The End of the Line!

Well here we are, at the end of the blog. It doesn’t seem like its been 10 weeks, but I guess it has been! I really hope that my readers have learned a little about Azorean Portuguese people living in the Bay Area and their history. I have to admit, when I started this blog I did have ulterior motives (see the next paragraph), but for the most part I looked at this blog as a way to better understand a part of my cultural identity that I have often looked down upon (because my grandparents were so uneducated and superstitious) and viewed as a nuisance a lot of the time. Now, I can really appreciate how the struggles of my grandparents were all in an effort to improve their lives, and by extension my life, and I can appreciate and see Portuguese contributions and connections to Bay Area history. They may not have been the biggest names in the Bay Area, but they certainly had a hand in a lot of aspects of the Bay Area culture.

Living in California, and especially the Bay Area, we have a wonderful fusion of hundreds of different cultures, which makes for a great amount of diversity in every possible way. On any given day in bigger cities like San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Daly City, Fremont, etc., the average person can hear several different languages being spoken. Despite this great diversity, I have always felt an attitude that comes along with it. Many times in my life, I have been talking with people about ethnic heritage. When it gets to my turn, I always respond, “oh I’m half Portuguese, a quarter Italian, and the rest is Irish and English”, and I usually get the response “oh, so you mean white.” Now more than ever, this reaction really makes me mad. In trying to boil down my ethnicity into one race, people basically devalue not only my cultural background, but every cultural background that can be classified as white. Why should being white make me some how culturally inferior and not worthy of historical exploration? If anything, I hope that my blog has made people at least think about this stereotype and how racist it actually is. Could you imagine if someone told me they were half Chinese and half Japanese and my response was “oh, so you mean Asian?” I would definitely get death stares and be labeled racist or politically incorrect or culturally insensitive. One last thought on this rant, and then I’ll be done—When you fill out forms like job applications, the census, college applications, and so on, they ask for ethnicity, but not in an equal way. For example, the major site for teaching applications in California asks your race as white, black, Asian Indian, Native American, and then 13 other options for Asian and Pacific Islander ethnicities and one specific area to check if you are Hispanic/Latino. Why? Why should the Asian ethnicities or Hispanic/Latino ethnicities count above white or black, and why is it more important to state your specific origin? Why is there no option for European American, or Atlantic Islander? Some days, when I get annoyed with these questions, I will check other and write either “European American” or “Atlantic Islander” because that’s what I am and it shouldn’t matter any less or any more than anyone else.

Ok rant over. Like I said, hopefully my blog has made the reader think about culture in a way that’s different from the traditional teachings of culture. For the future of history, I would really hope that the experiences of immigrant children can be given more credence and attention, because I think their experiences are valid and very relatable. I would also like to see more access to histories. For example, I was unable to access a lot of newspaper archives without paying fees to get in. I can see the point of the company, needing to make money and everything, but it still isn’t very fair to the reader. I also had about 6 books I wanted to look into and possibly use in my blog, but half were out of print and the other half weren’t in any libraries and could only be purchased (sometimes, they come in and out of stock) on a Portuguese publications website. I’d also like to know what’s up with not being able to access legislation, like the Azorean Refugee Acts in 1958 and 1960. All I could access on the subject was secondary sources and some newspaper articles from 2008 about legislation to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the act. I hope that in the future, legislation could be digitized and more accessible on a greater scale to help future historians. Finally, for future historians of Azoreans, I would like to see histories written for the average reader, not just for Azoreans or just for historians, but for anyone who might want to know more about Azoreans. A lot of the histories I read were very dry or very long and focusing on details only Azoreans from the Azores would really want to know about (On a side note, I found that the focus on genealogy and storytelling, even if your audience has no idea who/what you are talking about, is a part of Portuguese culture, and not just annoying people like my dad’s cousins and uncles!).  Stories Grandma Never Told did a really good job of personalizing history with personal narratives, which also helped make the history more relatable and accessible to non-historians and non-Portuguese who might just want an insight into a cultural identity so prevalent across the state.

