The immigrant advantage

Journalist Claudia Kolker has learned that a wide variety of cherished customs are brought to the United States by immigrant groups, often adapted to American life by the second generation in a distinctive blending of old and new. Taken together, these extraordinary traditions may well contribute to what's known as "the immigrant paradox," the growing evidence that immigrants, even those from poor or violence-wracked countries, tend to be both physically and mentally healthier than most native-born Americans. These customs are unfamiliar to most Americans, but they shouldn't be. Honed over centuries, they provide ingenious solutions to daily challenges most of us face and provide both social support and comfort. Fascinated by the success of immigrant friends, Claudia Kolker examines Mexican, other Latin American, Vietnamese, Korean and Indian (South Asian) immigrant communities, and dives with gusto into some of the customs herself, experimenting to see how we might all fit them into our lives.--From publisher description. "Do you have a relative or friend who would gladly wait on you, hand and foot, for a full month after you had a baby? How about someone to deliver a delicious, piping hot home-cooked meal, just like your mother's, right to your front door after work? Do you know people you'd trust enough to give several hundred dollars a month to, with no receipt, on the simple promise that the accumulated wealth will come back to you a year later? Not many of us can answer 'yes' to these questions. But as award-winning journalist Claudia Kolker has discovered, each of these is one of a wide variety of cherished customs brought to the United States by immigrant groups, often adapted to American life by the second generation in a distinctive blending of old and new.^ Taken together, these extraordinary traditions may well contribute to what's known as 'the immigrant paradox, ' the growing evidence that immigrants, even those from poor or violence-wracked countries, tend to be both physically and mentally healthier than most native-born Americans. These customs are unfamiliar to most Americans, but they shouldn't be. Honed over centuries, they provide ingenious solutions to daily challenges most of us face and provide both social support and comfort. They range from Vietnamese money clubs that help people save and Mexican cuarentenas--a forty-day period of rest for new mothers--to Korean afterschools that offer highly effective tutoring at low cost and Jam

שנה

2011

שפה

English

הוצאה

Free Press

מהדורות

3

עמודים

239

ISBN

9781416586821

מקור הנתונים: Wikidata