In many ways, Westbye was typical of the Norwegian immigrants who arrived in the U.S. around the turn of the 20th century—one of many young people who left home and embraced a hardscrabble life on the prairie in hopes of building a better future. Between 1836 and 1915 no fewer than 750,000 Norwegians emigrated to North America as part of a broader wave of European migration that has been called history’s largest population relocation. Up until 1890 only Ireland had a higher emigration rate than Norway. Norwegian emigrants moved to the New World to buy cheap land, to achieve personal success, and to enjoy a greater sense of freedom than they had experienced back home.

In other respects, Westbye was special. We know more about her than of most immigrants of her time, and the photographs that tell her story highlight a striking contrast between high culture and rough living conditions that many Norwegians—and other immigrants who came to the U.S.—must have experienced as they arrived. In the record of her life on the prairie, Westbye sometimes seems like a passing guest, adapting herself to a foreign environment while waiting for her life to take a new, American turn.

Norwegian immigrants sent home thousands of photographs and letters, and I have spent around a decade studying this material. Known in Norway as “America-photographs,” these images convey in immediate, visual terms the migration experiences not of heroes, but of ordinary people. Families pose before their homes or workplaces; ears of corn and wheels of cheese suggest American bounty. My family lives in Norway, and we have a photo of my grandfather Tor Lien, mounted on horseback in Montana in 1915. He had hoped to remain in the U.S. but had to return home after the death of his wife, who had stayed behind with their children.

I first discovered the portrait of Mina Westbye at the archives of the Norwegian Emigrant Museum. Amazingly, when I showed the image to a colleague at the University in Bergen, he recognized the young woman as his great-great aunt. He introduced me to Westbye’s then-90-year-old son-in-law, and to her grandchildren. I went to visit them in the U.S., and they let me study their family letters and photographs.

Gradually I was able to assemble an outline of Westbye’s life. Her father was a military officer of lower rank, who deserted his family in 1888 to emigrate to the United States. At the age of 21, his daughter followed, apparently to live with him—though her descendants say he had alcohol problems and had remarried, so she likely understood the necessity of shaping her own future in America.

At the time, one way to make money was to speculate in real estate by becoming a homesteader. According to migration records, Mina Westbye purchased a plot in North Dakota in 1903. She wrote in her letters that she planned to sell the property and use the capital to make her new start in life.

But homesteading laws required that she had to live on the property for three years before she could cash in—so while she sat there, waiting for her real life to begin, Westbye took photographs and wrote letters. The photo of her sitting outside her house on the prairie captures her circumstances neatly. Through the little window facing the photographer, we glimpse ironed curtains. Westbye wears a white lace blouse and a bonnet, and she poses like a young woman from the urban middle class—straight-backed and deeply absorbed in what appears to be a book or magazine. Her posture and grooming stand in strong contrast to the dismal shanty where she lives. A shovel leans against the wall, but her relationship to the landscape seems to be quite different than that of a farmer’s practical, utilitarian perspective. She is focused on what’s next, a world beyond.

The photograph of Westbye’s house on the prairie went home to Norway, but most of her letters during this waiting period were addressed to her future husband, Alfred Gundersen. Gundersen had a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and was teaching there while he continued his academic education in botany. It was probably in Minneapolis where he met Westbye and began writing letters to her while she was living alone in her claim shanty. Their correspondence stretches over a seven-year period, from 1904 to 1911.

The letters are written partly in Norwegian and partly in English. They make clear that Westbye did not always feel safe homesteading on her own. She writes that she owns a gun, but that she is not completely certain how to use it. She doesn’t hide her lack of interest in farming, but she never complains about it either. She spends most of her time on the prairie walking, around 10 miles every day. She tells Gundersen that it is a half mile to fetch milk and water, 16 miles to the nearest store and post office, and 35 miles to the railroad. She reads a lot (though she complains about the difficulties of getting hold of new literature). She embroiders, undertakes botanical studies, presses plants in her herbarium, and studies the moon and stars through a borrowed telescope.

“This is such a peaceful spot, but it can be lonely sometimes, like today,” she wrote Gundersen on April 28, 1905. Westbye tells Gundersen that she loves being “so far away from people and good manners,” and rhapsodizes about the nights, so “beautiful—clear and starry!” But a more civilized life beckons. “It’s blowing, snowing, and raining so much it’s practically impossible to go outdoors … When it is not windy—which by the way is quite infrequent—it’s so quiet you almost feel afraid,” her letter went.

Before too long, Mina Westbye’s life was firmly set on its new path. She began spending part of the year working as a seamstress and photographer in Minneapolis, and later in the small town of Hanska, Minnesota, where she lived with a liberal Unitarian pastor and his wife. She was finally able to sell her homestead property in 1908, and soon returned to Norway.

