Family Narrative and the Mexican Immigrant Identity Story

Introduction: Every Family Has a Story

Every family has a story — or rather, every family has a number of different stories. This does not mean that there are no important overlaps and consistencies among the stories that different family members tell. Both what is the same (or nearly the same) from one family member to the next and what is different are important to attend to when trying to make sense of a family's story. It is important to understand where the schisms are: Are there emotional and narrative fault-lines between generations? Between genders? Between matrilineal and patrilineal sectors? Between those who immigrated to the United States and those who were born here? And, just as important, where are the alliances? Between mothers and daughters? Between those who are the most or least educated? Between those who share a religion?

In this paper I create a family narrative for my own family, examining the stories that we tell about ourselves and what that overarching story reveals about who we are. In conducting the research, I discovered some facts I did not know and many opinions I did not know different members of my family held. I also discovered, to my surprise, that my family does have myths about itself.

Stories in my family followed the same patterns and performed the same functions that researchers have found to be the case in other families. As Wolff (1993) summarizes, stories help keep family members feeling connected to each other even as families change from year to year and generation to generation, often in dramatic ways:

Family stories, told and retold, become important vehicles in shaping the lives of family members. Knowing and understanding family narratives can aid students in understanding their families' histories, communication patterns, and meanings. The stories are a cohesive element for holding the family together, and may also capture the essence of the personality of members. Family myths have stabilizing effects on the family and communication patterns… The use of family stories promotes family awareness, intergenerational sharing, an understanding of family and self, and appreciation for the uniqueness of the family. The family narrative is a part of personal heritage, uniting a family's past and its present and providing a link to future generations.

Just a 'Normal' Family

None of the members of my family whom I interviewed for this project recognized that the stories we tell about ourselves and each other fit into the kind of function described above. I asked my family members what they thought was important about the kinds of information they highlight when someone asks them to describe themselves. To this question I received mostly confused responses. They did not see their stories as stories at all, much less as a connected narrative. They saw their descriptions of themselves and each other as "just the facts."

The narrative that was very much at the front and center of the ways in which my family members describe my family is that we are just a "normal" family. This seemed to some extent different from the kinds of family narratives described by authors such as Gouldrup (1987). He argues that family narratives often — and even more often than not — highlight aspects of the family that members see as making them unique or special. Indeed, he writes that one of the major functions of family narratives is to make families feel that there is something that sets them apart from other families.

This specialness is seen as a source of legitimate family pride, and the family narrative — whether in formal or informal versions, written down by a family member interested in genealogy or simply told as a series of stories at every birthday and wedding — is a way of proving this specialness.

What my family members told me is that they are just like everyone else. For example, my aunt, who is sixty, said that she knew there was some story about her family name but that she did not know what it was. Other members of the family I interviewed said they knew even less than this about their name. It seemed to them to be just something they had been given when they were born. There was, in general, an "it's no big deal" feeling to responses to this question that extended across the generations and included both males and females.

I believe that the reason for this lack of information as well as a lack of curiosity about the origin or meaning of the family name arises from the fact that my family is composed mostly of recent immigrants from Mexico to the United States. This also, I believe, explains the fact that all of the members of my family emphasized that they were ordinary in every way. I had initially thought that my family members were just trying to be modest — not wanting to present themselves as being better than other people. This seemed at first to be a good explanation because they are in fact generally pretty modest, saying that anything they achieve is due to hard work and God's blessing and not because there is anything special about them.

The Function of the Normalcy Narrative

I also wondered if perhaps my family is made up of people who are really quite ordinary and I had simply never noticed this because I love them.

After I had interviewed all of my relatives, I realized that what had at first seemed to be the lack of a story — for "we're all just normal and average" seems to be a non-story — was in fact serving a precise narrative function. Immigrants spend their lives feeling out of place, marked as belonging somewhere else in the view of many native-born citizens, knowing that they may live and die as being seen as from somewhere else (Tate, 2009, p. 28).

By repeating over and over — to me and to each other as they compare their daily lives and the goals they have for themselves and their children — that there is nothing special about them, they are actually saying how important it is to them that they can someday fit in. They want to believe that they will be seen as just another ordinary American family, not as "the Mexicans." This desire to be seen as belonging runs deep through all immigrant families, but I believe it is especially relevant and strong right now for Mexicans who have emigrated to the United States, which is in a political phase in which there is a high level of anger among some Americans toward "illegals." If one is worried about being seen as dangerous by other Americans, there is a strong incentive to describe oneself as ordinary and to downplay connections to one's pre-emigration life, including one's family name.

Conclusion: The Story of Having No Story

My family sees themselves as typical Americans. Of course, in many ways they are, for the ways in which we as a family conduct our daily lives is very similar to many other families. The stories that we tell each other are that there is nothing special about us, no reason for us to stand out in our new nation.