Why We Love America

I should just say that I love America because America is a nation of strivers, because that is straightforward and true. But there’s another reason that comes to mind: I love America because I see it through my father’s eyes.

When I was a teenager, I asked my father how long it took him to feel at home in the United States. He told me that it didn’t take him any time at all—that he felt more at home in New York than he ever had in his native country.

This didn’t surprise me, exactly. Though my father never lost his strong Bengali accent, and though he had a lifelong love for the Bengali language and literary tradition, he had what I think of as a broad, open, democratic American demeanor. He was the kind of person who’d chat up servers in restaurants, gas station attendants, and other strangers, often to my chagrin. He’d tell jokes in languages I didn’t know he could speak. He was an explorer. As a graduate student in Indiana in the late 1960s, he’d go on long drives to Louisville and Chicago to check out the scene. After a stint in Karachi, he spent time in Holland and Hong Kong—a long way to go for a young man from a tiny island in the Bay of Bengal. But it is America where he found himself, and where he devoted so much energy and effort to helping other strivers make their way.

Unlike my father, I’m not much of an explorer. He had to leave home to find home. I have the good fortune to have been born here. And as he explained to me very clearly, I can never take that for granted.