Post 5.13 - On Being American
I feel I have a unique perspective on being an American. For a long time, it wasn't clear to me what it meant to be an American -- I mean, I was born here, and I knew that it described my nationality. I was the grandchild of immigrants, so the idea of "coming to the New World" for a better life was present in my own, tangible history, as well as the prejudices that my grandparents and great-grandparents had to face. I am also descended from original settlers of North America, from Massachusetts to New Jersey, so there is this sense of being an "old" American family -- the group that struck out across the ocean, not knowing what they would find, and then taming the land and building a community. But the first time I can say I truly felt American was when I was outside the country. I lived in Europe in my 20s, and after a while, you grow accustomed to not seeing those ubiquitous symbols like the flag, the currency, even the architecture or those phrases about l...