But perhaps realizing that life had changed her, or perhaps longing for the freedom she had enjoyed in the U.S., she returned in 1911 to marry Gundersen, who had accepted a position as a conservator at the newly-established Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The couple settled north of New York City, a long way from the shanty on the prairie. They had two daughters and vacationed in the Catskill Mountains of New York, an area they chose because of its resemblance to Norway.

Mina Westbye’s descendants are now perhaps more American than Norwegian-American, though they maintain connections with the relatives in Norway. Not long ago I met a member of the Norwegian Westbye branch, who told me that a baby girl had just been born into that family and named after Mina. In Norway they have not forgotten their strong and adventurous aunt.

Other Norwegian Americans who traveled to the United States at the same time as Mina Westbye also saw their lives changed dramatically by the experience of migrating. Today, many of their descendants are searching for their roots back in Norway, perhaps inspired by these images and letters once sent back and forth, still to be found, framed on the wall, in albums, drawers or cupboards, on both sides of the Atlantic.

The post The 21-Year-Old Norwegian Immigrant Who Started Life Over by Homesteading Alone on America’s Prairie appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

My experience—I was trained in Mexico and now practice over the border in Chula Vista, in San Diego County—has taught me about just how vital immigrants are to California’s health care. It’s also shown me that immigrant physicians, like me, can play special roles in medical training and provide services and new perspectives in places where doctors are needed most.

I was born in Monterrey, Mexico, but moved to Tijuana when I was young. Medical school in Mexico is a seven-year program that starts right after high school, giving extensive contact with patients right from the beginning. At the medical school at the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California, I encountered all sorts of people and medical problems, reflecting the diversity of people who live and pass through that border city. I also volunteered as a medical student in the shockingly poor indigenous communities in Baja California del Sur. Mexican medicine is less dependent than American medicine on lab tests, so I became quite good at giving physical exams and talking with the people I treated.

In my 20s, I decided to immigrate to San Diego, as my family grew concerned about violence and crime. I could immigrate quickly with the help of my mother, who is a U.S. citizen, originally from Texas.

At first, I didn’t think I’d be able to stay in California, earn a medical license, and win a residency here. Such positions are very competitive. But then I had the good fortune to get into UCLA’s International Medical Graduate (IMG) program.

The IMG program solves two problems. Medical school graduates from Latin America find it difficult to make the transition to practicing here. And California faces a shortage of doctors in primary care, with more than 600 areas that are defined by the federal government as having a shortage of primary care physicians. Many of those areas are Latino, but fewer than 10 percent of doctors in the state are Latino.

So the IMG program prepares bilingual, bicultural immigrant medical school graduates who reside in the U.S. legally to earn a California medical license and obtain a residency in family medicine. In return, the program’s participants promise to practice in one of the state’s underserved communities for two to three years after their residency is over.

UCLA was great. The program didn’t just help prepare me for the licensing exams and score in the 99th percentile for U.S. students; it also gave me an introduction to the culture of American medicine. I helped teach a Medical Spanish course at Geffen School of Medicine, and, as part of a clerkship, I rotated through the UCLA hospital system. That, and my subsequent internship and residency in family medicine, came with surprises. For all the Latino patients I encountered, I didn’t encounter many Latino doctors. And I was shocked by all the resources and how quickly things happened: in Mexico, my patients had waited days and days to get CT scans, for example.

After residency, I decided to return to San Diego to practice family medicine at Family Health Centers of San Diego’s clinic in the extremely diverse City Heights neighborhood. Technically, this was a requirement of the program, but this is also the medicine I want to practice, in exactly the sort of place where I want to practice. I’ve since transferred to the Family Health Centers of San Diego clinic in Chula Vista.

My patients here remind me of the diverse working people I helped treat in Tijuana. And I’ve tried to use my background and experience on behalf of the community. I started a Spanish-language version of the diabetes group classes here. I often counsel patients who get assigned to specialists but struggle to communicate their needs.

But the value of having foreign-trained doctors is not only about speaking the language, but also about understanding the culture. Sometimes, that makes patients originally from Mexico more willing to share things with me. I’ve had a patient open up to me about rectal bleeding she was experiencing when she wouldn’t talk with other doctors.

In certain circumstances, my background gives me the chance to advocate, or convince my patients to be more assertive. I intervened on behalf of a patient who kept getting injections for an aching back and wouldn’t speak up despite the injections not working. I often remind patients that they have a right to have a translator when they are referred out of our system to see a specialist. And I’ve been able to make some progress convincing mothers from Mexico, where baby formula is highly popular, of the virtues of breast milk.