Now I’d like to say thank you and goodnight to my audience, whoever you may be. Hopefully you learned a little something, even something as minute as there are a lot of Portuguese people in California and the Bay Area! 

Museum Exhibits

After visiting the Portuguese Historical Museum in San Jose and reading through secondary sources like Stories Grandma Never Told, I think the biggest contribution I would like to see my research bring to a museum is the immigrant story of Azorean children and youths. This story seems to be mainly overlooked by historians, even though this is a valid and large segment of the population. Youth can provide insight into culture clashes, like education and making friends, as well as generational friction and family dynamics and how those were (or weren’t) affected by immigrating to the Bay Area.

Through my interviews with Mary and my uncle Joe, I was able to see the stark differences in views of immigration through the eyes of two different child immigrants. One focused on the positives of the immigration experience, like access to conveniences and entertainment, while the other focused on the realities of the immigration experience, like feeling alien, sitting in a classroom not understanding what was going on with no one to help you (in the days before schools had ESL programs), and having to become a translator for your parents as well as their friends. In Stories Grandma Never Told, there were interview with a few women who were school-aged children when they immigrated who also focused on different details. One talked about crying every day because of the frustrations and teasing she encountered at school, while another talked about her very real fears of her mother dying in child birth, which would force her into the role of her mother until her father remarried or she married. Still, another talked about culture struggles between her teachers at school, who saw her as a bright student who deserved at least a high school diploma, if not a college degree, and her parents, who only went to school the mandated amount of time in the Azores, so their daughter should only need the same amount of schooling they got and she should go to work like an adult. Each of these tales focuses on immigration from the perspective of a child and they all look at the immigration experience in a slightly different way. These stories are invaluable to the overall immigrant story of the Azoreans and should be given as much time and research as adults.

I think this topic could be integrated into a museum exhibit in several different ways. First, like the Portuguese Historical Museum in San Jose, stories could be posted in static, two-dimensional boards on the wall, with pictures to add to the story. To add to the traditional exhibit, I think it would be really interesting to have an audio segment, with oral histories to go along with the pictures and written accounts. I also think it would be interesting, but maybe only to me, to have examples of clothes actually worn by children in the Azores. The Portuguese Historical Museum had a section of folk clothes and band uniforms, but not clothes people would have actually worn, day in and day out. It stood out to me in my uncle’s story that when he came to America he got his second pair of shoes ever, and he was 11 when he got here! I personally think it would be interesting to see what type of shoes he would have worn when he was in the Azores and what condition they would have been in. This could really put into context the conveniences America had to offer not just children but adults as well. Another element the museum exhibit could add is textbooks from the Azores, as well as necessary written information, like students had to purchase the books themselves and take care of them because there wasn’t any money to buy a replacement. In Manuel Bettencourt’s interview with UC Berkeley’s Regional Oral History Office, he spoke about an incident where a student dropped is book in the outhouse and had to haul it out and try to clean it as best he could, but never being able to get rid of that smell. To speak to the immigrant youth’s experiences in California schools, I think it would be interesting to have a quiz in Portuguese, either through an audio segment or given by a docent, and ask the listener to give the correct answers, or even just to translate what was being said. This would give visitors to the museum a little taste of the alienation Azorean students faced when they came to school in America and didn’t have the resources available to them to learn English quickly. I mentioned docents earlier, and I think it would be interesting to have docents of different ages at the museum who could speak to their own immigration experiences, giving a well-rounded view of immigration from people who were different ages when the immigrated and who immigrated in different eras; clearly someone who immigrates now will have a much different experience from someone who immigrated in the 1950s or 1970s.

In conclusion, though childhood immigration experiences have been largely overlooked by historians of Azorean immigrants, I believe that their experiences are valid and create a well-rounded picture of the entire immigration experience for the Azorean culture. By including a historical exhibit focusing on the experiences of the children, we could gain more understanding of the experience and we could empathize with our own experiences with school, bullies, and generational differences.

Why YOU should be interested in the history of Bay Area Azoreans!

