Alienated immigrants: An American tradition
The best book ever written by a Minnesotan &mdash one particular of the six most crucial American novels, poet Carl Sandburg mentioned &mdash is a tragedy of immigrant life.
Ole Edvart Rolvaag, whose son Karl would one day develop into Minnesota&rsquos governor, emigrated from Helgeland, Norway, to the Upper Midwest in 1896. Immediately, he succumbed, he wrote, to &ldquoa feeling of utter helplessness, as if life had betrayed me &hellip the sense of being lost in an alien culture. The sense of becoming thrust someplace outdoors the charmed circle of life.&rdquo
I final wrote about Rolvaag&rsquos heartbreaking 1926 masterwork, &ldquoGiants in the Earth,&rdquo almost 30 years ago. It was in an editor&rsquos note for yet another publication that at the time was reporting on maladjustments amongst Minnesota&rsquos Hmong refugees, who had been then relatively not too long ago arrived.
This spring appears another suitable moment to bear in mind Rolvaag and his book, as Minnesotans struggle to comprehend, or even imagine, the type of alienation that is inspiring young Somali-American males in our community to sign up for duty with savage terrorist armies in the blood-drenched Middle East.
Rolvaag&rsquos harrowing account of the sufferings of my Norwegian immigrant forebears in the 19th century at least makes one particular thing clear: Self-destructive estrangement among new arrivals to America is nothing at all the least bit new.
&ldquoIf you couldn&rsquot conquer that feeling,&rdquo Rolvaag continued, describing the Scandinavian immigrants&rsquo anguish, &ldquoif you couldn&rsquot break by means of that magic hedge of thorns, you have been lost certainly.
&ldquoMany couldn&rsquot and didn&rsquot &mdash and lots of were lost thereby.&rdquo
We like to say America is a nation of immigrants. But our understanding of immigrants&rsquo psychological struggle &mdash that &ldquosense of being lost in an alien culture&rdquo &mdash seems to die with the 1st generation or two.
Again and once again, down by means of the years and amid numerous waves of immigration, nicely-settled Americans have been shocked and scandalized by the issues and failure to adjust of each new immigrant group &mdash Irish, Italians, Germans, Jews, Japanese and all the rest.
The terror recruitment crisis among our Somali neighbors is really serious and risky our response need to be dry-eyed and unsentimental. The law enforcement role is essential.
But the ultimate, unavoidable challenge is to help these comparatively new arrivals break by means of their own &ldquohedge of thorns&rdquo and come across a more comfy location in American life.
It could only aid that effort if established Americans (and, possibly most essential, Somali-Americans themselves) would recognize that immigrant alienation and confusion are, ironically but actually, distinctively American experiences &mdash pains almost all Americans&rsquo immigrant ancestors suffered.
We in later generations have forgotten, but that&rsquos to our discredit.
For instance, an obsessive longing to return to one&rsquos homeland, no matter what it requires, was anything Rolvaag &mdash writing his fantastic American novel in Norwegian, not English &mdash vividly described among certain Norwegian settlers on America&rsquos virgin prairies:
&ldquoShe sat completely quiet, thinking of the extended, oh, so interminably extended march that they would have to make, back to the location exactly where human beings dwelt.
&ldquoIt would be a compact hardship for her, of course, sitting in the wagon but she pitied Per Hansa and the boys &mdash and then the poor oxen &hellip
&ldquo[But] he definitely would quickly obtain out for himself that a dwelling for men and ladies and young children could by no means be established in this wilderness.&rdquo
One particular unsettling difference right now, of course, is that the dream of going &ldquohome&rdquo can now come to be not merely a destructive fantasy but a nightmare reality. Terror groups are all too eager to make it come true. And to do so they prey not just on immigrant vulnerabilities but on another set of distinctive yearnings, in a further population that is eternally restless and uncomfortable. That is, young males.