Would Genoveva have been happier if she'd tried to adapt to her new circumstances? Do you have first-hand experience with people who've permanently moved to a new country, and if so, how did they adjust?

Ana and her family immigrated from Portugal. Once in Illinois, her father seems determined to assimilate while her mother clings to her Portuguese roots (p. 7-8). Do you think Genoveva would have been happier if she'd tried to adapt to her new circumstances, as her husband insists?

Do you have first-hand experience with people who've permanently moved to a new country, and if so, how did they adjust?

I do believe Genoveva would have happier had she learned some English so she could make some friends.

My own mother was a war bride coming from Vienna in 1948. She spoke English extremely well but found living in the countryside of Virginia difficult since she was a city girl. Her deep love of my father helped her adjust. She began her career in an administrative position when I started elementary school. As she made more friends and had extra income, she enjoyed the lifestyle that could only have been possible in America. My grandmother did visit for months at a time every four or five years. After my two bothers and I were on our own, my mother and father enjoyed several visits to Austria. My mother was extremely proud of her Austrian heritage.

Ana and her father assimilated very well to the culture of America and were happy and successful and yes there were some hurdles they had to overcome but they did thus they felt a part of their adopted country. While Ana's mother did not and kept her old ways and never was happy in her new country. Both of my parents were Jewish refugees from the Nazis and happily adjusted to their new home country and participated actively in their community.

I think that Genoveva would have been much happier in this country if she had made the effort to learn the language and adapt to her new environment. Learning English t would have enabled her to interact more familiarly and comfortably with others on a daily basis and in familiar or similar circumstances. My experience with this has been with secondary students to come to this country with their parents. By enabling them to learn the language in ESL classes at the high school level, they make friends and adapt much more quickly than their parents. Many of them take the language home at night and share it, thereby teaching their parents. Being able to speak makes one more comfortable in every situation.

I agree with all of the writers above that Genoveva would have been more happy had she tried to assimilate. My question is why the author made her lack of adjustment so prominent, but didn't give hints or reasons why. Does anyone else think she really didn't convert to Presbyterianism either and that's why there was the big "blow up" with the father. Once she openly practiced her Catholic faith she was happier.

When I was a child, my parents had a boarder who immigrated from Poland. The idea was that she would live with relatives, but after just several months, she realized she'd never become a functioning citizen if she lived with the Polish speaking relatives. She lived with my family for ten years as she learned to read and write English and to learn a skill and be economically self-sufficient.

I agree with the above writers. Genoveva would have not been so lonely and isolated had she been able to speak English.

Probably. My grandparents came from Ukraine. I didn’t know my maternal grandparents, but they owned a taproom, which brought them into contact with people from the whole neighborhood. Contact with others, whatever the nationality, increases happiness—even my doctors tell me that. Our next-door neighbor married a Russian woman, whom he brought over from Russia. She never adjusted. Even though they remain married, she has returned to Russia with their two children. It’s better there, she claims.

The thing was, I don't feel like Genoveva even reached out within her OWN community. She certainly was isolated. She also kept looking backward to when they were much better off, materially, and not really appreciating the good things around her. So I feel like her unhappiness/depression wasn't simply due to her not learning English, although that had to have been part of it.

In my family, all four of my grandparents came from Hungary and knew little if any English on arriving here. They settled in Hungarian communities and had lots of Hungarian friends, though, so I never felt like any of them were isolated (they even went to a church that had services in Hungarian). They had various degrees of facility with English; one grandmother, who came here as a child, was fluent and spoke with no discernable accent, but another barely spoke it. They both seemed reasonably content, though (as far as a kid could tell!).

yes, I think Genoveva would have been happier if she had learned English. She also found it hard to accept that she had left her family's status behind. She never really found her place or made friends in her new community.

It seemed to me that Genoveva resented changing from being a practicing Catholic to an oppressed Presbyterian whose family turned against her - I assume this conversion happened when she married. She lost her home, her family, her faith tradition - the very things that provided support and stability. She was secretly praying to Mary and the saints and was afraid to live her faith in front of her family but when confronted about it she stood firm. That took a lot of courage and she was happier after that. She was the one to ok Ana’s schooling from the nuns, that may have been as much about her faith as it was about the importance of education.