When asked why my research matters, of course I would say it’s an important story, as would any Azorean living in California. But to really understand why the story of the Azorean Portuguese in California is a valid story worth looking in to, I think we need to put the story in terms of other stories we have looked at through the quarter.

            The United States is a nation of immigrants, California is alternatively considered a melting pot or salad, and the bay area is a microcosm of California. There are major histories on the experience of the Japanese and Chinese in the bay area, and research into many of the minority groups found within the area, but the stories of the Portuguese are less widely known. Through my research I was surprised to find historical works specifically about the Azoreans in California, but none were well known and none had all the information I sought. The story of Portuguese immigrants is just that—a story of immigrants coming to America and working through the cultural frictions of that move. Similar to how Russell K. Skowronek and Cecilia Tsu’s articles are about specific ethnic groups (Ohlone, Spanish missionaries, and single Chinese men) that can be used to apply to the broader story of the Bay Area and California, the story of Portuguese immigrants can also be used to represent the broader story of the Bay Area and California.

            My research didn’t focus on a specific time period of history, but the biggest wave of Portuguese immigration was 1960-1980s. What my research has shown about this era is that this was a time of increased immigration for everyone, not just specifically the Portuguese. Although, in 1958 and 1960, Congressional acts were passed specifically to alleviate immigration restrictions for refugees of the volcanic activity in the Azores in the late 1950s. Unfortunately, there isn’t much information about these acts, other than the fact that they were passed and commemorated in 2008 on their 50^th anniversary, but really no information into the acts themselves at all or historical perspectives on the acts. Research still needs to be done into this topic, because as it stands now, you would think that the Portuguese were a silent immigrant group that seamlessly transitioned into American culture with little fanfare or disruptions, and that simply cannot be true. As I saw with the Holy Ghost Festas, aspects of Portuguese culture altered Californian and Bay Area culture significant, yet sometimes small, ways.

            The story of Azorean immigrants in the Bay Area is a uniquely Bay Area story because it is a story of immigrants. Our nation is a country of immigrants, and nowhere is that fact more discernable than in the Bay Area. You can meet people from any country imaginable in this area and you can find food from almost any country imaginable. Skowronek’s article talks about cultural syncretism between the Spanish Catholic missionaries and the native pagan Ohlone of the Bay Area, where the Ohlone superficially converted to Catholicism, thereby assimilating to the new dominant culture, but they also retained a lot of their native culture through syncretism. For the Azoreans, many were quick to assimilate into American culture because American culture offered so many conveniences and opportunities for stability. Yet the Azoreans retained many aspects of their culture, such as their work ethic, their agricultural skills, and through their religion, the Holy Ghost Festas. These festas are now a big part of California and the Bay Area, and can be found all over the state. Each festa is centered around the same beliefs and traditions, but each is unique in its own way. In the Central Valley, you can find bloodless bullfights, and in the Bay Area, the focus is more on the tasty treats that come from the kitchen at the community dinners. In the Bay Area, you can also find a Portuguese cultural museum, and in June, a weekend long celebration of the Portuguese culture in the Bay Area. So while many aspects of Azorean culture were changed upon immigration and assimilation, the Azoreans also left their mark on California and the Bay Area, adding to its unique status as a state full of immigration stories.

            There are tons of questions left to be explored, questions that are hard to find historical evidence for. Personally, I wanted more information on superstitions within the Azorean culture, and whether or not these superstitions changed or vanished upon immigration. My grandparents had a lot of funky superstitions and I’ve never been able to find verification of those superstitions or really any information on superstitions within the Azorean community, in the United States or the Azores. I would also like to see more research into the cultural friction experienced by immigrants. None of the books I read or primary sources I consulted focused on immigration issues, but rather focused on the triumphs of immigration. America was the land of opportunity where the American dream was achievable, and that’s how the sources I read portrayed the Azoreans view of America. Azoreans are used to hard work and harsh living conditions from their life in the Azores, so I could see that they would view life in America as a wholly better life and overlook the cultural frictions, but I can’t believe that there were none. In the book about Portuguese women, the girls who immigrated as children did talk about the cultural frictions experienced in school, mainly in the form of teasing and feeling completely lost and alone because of the language divide and lack of close family and friends nearby. I would also like to see more research into possible examples of discrimination against the Azoreans in the Bay Area. I couldn’t really find any information about this, but I’m sure it happened, its just a question of to what degree did the discrimination effect the lives of the Portuguese immigrants. 

