Caddis Collaborative job captain Cathy Dong moved from China to the United States when she was in high school. The next year, while still in high school, she was assigned to read Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake in her AP literature class. The novel tells the story of Gogol, a second-generation son of first-generation Indian parents. Cathy responded strongly to the novel, which speaks to many of the cultural transitions and differences she was encountering as an international student in the United States.
Cathy describes her move to the United States as a kind of “cultural shock.” Adjusting to life as a high school student in Bangor, Maine, and adopting an American name were two of the many transitions she experienced.
Later, when she enrolled at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to earn a bachelor of architecture degree, she encountered a much more diverse community than the one in Maine. Some of her friends were second-generation children of immigrants and were experiencing some of the same tensions with their parents that Gogol faces with his first-generation parents.
Cathy has been able to go home to China to visit her family, but she has found that “home is a little different now – I had to get used to it again.”
