Personal Introduction

"Who were we? Who were our people? We knew so little. The American experience, the focus on individual achievement, the acquisition of goods and money to prove one's social value, is built on this sense of loss, this alienation from the warmth of the home culture, isolation from genetic bonds. This separation from one's tribe creates an inner loneliness that increases as one ages. There is in many people, especially immigrants, a burning need to complete the puzzle, to find the missing pieces. And what did it do to us, growing up as outsiders, as part of no place... [with] the sense that we were different and somehow tainted?" Annie Proulx, Bird Cloud 20 (2011).