Bullfights and Bilingualism

For this blog, I decided to read a little more into bullfights in California and bilingualism and biculturalism in Azorean immigrants. I also found for this entry that there are not many primary sources that pertain to my topic left that I haven’t covered myself, and the things that do exist, I do not have access to. But, I did the best I could with what I could find.

The first article I looked at was actually from the LA Times writing about the bullfights that can be found at the Central Valley festas. In “Tradition of the Azores Takes Root in Central Valley Bullrings,” author Diana Marcum looks at how the bullfights in California have preserved part of Azorean Portuguese culture, and how they have been changed by California. These bullfights have deep rooted tradition going all the way back to mainland Portugal, but mainly came to California from the bigger Azores Islands like Terceira. Bullfights are commonly found in the Central Valley festas, but not really in the Southern California or Bay Area festas. The author does not delve into this anomaly, but other sources have pointed to the fact that the smaller islands like Flores, Corvo, and Pico settled the Bay Area as fishermen and dairy workers, while the larger islands settled in the Central Valley as agriculturalists. Though keeping the tradition of bullfights alive in California is a distinct preservation of culture, the bullfights have also been changed by California. For example, in Portugal and the Azores, these bullfights would culminate in the death of the bull, but in California, the bullfights are bloodless. Instead of stabbing the bull with javelins, as is common in the Azores and Portugal, these California bullfights have the bullfighters using Velcro darts to hit the bulls at specific glued on pads. The bulls are also rewarded for the show they put on by being retired to a life of stud services to make more bullfight bulls.

There are several other factors that make these Californian Portuguese bullfights unique. First, California banned bullfighting in the 1950s, but these Portuguese bullfights were exempt, as long as they were for religious ceremonies. Because the bullfights are performed during the Holy Ghost festas, which are religious events, the bullfights were spared. Another point of uniqueness are the bullfighters themselves. The bullfighters talked about in this article alone have varied backgrounds, such as a 40 year-old, non-Portuguese Desert Storm veteran, a 22 year-old student at St. Mary’s College, and a San Francisco art school graduate. The fact that these bullfights allow people from many backgrounds to join is just another point where we can see the California culture rubbing off on the Azorean culture. These bullfights are a major example of cultural preservation, despite the distance from the home country and the amount of time that has passed since the first immigration waves.

