were more dry than the desert. He wore an ugly brown hat all the time, but it didn’t look bad on him. He was the best peasant I have ever seen in my life. He loved to work our land. When he came back from work, he told us how life was beautiful. He said he didn’t have any reason to feel bad because God gave to him everything he needed: a wonderful family and our land. That place signified for my father a gift from God.
My Dog Guicho
My dog, Guicho, was very ugly, but very good. He belonged. My father confided in Guicho more than anyone else. They were more than friends.
When dinner was ready, the first ones in the kitchen were my father and his dog. From time to time my father shared his food with his friend. Sometimes my father gave him a piece of meat with his mouth. My mother told my father again and again that wasn’t good, but my father didn’t care. One day Guicho bit more than the piece of meat from my father’s mouth. My father’s lip was bleeding, and my mother laughed while she cleaned my father’s lip.
When the sun touched the moon, Guicho ran toward the hill, waiting for my father to return from work. Every day at the same time Guicho followed the same routine, until one day, he waited, but my father did not come back from work. Guicho waited on the hill until the next morning, but his wait was in vain. The next morning the whole town was in mourning. Guicho did not stop his routine for more than six months. But he was tired, and the sadness weakened him.
My poor little town and everybody in it have been little lights in my life. My memories are the inspiration of my life.
Sonia Shazadi, Pakistan
(as dictated to her ESL teacher, Parkway Elementary School, 5th grade)
Memory of Home
Hi, my name is Sonia Shazadi, and I am from a village outside Lahore, Pakistan. I moved here in November 2001. I have two sisters and one brother, a mother, father, and nine cousins living with us in St. Louis. I want to tell you about my memory of Pakistan.
Our house was made of bricks and clay. We had tall walls around the house and one gate with two doors. We lived close to a farm. My family and many relatives worked on this farm. My mom and I took food and water to the workers. Sometimes we carried the food on our heads. I would kneel down and she would put the food on my head. We would wrap a scarf around our heads to help carry a clay pot of hot rice. My mom carried a silver pot of water on her head. People sat in the shade of a tree to eat. We had cows and sheep in a field, chickens around the house and goats outside, tied to an apple tree. In a field we grew carrots, gheia tori, onions, tomatoes, turnips, cauliflower, peppers, bitter gourd, corn, ginger, and wheat. Some of the fruits we grew were peaches, watermelon, apples, and coconut. I wish we still lived close to a farm.
Sometimes I helped my family cut the corn or pick the fruits and vegetables. Then we washed them with well water. The well was down in the ground. We had to pump the water out. My mom had a clay oven to cook the food. We put sticks in there to build a fire. We put our food on plates that our mom wove from corn leaves. If it was raining, we ate inside. When it was nice weather, we ate outside on the ground, or on our beds, which were woven cots.
I remember the smell of my mom’s chicken cooking in the clay oven outside. My favorite dish was one my mom cooked with carrots, peas, and potatoes together with many spices. It smelled so good! We drank milk from the cows. My mom put the milk in a special jar with salt and put it outside overnight. The next day we had to shake it up. Then we could drink it.
There was a special room in our house. Many families had this. In there was an American bed, some chairs, pretty pictures and other nice things. This room was usually locked. Only my mom could open it. We used it when guests, like religious people, came to visit. There was a window between this room and the window in another bedroom. My sisters and I tried to open both windows so we could see all the pretty things in this room.
Cipriano Casado, Argentina
I am from Argentina. I was born in Azul, a small town in the middle of the Pampas, in the province of Buenos Aires. There was not much to do there, but since my father was crazy about birds, we had all kinds of feathered animals in the backyard of our home. My job was to feed and clean them. I had three younger sisters, but of course they were exempt from the bird breeding chores. Years went by with the same routines.
Luckily, one day after a vacation, my parents decided to sell everything in Azul and move to a wonderful ski resort town in the south, in Patagonia: Bariloche. My father had leased a small, 25-room bed and breakfast there. I was 13. By then, my toy of choice was a globe, and I would spin it, close my eyes, and put my index finger on it to see where I would travel, at least in my imagination. I loved maps, countries, history, and geography.
One day, as I was walking in the halls of my secondary school, I saw a pamphlet about a student exchange program sponsored by my school. I quickly signed up—without my parents’ knowledge—and was selected to spend a year in Creve Coeur, Missouri, with an American family. I was barely 16. I couldn’t believe it: one year in the United States, all expenses paid! I certainly did not know where Creve Coeur was, though I found out later it was a St. Louis suburb. My parents were not very happy about my idea, but with the help of some of their friends, they agreed to let me go. I became a senior at Parkway North High School, and the family I stayed with was fabulous. I had the best year of my life, no doubt! I learned English and lots about the culture.
A year, I felt, wasn’t enough. As I was returning to Argentina, I told my American father that one day I would come back. The travel bug and the passion for learning about other cultures and places were in me. I went to college in Argentina, graduated with a political science and international affairs degree, and ten years after that amazing experience in Creve Coeur, I came back in 1991 to pursue a master’s degree at Washington University. I had the opportunity to work here, and one thing leading to another, I stayed in St. Louis, the city that so warmly embraced me in my adolescence. I worked in sales first and then decided I wanted to teach and spend time with kids. I have been a teacher since 1999.
