First Generations Speak: Legacy
By Nyles Pollonais
1. The Passing
My grandmother asked me to write the eulogy and the obituary a few weeks before anything happened. It was hard for me to fathom what was about to take place. I had never faced the death of a family member, and this one was something serious. Death had always come for a distant aunt, an old friend, or random person on the news — but not for my immediate family. My grandfather, my Daddats, was born in Guyana, South America in 1933 and he died in Port Charlotte, Florida on February 25th, 2020. As I spoke with my grandmother, mother, aunt, and uncle about his life, I began to piece together the person who raised me and to understand the reasons for his ways.
My Daddats was born into third world poverty but through strict self-discipline, self-preservation, and self-education became an American millionaire. This was one side of the man — the internal-idealistic-grandfather. When the rest of my extended family began to flood into Port Charlotte, Florida for the funeral, I began to hear the stories of who he was while I played dominoes with my older cousins, aunts, and uncles. In addition to his rigid regiments, I learned that my grandfather was a man who embodied the motto “work hard and play hard.” At times, his jovial spirit and elaborate dance moves enthralled all who were blessed to spend time with him. These memories kept his spirit alive in such a depressing time. However, in my own remembrance of my grandfather, he was much larger than both of those recounts. He was a giant, a figure so grand and so ethereal, that one would have thought that he was born a grandfather: an old man emerging from the birth canal of an even older great-grandmother. I could not imagine him as a young man growing up in a world so far away. I could not envision him learning how to shave, dealing with puberty, finding his first job, meeting his first love, or even riding a motorcycle (which he did often in Guyana). So when he did pass, I was left to grapple with two main ideas, one of which I will delve into in this paper. The first idea speaks to the fragility of life: how important it is to make the most of your day to day experience, while planning for the future. The second idea, the one in which I’ll go into more detail, is the idea of the changing traditional and cultural values for the first generation immigrant. From Guyana to America, what is expected of the young man, the first-grandchild, the legacy of a family today?
2. Success
To put the answer simply, what is expected is success. Defining success can be difficult, depending on the requirements and expectations of one’s own family. For me, I’ve been able to define that myself. However, that doesn’t make the pursuit any less arduous — at the end of the day, one is still expected to explain that success to the family and to be able to provide for oneself, i.e. being accountable. Traditionally, a well paying skilled position, in something like engineering, medicine, or law would have been sufficient for success. I can only imagine the pride on the faces of my family members, saying to themselves and their relatives that their grandson, son, nephew had become [blank] — and he now is able to carry on the family legacy, proudly. These visions haunt me, because I know that I cannot live someone else’s dream or up to anyone else’s expectations. I know my family members understand this also, but it still does not stop them from having these hopes. So I try to disregard them when defining my own success, but I always seem to end up at the question of who I am and what I want.
Since graduating from NYU, I have grappled with the idea of the scheduled life. Some children, specifically upper middle class and often white, have the privilege of pursuing whatever it is they want — because at the end of the day, there is a security net to catch them if they fall. My family (my mother specifically) on the other hand, since my birth, has crafted my life’s arch to be something greater than they [she] had ever been able to become — because at the end of the day, it is me who will have to carry my family until I fall. The scheduled life becomes an issue after one has fulfilled all of their perceived appointments and duties. After graduation, I felt free — like I was finally able to log off of my life’s Google Calendar. I had completed every assignment, attended every meeting, and submitted every task. So in essence I was free...for a moment. Then came the real freedom — the freedom to choose for myself. There was no more hiding behind my mother’s hopes and ambitions for her child, it was time for me to become the man I was meant to be. Here I began to lose my grip on success, the one I once held like the mother holds the child. It became immensely difficult for me to find that same success, and eventually defining it felt like trying to verbalize emotion. Soon enough, the degree I had seemed to matter less and less. The questions came like a hail storm, all asking the same thing. “So what’s next?” I couldn’t see past the end of the neighborhood.
“...like somehow, just by being here [being born here] love and happiness would simply fall into my lap. I can’t speak for other first-generation Americans, but for myself, this surely is not the case.”