The next article I looked at was a journal article by Frederick G. Williams. Williams’ article, “Portuguese Bilingualism Among Azoreans in California”, focuses on Portuguese cultural preservation in California through language preservation. Williams’ goal is to “treat the origin of the Portuguese community in California to the extent to which the Portuguese language and culture form a part of California’s heritage, the problems associated with Portuguese language maintenance, and finally, the successes and failures of bilingual education programs” (724). Williams seems to think that statistical evidence can take the place of actual, concise writing, so his article left a lot to be inferred by the reader. For Williams, language preservation is a primary way for any immigrant group to preserve their culture and heritage upon coming to America. In the case of the Portuguese people, he notes that language has often fallen prey to the common assimilation pattern—first generations are fluent in Portuguese, second generations are bilingual, and third generations are fluent only in English—but he also notes that Portuguese have taken several unique routes to preserve their language, and thus culture. Portuguese immigrants in California have preserved their culture by gaining leadership positions in the dairy (Central California) and tuna (San Diego area) industries, fraternal insurance companies, Holy Ghost Festas, establishing I.D.E.S Halls, and founding local Portuguese newspapers and radio programs. While these do sound like great ways to preserve culture, it seems to me that these examples do not ensure the future of the Portuguese language among California Azoreans. Instead, it seems like a way to ensure that the language dies with the older generation. I’ll use my experience as an example. My grandparents and father’s oldest brother (my uncle) were born in the Azores, with my dad and his other older brother being born in California (so, depending on your definition, my dad is either first or second generation American, making me either second or third generation). All of these people speak Portuguese fluently, but a more broken, uneducated Portuguese, which makes it difficult for my father to communicate with people who aren’t family members from the same area as his family. I, on the other hand, speak pretty much no Portuguese at all, except for little words I have picked up here and there, typically consisting of greetings and curse words. I can tell you to close the door, kiss me, kiss my butt, ask if you speak Portuguese, ask what’s going on, and that’s about all. Because of this, there is a very prominent cultural divide between my dad and grandparent’s generation and mine. So walking into a festa, filled with old school Portuguese people, all speaking Portuguese to each other, is about the last thing I want to do. Even at family parties I constantly have to ask someone to translate for me and I usually just feel bad that I don’t understand anyone. To me, it seems like this act of keeping the language alive by holding events together and speaking the language as often as possible would only make younger generations who don’t know the language angry and kill off any desire to learn the language. I personally would like to learn, but my dad makes the worst teacher (any time I ask him “what’s ___ in Portuguese?” he just gives me the English word back), and all Portuguese conversations I have seen revolve around the same topics—where your family is from, who you are related to/who you know, and what food you like to eat.

Later in this article, Williams explores bilingual education, basically singing its praises. He points to the Chacon-Moscone Bilingual-Bicultural Education Act of 1976 as a key legislation that will keep Portuguese language, and therefore culture, alive in younger generations through state education. I think the author, writing in 1980, was somewhat confused by the concept of bilingual education. What Chcon-Moscone actually does is set up bilingual education as a necessity in education, but bilingual education basically helps children who are learning English as a second language by sheltering them in a bilingual classroom until they are ready for a full English education. Nowhere does the legislation state that teachers will teach in Portuguese and teach kids who want to learn the language as a second language. Instead, it is a program for immigrants to help them get up to speed with their grade level. Though Williams’ view seems slightly distorted, he does bring up a good point—Portuguese as a second language classes. These classes are few and far between in California. I have cousins who live in the Gustine area of the Central Valley, and apparently out there they offer Portuguese as a foreign language. This is probably due to the fact that there is such a huge Portuguese population in the Central Valley. But what about the Bay Area? San Leandro in particular still has a major Portuguese population, as does San Jose and Oakland, but Portuguese is not offered as a foreign language education course. My opinion is that, because these areas have been centers for more waves of immigration from other foreign countries, like India, Afghanistan, China, Japan, Vietnam, Korea, and many others, that these new groups have taken over the landscape of the ethnic identity of the areas.

Lastly, Williams, in his survey, explored the idea of language preservation as cultural identity preservation. Williams surveyed Portuguese born and Portuguese descent people, and in both cases those surveyed overwhelmingly agreed that the ability to speak Portuguese was essential to their ethnic identity. This shows that language is an important bearer of culture, even among second-generation immigrants, who traditionally become bilingual, and eventually have children who only speak English. These results are very interesting, but also very sad, because it doesn’t seem like the Portuguese community really does much to preserve language among later generations. In my own life, I have concluded that language is preserved and passed down by the mother. If your mother speaks Portuguese, you will speak Portuguese. As I said, I only have people I have met to go off of here, but in my experience the men do not teach their children the language, and the women do, so in my case, because my father speaks Portuguese and my mother doesn’t, I don’t speak Portuguese. However, I have cousins who are three and four generations away from the original immigrants (we’re getting into great-great-grandchildren here) and they all speak fluent Portuguese. I do have to agree with Williams that language is an important bearer of culture, because being on the outside and looking in on people who do speak Portuguese, I feel like I don’t have access to a special part of my heritage, and like I am missing out on a lot of relationships that could be enhanced if I knew Portuguese. If I had known Portuguese, I probably would have been able to actually talk to my grandparents, rather than sit in the same room with them and watch Jeopardy with them. 

