By Shelli Fedullo
Our Summer issue included part of a conversation among colleagues, each American-born with one or both parents who had emigrated to the United States. Katayun (Kathy) Jaffari, Kristine Calalang, and Vikram (Vik) Patel joined me to share family stories and first-generation American experiences and perspectives. We all knew each other, I knew that their backgrounds aligned with my interview concept, but otherwise I used no “methodology” in assembling the group. I was very hopeful the dynamic would encourage discussion. The group’s candor, warmth, energy, trust, and mutual kindness went beyond my hopes. Thank you, Kathy, Kristine, and Vik. The dynamic also resulted in a very long transcript, which albeit having been divided into two edited and condensed parts, the second of which follows, captures the heart of a heartfelt discussion.
PART ONE RECAP
Kathy Jaffari‘s parents emigrated from Iran. Her father, a physician recruited by the U.S. government, arrived in the mid-1950’s. He returned to Iran in the early 1960’s. In 1964, he and Kathy’s mother arrived together in the U.S. following their marriage.
Kristine Calalang’s parents emigrated from the Philippines. Kristine’s father, a nuclear electrical mechanical engineer, was recruited to work in the U.S.
Vik Patel’s father emigrated from India in 1978 to pursue graduate studies in mechanical engineering at the University of Iowa. Vik’s mother is from Nebraska and can trace her lineage to before the American Revolution. His stepmother emigrated from India in 2002.
Shelli Fedullo’s father was from a region in Transylvania that at various times was part of Hungary. A Holocaust survivor, he emigrated as a teenager after WWII having lost his immediate family and his home. Shelli’s mother, a first-generation American was born in Philadelphia.
Fedullo: Starting with Kathy, when did you develop an awareness of being first-generation American, how and why?
Jaffari: That is a phenomenal question. I love the mix of people we have here with so many similarities. It will be interesting to see the differences. In the sixties, right, wrong, or indifferent, it was all about assimilation. I was born in ‘69. My sister was born in ‘65. It was all about being American. It was not about being first generation. In school, we were very cognizant that we were American. We were born here. We spoke English. We personally didn't have an accent, and so it didn't resonate. In grade school, when teachers would get to my name, they stopped because there was nobody who had a foreign name. When they would stop, I knew it was me. I would say, “you can call me Kathy.” I always joke that’s my name - you can call me Kathy - in quotes. But again, it still didn't resonate. I always was Kathy. I never used Katayun. I probably didn't start using Katayun until middle to late 2000s and still very few people call me Katayun, and I don't usually call myself Katayun.
We had our Iranian culture in the home, Iranian rugs, the language, the food, etc., but when we stepped out it was not so. I always had feet in two different worlds. I think that's what makes me so comfortable and desirous of being with all different types of people. I don't know all the Iranian culture.
I would like to think more about this, but it could be when culturally in the U.S. there was a shift, and this beautiful pride in being both American and first-generation American occurred. There was this immense pride to be able to say, “I'm first- generation.” I'm not sure I could tell you when that was, but for me personally that probably wasn't until the ‘90s, post college.
Calalang: I have always been aware of being first-generation since when you see me, I am an Asian person. I don't turn this off. Visually, you look different than other people. It’s called being considered the perpetual foreigner, even if you were born in the U.S. Growing up, my parents always told me where our family came from. These are the people you come from. These are strong people; these are the leaders you come from. You have value in and of yourself, you have something important to bring. Your family has value.
