Three stories: Grinnell's diverse history department
Clockwise from top left: John Wei, assistant professor of history; Al Lacson, instructor of history; and Pablo Silva, associate professor of history. Grinnell College has a strong commitment to diversity, and the Department of History embodies that commitment through its faculty, three of whom are the children of first-generation immigrants: Pablo Silva, John Wei, and Al Lacson. Although the countries they came from and their stories are different, they all ended up teaching in the history department here at Grinnell.
Pablo Silva
Associate Professor of History Pablo Silva was born in Chile, and his family moved to the United States in the late '60s. His parents were both doctors in a rural hospital and received medical fellowships to study abroad.
The fellowships -- at Dartmouth for his father and Yale for his mother -- were supposed to end in 1973, but that September, General Pinochet organized a coup and forced Chile into military rule. As they watched the Chilean economy collapse, the Silva family spent the next decade in limbo, wanting to return to their homeland but unable to.
"Every time [my parents] thought about going back, things would get disastrously worse," Silva says. "After a few years ... it would have been tough to go back. And so we ended up Americans."
Silva decided to travel back to Chile after graduating from college in 1989. This was the year of the first democratic election since the coup, and Silva was mystified by what he encountered.
"I could understand what people were saying and I could read the newspapers, but I couldn't really understand," he says. "I decided then ... it would be really interesting to know more about the history of this place."
Silva decided to make Chile his focus of study and he goes back frequently for research, as he has this past year while on sabbatical. Without his Chilean back-story, he says he probably would have ended up like his parents, in med school.
Al Lacson
Instructor of History Al Lacson's parents met in San Diego after emigrating from the Philippines. His father, like many Filipinos of his generation, enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a cook. They eventually settled outside San Diego in Chula Vista.
Because of the military base there, Lacson grew up with many other Filipinos, as well as Mexicans and other Latinos. Lacson says he mostly hung out with Mexicans, which caused some animosity among the other Filipinos.
"Most of my friends were Mexican when I went to the junior high," he says. "There was a group of Filipinos I didn't hang out with so much, and they might have seen me as some sort of traitor. I know this because about 15 of them came to my house to beat me up."
Lacson's parents emigrated from the Philippines to improve their economic situation, so when he decided to major in history in college, his parents were not so supportive.
"Both my parents thought of college as a vocational school," he explains. "When I decided to be a history major in college, they were both sort of [unhappy] and had no idea what [I] was going to go with that."
Now that he is working, Lacson says his parents are now satisfied with the career he has chosen.
"They're happy now that I have a job, but they still don't quite understand my work," he says. "My father wonders why I still need to read in order to teach."
John Wei
Assistant Professor of History John Wei's parents emigrated from Taiwan for graduate school, where they made many Chinese friends. Wei was born in Connecticut, grew up in a vibrant Chinese community, and attended Chinese school every week.
"Other Chinese parents in the area created a Chinese language school where people would volunteer to teach Chinese language classes," he explains. "We would go to learn and not forget everything."
Even though he did maintain his Chinese roots, Wei does not feel alienated from his American experience.
"In lots of literature on immigrant experience, they talk about a loss of identity and not really fitting in," Wei says. "I didn't really have many of those experiences growing up ... I've always thought of myself as an American, a Chinese American."
But there are some things Wei still can't get used to.
"One thing I still can't get over is how most Americans walk around with shoes inside," he says. "You get everything dirty."