In conclusion, Williams effectively showed that language is considered a very important bearer and keeper of culture, which is why it can be so distressing to older generations when newer generations lose that cultural connection by losing their language. In California, Williams states that this concern has lead to an increase in bilingual education, though he seems to misunderstand bilingual education. In Marcum’s article, she shows how an Azorean tradition made it to California and was also transformed by California. Bullfights, an important part of festas on larger islands like Terceira, came to California with the Azorean immigrants, but have changed to bloodless bullfights, showing a dedication to cultural traditions, and a respect for their surroundings (since California banned bullfighting in the 1950s, but let the Azorean bullfights remain because they were related to religious ceremonies, the bullfights evolved into bloodless fights). These are both important factors of cultural preservation after immigration and assimilation. 

Education: Azores vs. California

            For this blog post, I wanted to focus on the experiences of immigrant children. Mainly, the contrast between life in the Azores and life in California, and the trials and triumphs that came along with that part of the immigrant experience. I interviewed my uncle, my dad’s cousin, and I used an oral interview with Manuel Bettencourt from The Bancroft Library’s Regional Oral History Office at UC Berkeley. I came into this blog with the assumptions that, based on what I have seen within the Portuguese families I am related to through my Dad, education was not important to the Portuguese, and I also assumed that because of the education system, most people were uneducated and therefore unintelligent. What I found actually made me feel stupid for ever assuming that.

            The first thing I wanted to know was how old my Uncle Joe and my cousin Mary were when they immigrated to the U.S., to get a feel for how much they could have experienced. Joe was 11, Mary was 12, and, though it doesn’t specifically state this in the interview, Manuel Bettencourt was about somewhere in his late teens/early twenties (he was born in 1943 and was here at least in 1963, if not earlier than 1963). I was glad to hear they were all over 10 years old because I knew I could rely on their memories and that they were old enough to be able to compare and contrast the different lifestyles between the countries. Joe, Mary, and Manuel all went to school in the Azores, and their experiences there are very similar. Joe and Mary both lived on the island of Flores, and Manuel lived on the island of Graciosa (in fact, Manuel is slightly younger than my Uncle Joe, so they would have been in school around the same time, as compared to Mary who was about 20 years younger and experiencing school in the 1950s and 60s.

           

            Life in the Azorean school system was very different from our conception of school. Every island has its own school, but those schools, similar to our elementary schools, only go up through about 4^th grade, and then you would have to pay (pay for room, board, and the education) to be sent to another island for the upper grades, and then to be sent to the mainland for university. As Azoreans are not very rich people, with most of them living a pastoral, agricultural life and needing the help of their children’s labor, most people on the smaller islands did not go any farther than 4^th grade. The school was set up so that you started when you were about 7 and finished when you were about 11, and school was Monday through Saturday, with Saturday as a half day, but all other days you were in school about 9-5, with very few breaks in the day. So you can see here that, while they only finished 4^th grade, these students probably had the same education level of about a 6^th grader in America.

School in the Azores was run quite differently than school in America. The basic set-up reminds me of a turn of the century rural schoolhouse. All four grades were in the same room, taught by the same teacher, and separated by sex—so girls were in one building, boys in another. According to Manuel, rainwater leaked in, there was no running water, and the bathroom was just a big hole in the ground in an outhouse. The teachers in the Azores were the ultimate authority, and ruled with an iron fist. Punishments for forgetting to complete homework, or disturbing the class, were severe, and often encouraged by the parents, and Manuel points out. According to Mary, the punishments could range from having your hand hit with a 2” ruler, to having to stand behind the blackboard until the teacher allowed you to come back and join the class, to having to sit in the corner with a dunce cap on, or as Mary put it, “Jackass ears”. Parents were very strict and would reinforce any punishment given out in the classroom at their home. There was no idea of “the teacher is just mean and out to get me” or that the teacher is wrong—the teacher was the ultimate authority and what they said was as close to Biblical truth as it got. From this information, I now can see how education could become very important in America as well, with good grades being the ultimate sign of success to a parent who was used to the Azorean educational system.