I have traveled throughout the United States, including Alaska, by motorcycle, my other passion. In 1997, I even took the Pan Am Highway from St. Louis to Argentina (five months and 13,000 miles) on my motorbike! I am now a Spanish teacher at a private St. Louis high school and am married to Celina, a violin teacher and an amazing woman.
Buckets of Frogs
I grew up on a little farm outside of Azul, a small town in the Argentine pampas. My grandma Sara raised my sister Sabina and me because our parents both worked in town, sometimes until 7:00 p.m. There was no television in our house, and we did not have a telephone. Sabina and I spent most of our time outside on the farm, surrounded by a horse, two cows, two boxer dogs named Gundi and Estrella, chickens, pigeons, and rabbits. In the summertime, we picked peaches, figs, watermelon, grapes and many kinds of plums. Here, on my childhood farm, is where my terror of frogs began...yes, frogs, and my little sister Sabina had a lot to do with that!
There was a big windmill near the house to pump our water, and next to it, my father had built an above-ground pool. There were a lot of gigantic frogs near there, and during the summer nights, they croaked continuously. Sabina loved these animals, and without my knowing, she would get a big bucket, go for a walk, collect frogs and put them in the bucket. Later on, when I was distracted, she would come from behind me and literally dump over my head the bucket full of these horrendous, cold creatures. I panicked and screamed every time, while she laughed wholeheartedly.
I was maybe four or five years old. This happened all the time, and every time Sabina was “missing,” I would hide because I knew what was coming. My parents and grandma repeatedly talked to her, trying to deter her from the “frog dumping,” but to no avail. I was horrified by these creatures, and I still am.
A few years ago, while camping with friends near the Ozarks here in Missouri, I saw a big frog near me, and I instantly jumped up onto a camping table, without thinking. My friends were perplexed by my reaction. I had to explain my sister’s adventures on our little Azul farm.
It is something I have a difficult time dealing with even today, and every time I see a frog, I think of Sabina and her bucket.
Yael Shavit-Shotland, Israel
I was born in the summer of 1963 in Haifa, a city in the north of Israel, by the Mediterranean Sea. I grew up in Haifa, where people from different cultures and religions lived together.
After high school, I did my military service, like everyone. I traveled for six months, like everyone, and then I was ready to go to college. I studied occupational therapy in Haifa University, and after graduation, I worked as an OT, especially with people with severe mental disorders.
I met my husband on a trip to Sinai, a beautiful desert with a very romantic beach and mountains. We climbed together to the top of Mount Sinai, where people believe Moses got the Ten Commandments from God. It was a full moon night, and I knew, “This is the one.”
My husband is a biologist researcher. We came to the United States for his research, to work at Washington University in St. Louis. We have three lovely children: a ten-year-old girl, a seven-year-old boy, and a one-year-old girl. Although we enjoy our time here in St. Louis very much, we plan to go back to Israel soon.
Memory of a Four-Year-Old Girl
1967. Three weeks, and I would turn four. I had a new baby sister, two weeks old, and we had just moved to a new house in a new neighborhood. So many new beginnings. I lived in this new big house, in a new room all to myself. (Later, I would share the room with my sister; meanwhile, she was sleeping with my mom.) My brother was four years older than I, and he had his own room, too. However, everything was confusing. We had so many things to be excited with and to be happy about. But my mom was tense and not happy at all. My dad was not with us; he had gone into the army. That meant that war was at the door.
It was a confusing time because I could see the difference between what I felt with all these beginnings and good things that were happening to my family—and the mood people had around us. I saw my mom and my neighbors worried, sad, nervous, maybe even scared.
And then, the Six Days War started. We didn’t know then that it would take only six days; we did not know how it would end. We just knew that all the countries surrounding us wanted to fight and did not want us there. It happened almost forty years ago, and I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember the tension. I remember my mom listening to the radio and staring at us to be quiet. Orit, a friend of mine five years old, came over, and we were playing and talking. We did not talk loud, but I could hear my mom saying, “Now, be quiet!” and listening to the radio.
We lived in the city by the shore, so we did not hear the sounds of the war, only the alarms—alarms during the days and during the nights. And I remember the night, in the middle of the night, when the alarms started. Each of us had his duty, his or her responsibility. My chore, as a four-year-old girl, was to get up by myself, to put my slippers on, and to be ready. My brother, eight years old, had to take care of me. My mom took care of my baby sister. The night when the alarms began, I remember waking up. It was dark, and the door to my room was closed. I got up. I remember sitting on the edge of my bed, wearing my pajamas, my feet in my slippers, and waiting—waiting for my brother to come and take me. I recall the darkness, the door opening, and my big brother coming in. I was proud of myself for being ready before he came in.
We all went together down to the shelter, with our neighbors. I didn’t feel any fear. I was not crying or screaming. I was excited, a four-year-old girl pleased to have done her job, to be part of the adults’ world—a girl that did not understand what a war really meant, what those alarms meant—only feeling the unrest and the turmoil. I do not remember anything else from that war, just that night that I was “independent,” got up by myself and was ready even before my brother came to help me. I felt proud, and I felt good. These feelings continue with me and are carved in my memory.
Now, my ideas about war are so much different. I cannot put the words “excitement” and “good” together with “war.” I can just hope that my children will not have to go through this kind of experience.