I read the Namesake this weekend while traveling to visit my family in Los Angeles.
I liked it. I liked it for it's not so resolved ending and for its beautiful description of the immigrant experience.
Lots of references like the family expectation that you become a doctor or an engineer ring true. My parents, too, have built an extended "family" of friends in Los Angeles whose parties they go to or host almost every weekend. These are boisterous parties with over 20 people in attendance everytime. As a kid, I, like the character in Namesake, was too old to be with the kids upstairs watching TV, but too young to be with the adults.
For the first 10 years in this country, my mother cooked all day and all night for these parties. The concept of an empty table with 3 courses served and nothing else seemed bizarre and unacceptable.
But lots of things were different too - we have never gone back to Russia. In fact our relatives have been moving our way instead. I don't think I resented my culture and the traditions as much as Gogol does in the Namesake. At least since college, I have always been very proud to bring my friends, significant others, etc. to my home and introduce them to my parents.
It isn't easy at times. Sometimes my friends think the food is odd or it's hard to understand my parents. But they try very hard and are very accepting of my world as much as they can understand it.
I definitely have watched my parents continue struggling over the years with the language and a way of life that will never be native for them.
I respect them tremendously for going on this journey - leaving everything they know behind for a better life. A better life I believe they have achieved...but somehow I think they will always be missing a part of their world no matter how accustomed they get to United States.