Both Mary and Joe came to America in time to experience public education here, and both had very different views on that education. For Joe, he saw school in California (Antioch) to be a lot easier than school in the Azores.  Though he came here knowing only Portuguese, Joe was 2 years ahead of his classmates in math, so he was able to spend and entire year learning English and perfecting his reading and writing skills, without losing any of his math skills. He describes the American schools as more relaxed, and easier to excel in without as much effort. He points out the fact that Americans had P.E. and cookie breaks as a main difference between the schools. Joe also said that, although school was easier for him, he still had to work twice as hard to get up to grade level with his English. For Mary, this transition was not as easy. Mary said that despite not knowing English and having the focus of subjects (such as history) being completely different in America, the strict discipline she faced in the Azores and her commitment to her studies helped her to make it to the honor roll in 12^th grade, when she only started school here at the end of 6^th grade!

Both Mary and Joe stated that their children’s education was of the upmost importance to them. Despite the fact that neither sets of parents were educated past 4^th grade, they all wanted their children to do their best and be the best. Joe states that his parents (my grandparents) would get very upset even if he had an A- rather than an A or A+. Joe also says that his father believed that, with an education, there was no limit on what you could achieve (he makes a note here to point out that this is why my grandfather wouldn’t let my dad or uncles participate in frivolous pass times like sports). While Joe focused on the positives of schooling, Mary brings in some of the realities of being a foreigner in a 1960s California school. She talks about the embarrassment of having to have a relative sign you up for school when you’re already 12 years old, and then having to translate everything for your parents all the time. She also talks about how hard it was to sit in a classroom day in and day out with only English being spoken, because there was no such thing as ESL or sheltered English learners in those days. The teacher really didn’t offer any help in teaching English, but another Portuguese student eventually came forward to help tutor Mary in English, but it still wasn’t until about a year later that Mary felt comfortable speaking English in school. Mary also talked about her loss of freedom. She lost all of her friends when she left the Azores, and she also had to become a translator for her parents, going wherever they needed her, whenever they needed her.  She then began translating for other family members when they needed her, which is a far cry from what the typical 13 year old would want to be spending her time on!

For Joe, America and California were full of so many new and different things that were an improvement over his life in the Azores, that there wasn’t any time to focus on differences or be culture shocked. He was more interested in becoming an American and enjoying all that there is to enjoy here. One of the biggest changes he noted was that, in coming from an agrarian society, they lived a life of sustainable farming and bartering for whatever you needed that you didn’t already have. Here, we had indoor plumbing, running water, electricity, cars, abundant food and clothes, etc. Things were so different, but from his view so great, that he didn’t really focus on the transition or any struggles, but just focused on how much he could gain from living here. As for Mary, her struggles were eased by moving into a community that was close to her relatives, and as Joe said, becoming immersed into a culture that had so much to offer that was new and exciting, like new foods and entertainment, and a climate that was better all year round.

As I said before, this blog forced me to confront some of my own assumptions about the Portuguese. Before I did these interviews, I said to my dad “clearly education isn’t important to Portuguese people, because you and your brothers have the highest education of all of your relatives, and your parents were barely educated at all!” This was really far from the case. In the Azores, what you did in life was more out of necessity than anything else. If you wanted to eat, you had to grow your own food, raise your own livestock, and barter for anything else you needed. Because life was so much more difficult there, it was also harder to focus on school when your parents needed help at home. Children would stay in school for as long as they could, but often parents needed help sooner rather than later. That all changed once they came to America, and doing the absolute best you could in school became the only job children could have. I had always assumed that the only reason my dad went to college was because his older brothers, Joe and Dave, had gone and therefore had pushed him toward that goal as well. Instead, it was also his own parents telling him how important education was and pushing him toward college. In terms of Azoreans and the older generations, like Joe and Mary’s parents, I can see that it wasn’t a fact of being intelligent or unintelligent, but just basically the work ethic that mattered most. Both Mary and Joe’s fathers were carpenters and farmers, and Joe’s father was also a fisherman when the ocean allowed it. Their mothers both worked in the fields and took care of livestock, like pigs and chickens, as well as making the clothes for their families and their meals. Just because their parents weren’t educated to our modern, American standards, doesn’t mean they were unintelligent. These people had to work hard day in, day out, from the time that they were small children, and they survived and thrived. That in itself is an achievement and a sign of intelligence.