I grew up in Medford, New Jersey, a South Jersey suburb which I love very much, but it was not very diverse. There were just a few Asian people, with only two Filipino families in Medford. There was a bigger Filipino community in Cherry Hill, and we had friends there who we visited. It was a community where everyone takes care of you, and maybe more so for me because I was probably the youngest in the friend group. There's comfort where everyone already knows who you are - it feels like always being with family. My parents speak “Taglish” with family, part Tagalog, part English. They mainly spoke English to my brother and me, but I can generally understand Tagalog. My parents and I think you'll always have the tension of assimilation, and there’s sort of a cognitive dissonance. You love the American culture. You love your Filipino culture. When I say I'm Filipino American, I don't know anything other than to be American but know my family's background. I was born here and grew up here. This is my culture. You can learn about your culture from back home, which I have, but I have never lived anywhere else. I always want to make sure people understand that you can represent and celebrate both cultures. In the Philippines, it was customary in my parents' family's homes to have people working for you in your house. When I visited the Philippines when I was young this confused me. When you want some food, you're not supposed to just burst into the kitchen. Someone will go prepare it for you. Clothes were laid out. A warm bath would already be drawn. I have to say my awareness of cultural differences and similarities was an ongoing process as I grew up.
In Filipino culture, food is love. You go to a Filipino's house, and it doesn't matter whether you had just eaten a whole buffet, it is always what do you want to eat? And as you're about to answer, they're already getting or preparing something. When my mom came here, she wanted to cook cultural food from the Philippines, but she had to learn how to cook because it was done for her back home. She learned from family and friends in the Filipino community. She then expanded and learned to cook other kinds of ethnic foods very well, such as Italian food, French food, Mexican food, etc. That was an interesting thing in our house. Growing up, I had lots of friends who always wanted to come to my house to eat. I think the love language of food helped me to educate them and had the power to show that different isn't bad and that we can enjoy each other's cultures.
Fedullo: Vik, you have American lineage dating back to before 1776 on your mother’s side of your family. Your father emigrated here from India in 1978. When, how, and why did you become aware of being, in part, first-generation American?
Patel: As Kristine said, it’s ever present because it's visually there. I don’t turn it off and on. I grew up in Iowa and there weren't exactly a ton of Indian people or even many non-white people around. Through most of my schooling, and all of elementary school, there was only one other non-white person in my grade.
My mom's white. Throughout a lot of our childhood, my mom would regularly get stopped at the grocery store with comments like, “oh, it's so great that you adopted all these kids.” This happened regularly, almost every year, which is why it's so memorable. The interactions were short. She’d say something like, “no, these are my kids,” and then we would get out of there.
When teachers would call on me in school, I'd be the only person with a name that they wouldn’t be familiar with. I would try to save the teacher - there was the pause, and I’d say, “that's me.” To Kathy’s point about having a name that people can easily attach to, it’s one of the reasons I go by Vik. When people can't say your name or have trouble with your name, they're less likely to interact with you. They're uncomfortable interacting with you because they don't want to be embarrassed. One of the things about being first-generation growing up outside of a related community is that you are kind of the stranger in both communities. You are not seen as American enough to be American, not Indian enough to be Indian. This isn’t only while just growing up. Last year, I had a conversation about Indian politics with the dad of a friend who is Indian. It got kind of heated. At one point he said I was just thinking that way because I am not a real Indian. He was losing the argument and just attacked. The thing is it does reinforce the feeling of being a stranger in both communities.
Jaffari: It’s so fascinating what you have said. Your statement about not being seen as 100% Indian or 100 % percent American is impactful.
Fedullo: For me, real awareness came much later in life. I'm Jewish, and growing up I identified culturally with being Jewish, not really with my roots in other countries. I speak only for myself, but I think that’s fairly common. I knew my father was from Hungary. He had an accent, but so did other people regularly around me - my grandfather and my father’s friends. I grew up in Logan, mainly a working-class neighborhood. There were kids in my elementary school from other countries. I knew other kids whose parents had accents. A lot of the small store owners - the bakery, the candy store, the grocery store - spoke with accents. There was nothing out of the ordinary about being around immigrants or having an immigrant parent. I am white, so unlike Kristine and Vik, there was nothing visually about me, and even my last name, Hollender, which I used until I got married, didn’t sound particularly ethnic. This may seem like a disconnect, but from a young age I identified very strongly with being the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. I clearly remember first finding it out. I was a little girl and asked my father why he had numbers on his arm. I had seen them before but had never asked. He was caught off guard and said they were his girlfriend's telephone number, I guess hoping to sidetrack me with a joke. I got very indignant and said, “what do you mean, Mommy's your girlfriend.” He then said he meant his old girlfriend, but it was too late. I immediately went to my mother to complain. In the gentlest and simplest possible way, she told me about a very bad man named Hitler who did very bad things and my father had the numbers because of those bad things. I remember crying a lot.