3. Love & Happiness
Like success, love and happiness is one’s own to define. However, unlike success, love and happiness are not expected. Survival is. As a first-generation immigrant, son, grandson, and nephew, I was wished love and happiness. It comes with the American dream: the white picket fence, the gold paved roads, and the loving nuclear family in a stable home — like somehow, just by being here [being born here] love and happiness would simply fall into my lap. I can’t speak for other first-generation Americans, but for myself, this surely is not the case. Firstly, my perception of love is a bit skewed. My parents separated when I was 2, so I have no proper recollection of my father and mother living and loving as a couple whatsoever, not to mention me being somewhere on the queer spectrum also. The closest I get to the image of two people loving is my grandparents, who I could imagine, throughout all their ups and downs, decided to keep their relationship because of their similar background, culture, and history. Sure, I have familial love too, but the love of a significant other, or even some friends, seems so abstract to me at times that often I feel like it is me who jumped off the banana boat from an unknown island. Furthermore, the love I see on TV seems so fake that I can’t even imagine trying to make myself act in any such manner like those characters — it seems impossible, not to mention the varying social and cultural differences I was raised to expect of a significant other. Don’t get me wrong, I have been in love and out of love, but what I want and what is expected of me are two different things.
Happiness, on the other hand, is an individual quest; a thirst that should be quenched through work. My grandfather, for example, found his happiness in the basement of our home in Brooklyn. He would blast his music as he fixed broken radios, TVs, walkie-talkies, and other devices — it was Daddat’s joy. I, however, don’t get much happiness watching C-SPAN or reading the day’s political headlines. For me, it’s more of a paining call to action than a brain teasing self indulgence, so I have had to find my happiness elsewhere. Luckily, I found my happiness through music and other outlets. The delicacy of putting together a carefully crafted verse is almost as, if not more, electrifying as rebuilding an old television. Regardless, happiness does not pay the bills unless you’re a clown. So in theory, it is expected that one finds a love that builds a future and not one that coddles the present moment. And, it is expected that one finds happiness, but not something that takes away from your pursuit of socioeconomic stability.
4. Innovation & Leadership
My middle name is Amiri. I was told by my mother that it means “leader,” in a language that I do not speak. Every few months as a child and as a teenager, I was asked, “Are you a leader or are you a follower?” With no hesitation, I would answer her by saying, “I am a leader,” very enthusiastically. I’ve always been good at selecting the answer that the person asking would want to hear. It’s true, as a legacy and first-generation American, one’s family expects leadership of you. Eventually, I came to believe it. Call it conditioning or fate, either or, I was becoming a leader. I followed the call to leadership like the wandering sailor followed the call of the siren. When I was younger, it was easy to lead. I was the eldest of my siblings and my cousins, so I just had to keep on the correct path and whatever I did, it would look like leadership. Even in my friend groups and into college, I could tell that some folks looked to me for guidance in certain situations. I felt proud that I held this title. I was carving a path out for myself, and in the long run it did me well.
Now, where leadership becomes difficult is when leadership directs the leader to the path least taken, and least understood. On this path, it seems like the people who have been with you since the start begin to leave your side. Some cheer you on from the sidelines, but they won’t follow, either because they take their own paths or because the herd is more comfortable. Family would say that these folks don’t matter. “People come and go,” but what is a leader without someone to lead? Even family, at some point, begin to question your decisions with a criticism that seems generationally displaced. Nonetheless, I’ve come to understand now that the leader must first learn to lead himself before others will follow.
4. The Birth
Whether I am right or wrong, only time will tell. I value the traditions, cultures, and expectations I was raised with and will adopt the ones I chose to. I’ve come to see that it is those traditions that have garnered the success of my family in America. I also understand that I have a right to define my life the way I like. I have chosen to define my own success as an entrepreneur by co-founding my own start up company at the age of 23 with friends from college, taking a break from academia and the cut-throat corporate world. I have chosen to seek my own happiness by taking the time to reflect on my life thus far in hopes of escaping the burnout that plagues many in my generation, first-generation or not. Lastly, I have chosen to lead myself to the path of peace and mental health, making those the key attributes of the man I’d like to become. Sure I will always be my own person, but I hope to be half as courageous as my ancestors were so that I, too, will have grandchildren who admire the path I carved for my life.
“Be easy,”
— Nyles
