By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The story of the United States added 65 new chapters on Thursday.
During the naturalization celebration held at Bowling Green State University, 65 people, who came from 32 countries, took the oath of allegiance to become United States citizens.
In her remarks, BGSU Professor Vibha Bhalla urged the new citizens “to add your story to the American narrative.”
Bhalla, a scholar who studies immigration and who teaches in the Ethnic Studies Department, shared her own story of how she became an American.
She took the oath at Fort Meigs in 2013. She experienced the same emotions of those gathered before her.
She’d taught American history in New Delhi in her native India before moving here. She first visited the United States in 1988 on a two-month National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship. She studied in Tucson, Arizona. At first she was disappointed because it wasn’t New York City, which was her image of the country. But soon she became entranced by the beauty of the desert.
She returned in the 1990s, to study American immigration history. She loved the diversity of the country, especially the culinary diversity.
“I was fortunate to be embraced by a host family,” Bhalla said. “The transition to becoming an American was unconscious. I was shaped by a community that embraced me as one of their own and made me feel like part of their family, and helped me loosen my ties to my birth nation well before I took the oath of citizenship.”
Still “becoming part of America is not incompatible with retaining your own cultural identity,” she said
citing an article that offered advice to Indian immigrants.
Bhalla felt, though, that Americans, even well-educated ones, were looking at her through a lens of stereotypes. For them, India was still the country of maharajahs, snake charmers, and elephants.
“The rich stories of contemporary India and Indians were missing from this discourse,” she said.
This was the danger of “the single story” as explained by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe.
This story perpetuates stereotypes, flattens experiences, and becomes a single, incomplete tale.
Bhalla said much is made of immigrants economic contributions — this was discussed last week at the Immigrant Ohio symposium she organized.
But they also make cultural contributions. Through telling about their cultures and their journeys to becoming Americans, they connect their communities to the rest of the world.
“I want to you to break the stereotype of the single story,” she said. “Tell your story of the nation you came from, of your gender, your generation, your family’s story. Stories matter. Stories empower you.”
This is the fifth year that Federal Judge James Knepp has convened a session of the US District Court at his alma mater to swear in new citizens.
This year he let Mayor Richard Edwards administer the oath of citizenship. Edwards will leave office at the end of the year. As a second generation American, Edwards said, he finds this ceremony moving.
In congratulating the new citizens on taking “this momentous step,” Edwards said: “I know you will welcome the opportunity to vote. It is perplexing and disturbing to me that so few citizens eligible to vote in the last election… exercised their right to vote.”
BGSU Vice President for Enrollment Management Cecilia Castellano connected the university’s welcoming of international students to campus to the ceremony, which took place during International Education Week.
She noted three BGSU graduates — Amamah Alawi Alkhadrawi, from Saudi Arabia, and Bo Li and Li Zhang, both from China — had returned to campus to become citizens.
Also, taking the oath was a member of the faculty, Sujin Lee, who teaches voice in the College of Musical Arts.
She first came to the United States in 1995 to do graduate work at the Manhattan School of Music. Then she studied at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia where she met her future husband, Shawn Mathey, a native of Bowling Green.
Their careers took them to Europe where they performed extensively and where they started their family.
After their second daughter was born, they decided to establish a more settled home in Bowling Green. While Mathey continued to perform abroad, Lee began teaching at BGSU.
As she raised her American children and set deep roots in the community, she felt now was the time to become a citizen. “It’s very emotional. I’m very happy.”