It wasn’t until 2017, the first time I spoke as the Association’s representative at a naturalization ceremony, that I really connected with being first-generation American. I thought about my own immigrant roots and spoke about my father’s story. Most people were very dressed up, many brought family members, and took pictures with the presiding judge, the other speaker and me. People beamed when they were called up to get their certificates. It really hit me - this is a very big deal, an important, meaningful occasion. It drove home that I had always taken being an American for granted and had never thought of myself in terms of being first-generation.
Jaffari: That’s the beauty of this - listening to each other. What resonates with me in telling my story and hearing all of your stories is where we are and what we received, knowing that we have both cultures in us and the impact that immigrants can have on a society.
Fedullo: We have already touched on this, but I would like to expand the discussion. What was your family’s status - however you want to define or approach it - in their country of origin, relative to here, and any thoughts about how that relates to the American dream, however you view that. Kathy, you shared that your father was from a poor neighborhood, and your mother from a middle or upper middle-class background.
Jaffari: Certainly, my father was more comfortable here, no question. He had to walk miles to go to school. His father died when he was nine. His mother died when he was 14. His sister died in his arms when she was two years old. These are usually not the kind of stories that our friends with families who are here for generations have. My father was a physician for Episcopal Hospital. We grew up middle class in the 70’s. We lived in row homes in the far northeast which I loved. We went to public schools - private school was not even an option. One car was more than enough. Again, my father did better here, and my mother did fine, and we were always just comfortable.
We were told, and I think this is a typical immigrant story, that money doesn't grow on trees. You save. You save for your future. You better get straight A's. An A- or anything below an A is failing. I'm not suggesting in the least that this is only true in immigrant families, but with my first-generation or immigrant friends, we definitely had that discipline, but with the discipline was this immense unconditional love that is overpowering. I had all the love I ever desire with my parents and my sister. Whatever we had, whatever was on the table, we had this unconditional love and support in the home. It always resonated with me that we were lucky.
People would say, your father's a doctor, you must live in the Main Line. I didn't know what the Main Line was until I started at Saul Ewing. I was 25 years old, new at a law firm. Somebody told me we’re going to the Main Line to the managing partner’s house, I thought we were traveling to another city. They said, “Kathy, we have to teach you what the Main Line is.” My reaction was, “that’s okay - I'm a northeast public-school girl and I loved it.”
Calalang: To Kathy’s point, you get a 97 on a test, and the question is what happened to the other three points? I try not to do that to my son. Both my parents’ families were well positioned in the Philippines, and valued education and hard work. My mother’s family’s house covers a city block, a big walled complex including a place where domestic help lived. They were very, very, comfortable, and the Laurel family has a great reputation and is very well known - there is a Laurel Highway. My maternal grandfather was a lawyer and became the head of the equivalent of the FBI. My mom's great uncle, also a lawyer, rose through high levels of government, served as an associate justice of the Philippine Supreme Court, and ultimately served as president of the Philippines. Still her family was modest and kind - you don’t flash what you have, and you are good to the people around you. For my mom it was an adjustment coming from that background to a place where nobody knows you. She also had to learn to do the things that had been done for her at home. But the company that recruited my father set them up in a very nice place in Pittsburgh where they first started out. My mother came from the province of Batangas, and my dad from the province of Bulacan. He also lived in Manila for many years before coming to the U.S. He was used to being in a big city, so he was probably a little more prepared for Pittsburgh than my mom was.