In family medicine, I have the advantage of seeing multiple generations of a family, from the grandma to the baby. That allows me to understand the family environment and diet and suggest changes that can reduce the risks of diabetes. With elderly patients, who sometimes struggle to read, I’m able to communicate clear dosage instructions through younger relatives. When dealing with a colicky baby, I talk with a grandmother about not feeding them in ways that may contribute to the problem.

And in border communities, I’ve seen treatment become broader and more culturally sensitive because we have both physicians and patients who have migrated from so many different parts of the world. We screen people for a variety of diseases from around the globe, and are very attentive to the risks associated with hepatitis B and other infectious diseases.

When it comes to health care, at least, the border isn’t much of a barrier anymore.

The post ‘When the Baby Has Colic I Talk With the Grandmother’ appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Esteban Nuño was a farmworker. He was born in Tepantla, Jalisco, 70 years ago, the youngest of nine siblings. He left Mexico for the United States in 1964, when he was 20, and found work in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley, picking grapes, oranges and grapefruit. For 50 years, his hands harvested food that fed the nation. It was hard work in which Esteban took great pride and at which he excelled.

In 1971, after settling in Delano, Esteban married a young woman who had immigrated from Zacatecas. The home they shared became a point of contact for family members making their way to el Norte. Esteban and Consuelo lived frugally and saved enough to buy a second modest residence nearby. As some of Esteban’s nephews came north, they and their families stayed in that second house until each family outgrew the place and found homes of their own.

Esteban returned to Jalisco every few years, sometimes taking one of his children or grandchildren with him. His home was now in California, and he would never live in Jalisco again. It probably never crossed Esteban’s mind to calculate how much money he sent back to family members during his decades working in the fields. His hard-earned dollars were part of the billions in remittances that Mexico’s sons and daughters send to their families each year to help buy food, build houses, and maybe fund someone else’s trip north.

Although he spent most of his life in a small agricultural community, Esteban saw history being made, and he made a little history himself. On March 10, 1968, he stood near the tiny Delano airstrip and watched as Sen. Robert F. Kennedy exited a small private plane and was escorted to the United Farm Workers’ headquarters at Forty Acres to help Cesar Chavez break a 25 day fast. Seven years later, after California passed historic legislation granting farmworkers the right to vote in union elections, Esteban was among the first to cast a vote for collective bargaining.

Esteban’s connection to the earth went beyond his work. His backyard was a cornucopia of lemon, peach, grapefruit, and orange trees and plants bearing chilies and tomatoes. Until he was diagnosed with leukemia, and chemotherapy robbed him of his strength, he spent hours each week working a little plot of land in the Delano community garden. He delighted in tending sunflowers that towered over him.

The leukemia beat him after four years. On the day of the funeral, Our Lady of Guadalupe Church was packed with mourners. They came from Delano, Bakersfield, Poplar, Earlimart, Hanford, Fresno, and other agricultural towns hugging the valley’s Highway 99. Esteban’s 72-year-old sister travelled from Jalisco. Nephews and nieces came with their spouses, their children and, their grandchildren. Esteban was my brother-in-law, and I drove from San Diego with my daughter to remember and honor him.

Some of Esteban’s nephews organized food for a reception at the church hall. With their full, round faces and over-sized mustaches, they were living images of their uncle. Men wearing work shirts, work pants, and wide leather belts stood in line for plates of tacos to take to their wives and children sitting at tables throughout the church hall. People who hadn’t seen each other for some time hugged affectionately. A few crying babies needed extra attention. But underneath the outward appearance of normalcy, everyone was grieving deeply for Esteban and remembering what he had meant to them. I will always remember how Esteban gave my son comfort and love and laughter when he needed those things the most.

On Sunday night after the rosary, family members crowded into the small living room of the Nuño home on Albany Street in Delano. His grandson Frankie, now 20, told them a story:

Two years earlier, a few days after his birthday, Frankie was visiting his abuelito when Esteban beckoned him over to the northwest corner of the front yard. Esteban pointed to a pine tree that Frankie had seen many times. Then he pointed to a small, rectangular piece of wood, attached to the tree with wire. “8-23-94 F.R.” was carved into the wood. Frankie’s birthdate and initials. His abuelito smiled broadly and told his grandson that he had planted the tree the day Frankie was born. It was a secret Esteban had kept from everyone, even Consuelo, for 18 years.

Esteban must have loved caring for that special tree, watching it mature, patiently waiting for the day when he would tell his grandson how he had celebrated Frankie’s birth. Frankie’s tree, in the corner of the yard on Albany Street in Delano, California, stands as a living tribute to a man who, by his example, taught his children and grandchildren about the value and dignity of all work and about dedication to family.

In Esteban Nuño, Mexico had sent one of its best.

The post A Eulogy for a Delano Farmworker appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The post First Comes Immigration Reform, Then Comes … What? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.