Getty images; Tyler Le/BI
Their families came to America for different reasons: opportunity, education, safety. Decades later, some of their children — first-generation Americans — chose to go in the other direction.
I am one of them.
I was born in New York, the only member of my family with a US passport at the time. I grew up between America and Japan, and for the past 17 years, I’ve been living and raising my family in Singapore. My parents are from Argentina, though they were both first-generation Argentines: my father was born in Austria, and my mother’s family came from the UK.
So when someone asks where I’m from, I usually pause. Are they asking where I was born? Where I grew up? Where I live now? Or where my roots lie? Do they want the short version or the one that spans continents, cultures, and generations?
Over time, I’ve learned not to shrink that complexity into a sound bite. It has also made me more curious about how others navigate that same in-between space.
That curiosity led me to connect with other first-generation Americans who also chose to leave the US and return to the places their families had once left behind. The result is this collection of features, essays, and profiles about people who walked away from their parents’ dreams — and, in many ways, from the American Dream.
Last year, the Association of Americans Resident Overseas — a nonprofit that advocates for US citizens living abroad — estimated that 5.5 million Americans reside overseas. It’s a rough estimate based on international census data and doesn’t include military personnel stationed abroad. It’s unclear how many of them are first-generation Americans or how far back their family roots extend.
Some of these millions of Americans are chasing job opportunities, others a lower cost of living, or just a new adventure.
Lily Wu, now a compliance professional, was born in the US to Chinese parents who had come to study. She grew up in Boston and spent a lot of her childhood trying to be “fully American.” In her 20s, she moved to Hong Kong, reconnecting with a part of herself she felt had faded. “Now I find myself wanting to be more Chinese,” she said.
Catherine Shu’s parents were “shocked” when she told them she was giving up her dream publishing job in New York City and moving to Taipei. They had left Taiwan to pursue careers as architects in the US.
Ai Vuong, a filmmaker whose parents had immigrated to Texas from Vietnam through the Humanitarian Operation program, said her parents viewed Vietnam as a place they had escaped. But for her, it was a place she felt pulled to, a place she wanted to live.
Each of their stories reflects a familiar tension: between assimilation and belonging, between who we’re told to be and who we ultimately become.
Read on, and if any of these stories speak to you, or if you have your own story of relocation, working and living abroad, or walking away from the American dream, I’d love to hear from you at [email protected].
Credits
Editors: Alexandra Karplus, Lina Batarags
Reporters: Lavender Au, Faye Bradley, Amanda Goh, Alexandra Karplus, Raphael Rashid, Catherine Shu
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