On my dad's side, my grandfather was the personal doctor for General Wainwright when he was in the Philippines and served in the United States Army Forces Far East as a major. When my grandfather was sadly killed in action, lovely things were done to honor him and our family by the U.S.
But it is also important to remember some history. The Bataan Death March in 1942 affected many Filipino families. About 78,000 prisoners, of which about 66,000 were Filipinos, were forcibly marched at gunpoint over 65 miles, then loaded into boxcars. Many unfortunately died along the way. There were people from my family who survived, and people from my family who sadly died. That is part of our background.
We love America and believe in the American dream. My family has worked hard and been fortunate to live in nice areas with great educational opportunities. In addition to my father’s engineering career, my family had a small business. Their work helped build something new, and contributed to the local community which is part of the American dream
Patel: It was a bit up and down on my father’s side. The village where my grandpa grew up was very undeveloped. Their house didn't have electricity, didn't have running water. My grandpa studied in England to become an accountant. Moving to England was the first time that he had a pair of closed shoes. He became successful, and was able to move to Calcutta, and eventually was the owner of a glue factory.
My dad grew up very well off and then moved to the U.S. Because of limitations back then on what he could bring in -I think it was something like $100 - he had to leave that all behind. My dad always tells the story about this one restaurant he would go to in Iowa because he could buy one hamburger and get through his day. I have mentioned the surplus Korean war jacket that he bought which he thought would keep him warm in sub-zero Iowa weather. We held onto it forever - that was just part of the mentality. I used that jacket when I was a teenager. The immigrant story is kind of starting over when you're here, which is what my father, who has a good career as an engineer, has done.
Fedullo: My father’s family was fairly affluent. They owned a lot of land -vineyards - all confiscated. My mother told me many times to try to claim my father’s land, but I had no idea of its location or how to track it down. Even if I knew, the mechanics and feasibility of pursuing a claim were daunting. My father planned to go to university and become a doctor, feasible for him. As I have said, there are gaps in what I know, but sometime between ages 13 to 15, possibly when he was still 12, he was taken to Auschwitz, the first of several concentration camps he survived. His mother and two youngest siblings had been taken away and were never seen again. His father and brother both died in one of the camps, his father of typhus, his brother in a way my mother would not tell me until far into my adulthood. HIAS brought my father to the U.S. after the war. Before leaving Europe, he was trained to be a tailor, I am pretty sure by an organization named ORT. I am not sure how or when he learned to speak, read, and write in English. I do know he got his GED here. He had a good job as the head of the tailoring shop at a men’s clothing store. Some Philadelphia based singing groups in the 50’s shopped there, and he did their fittings and suit customizations. They were very good tippers and signed autographs for my teenaged aunt. Every so often he went to Washington to take measurements for custom made suits for Secret Service agents which would accommodate their weapons etc. It was very important to him to always be well dressed, in part for his job, but I am sure also because of his past experiences. My father dressed beautifully, and his clothes were perfectly tailored. I was so proud of the way he looked. I remember how thrilled he was when he got his first car, a Chevy Impala.
My father came here out of necessity. It was a place of refuge for him. The life he thought he would have had was stolen, but he survived the unimaginable and built a new life. He married a wonderful woman, worked hard at a good job, had a child. Still, I feel somewhat conflicted when I think about him in terms of the American dream, but he set the stage for me.
Jaffari: That resonates with me. I think our parents’ American dream is us, where we are and how we're contributing back to society. We learned from our parents to give back because they were grateful for what they received here in America.
Rochelle M. Fedullo is a former chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, co-editor in chief of The Philadelphia Lawyer magazine and of counsel to The Weitz Firm, LLC.
Kathy Jaffari is 2025 Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association. You can reach her at chancellor@philabar.org.
Kristine Calalang is 2025 Vice Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association. She is also owner of The Law Office of Kristine L. Calalang.
Vikram Patel is 2025 Chair of the Board of Governors of the Philadelphia Bar Association. He is also managing attorney at Community Legal Services.
