Parenting with an Accent How Immigrants Honor Their Heritage, Navigate Setbacks, and Chart New Paths for Their Children

by Rumer, Masha

• ISBN13: 9780807021873
• ISBN10: 0807021873
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780807021941
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2021-11-30
• Publisher: Beacon Press
• More Book Details
• Purchase Benefits

Summary

Winner of the 2023 Sarton Award for Nonfiction

Merging real stories with research and on-the-ground reporting, an award-winning journalist and immigrant explores multicultural parenting and identity in the US

Through her own stories and interviews with other immigrant families, award-winning journalist Masha Rumer paints a realistic and compassionate picture of what it’s like for immigrant parents raising a child in America while honoring their cultural identities. Parenting with an Accent speaks to immigrant and non-immigrant readers alike, incorporating a diverse collection of voices and experiences to provide an intimate look at the lives of many different immigrant families across the country.

With a compelling blend of empirical data, humor, and on-the-ground reportage, Rumer presents interviews with experts on various aspects of parenting as an immigrant, including the challenges of acculturation, bilingualism strategies, and childcare. She visits a children’s Amharic class at an Ethiopian church in New York, a California vegetable farm, a Persian immersion school, and more. Through these stories, she opens a window to a world of parenting unique to multicultural families. Immigrant readers will appreciate Rumer’s gentle message about the kind of ethnic and cultural ambivalence that is born of having roots planted in many different soils, while in these pages non-immigrants get a fly-on-the-wall view of the unique experiences of newcomers.

Deeply researched yet personal, Parenting with an Accent centers immigrants and their experiences in a new country—emphasizing how immigrants and their children remain an integral part of America’s story.

Author Biography

Masha Rumer is an award-winning journalist and freelance writer. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Quartz, the Moscow Times, Parents.com, SFWeekly, Volume 1 Brooklyn, and elsewhere. An immigrant from the former Soviet Union, she now lives with her family in California, where she is navigating the nuances of multicultural and interfaith parenting. You can find her online at masharumer.com and on Twitter @MashaDC.

Table of Contents

Preface

1.
I Am the Grinch Who Stole Christmas

2.
The Beet Test

3.
Then Comes Baby in a Baby Carriage

4.
Vodka Rubs and Other Family Advice

5.
The Polyglot Boardinghouse

6.
Bilingualism: An Uphill Battle, Sometimes

7.
Standing Watch

8.
The Experts Weigh In

9.
Nannies and Daycares and Grandmas, Oh My!

10.
Protests and Myths

11.
Live and Learn

12.
“They Say Little Racist Things”

13.
Between Two Worlds

14.
Finding Home

Acknowledgments
Notes