Oral History Immigrant Interview

For this paper, I decided to select Topic #2 (Oral History-Immigrant) and interview my father, Genaro Gopar. In doing this paper, I come across new experiences he shares with me--ones that he has never revealed to the family. In this interview, he reveals his overall immigrant experience, adversities, values, and thoughts. My Father was born in a poor family and raised in a small town called Oaxaca in Mexico. He is the oldest child of three. Both of his parents worked as fruit vendors and my father along with his siblings were responsible for helping out. My father had big dreams and hoped to convince his father through his dedication in school to fund his wish to attain a higher education in order to reach his goals. He wanted to become …show more content…
My father wanted to come to a country that a lot of people admire and to witness the greatness of America that everybody talked about. Additionally, Mexico lacked opportunities, whereas the United States thrived with opportunities for people that work hard to seek for them. My father would consider himself a futuristic person, his idea of coming to America was also to settle and start a family in America. He says that life in Mexico is tough and harsh. Although he wanted to raise a family in the United States, he sometimes wished he would have brought my siblings and I back to Mexico for at least a year to experience the rough life for the residents of his village. He believes that my siblings and I sometimes oversee the struggles that other live through because we have been blinded by what seem to be "normal". My dad pointed out that other children work for their daily food; meanwhile, my siblings and I are provided with food. He sometimes gets frustrated to see that the following generation lacks the motivation to go further beyond their parent's socio-economical …show more content…
My father's first week was really difficult and at times he only wanted to return home; however, he knew that he really did not have an option. Some of the socio-cultural challenges he experienced were not knowing how to speak English and not knowing the way of living in the America. When my father first came to the United States, he constantly had trouble understanding and communicating with others. In order to communicate with others, he started to attend afternoon school to learn English. Before coming to America, my father lived in a rural part of Mexico so the transition to living in Los Angeles was a bit shocking and unusual. People in his town would do things by hand, but in America machines took care of most of the task, such as laundry. In regards to food, my father found frozen meat to be weird at first; where he came from meat is freshly