In conclusion, these interviews helped me to learn a lot about the educational differences from the Azores to California’s greater bay area. I was able to confront assumptions I made about Azoreans. I now know that, if the tables were reversed, and my family immigrated back to the Azores, I’d probably be dead within a week! Those people had to work hard all their lives to give themselves and their children a good life, and for Joe, Mary, and Manuel, their families decided to leave their home and come to America for a better life. I also thought it was interesting that, contrary to the common immigrant experience, Joe was really interested in assimilating quickly into American culture and felt very little culture shock, while Mary did feel a lot of culture shock from not knowing English, she also was eager to join in on the convenience and excitement of America. 

A Day At The Museum

For this blog, I decided to visit the Portuguese Historical Museum in San Jose. Honestly, this place was kind of creepy. It’s located within Kelley Park, which at one end features Happy Hallow Zoo and a Japanese garden. The end with the Portuguese Historical Museum is kind of a small town recreation. There is a trolley car, an old-fashioned gas station, and main street with several other streets splitting off of it, all with historical homes that were either recreated or picked up and moved to the site. When I went there, it was the weekend before Halloween, and walking down the main street definitely gave off a Children of the Corn vibe.

The Portuguese Historical Museum was located on the first little street off of the main street and was designed to look like the first permanent imperio in San Jose (a religious and cultural center). Outside of the museum, there are several interesting pieces of art in the stone walkway leading up to the entrance. First, there are two whales on either side of the center walkway, commemorating the centrality of the whaling industry in Portuguese culture until the early 1900s. 

There is also a ship, which commemorates the rich maritime heritage of the Portuguese, which also kicked off the age of exploration in Europe.

In the center walkway is a recreation of a compass rose found in Lisbon Portugal. In the middle of the compass there is a map of the world with Europe as the center.

Lastly, before the steps leading up to the entrance, there is a recreation of the emblem found on the Portuguese flag

(mega-flags.com)

Inside the museum was amazing! All the work and research was really thorough and included information not only about Azoreans, but also about those from mainland Portugal, Madeira, and even those who went from the Azores, Madeira, and Portugal straight to Hawaii, something many people overlook in Portuguese immigration. The ground floor of the museum is a permanent collection, while the basement features rotating exhibits.  On the first floor, the first section you will find when you walk in and go to the right (its kind of a big circle), is a short bit about life in the “old country”. One problem with the museum was that it often didn’t distinguish between mainland Portugal, the Azores, and Madeira and just lumped them all together as the old country. However, one of the many plaques of writing and pictures on the walls of the museum does note that many of the Portuguese in California immigrated (or their relatives immigrated) from the Azores or Madeira.

There is a plaque with photos of life in the old country, featuring typical architecture and livelihoods. The next section is about the trip to America, and features a very common painting of immigrants waiting to come to America.

The next plaque talks about the waves of Portuguese immigration to America, particularly the East Coast, California, and Hawaii. The first wave was in the 1800s and spurned by the whaling industry along the East Coast and California, and also by the Gold Rush in the mid-1800s. The second wave of Portuguese immigration occurred in the early 1900s and was due to political unrest in Portugal. The third wave of migration was spurned by the volcanic eruption in 1957 of an undersea volcano and ensuing earthquakes, which destroyed many villages across the Azores. This wave started with the Azorean Refugee Act in 1958 and 1960 and ended in the 80s, after a political revolution ousted the dictatorship in Portugal and established a democracy.

The next area featured a recreation of a Portuguese church. Unfortunately, when I went to the museum, I forgot my notebook at home so I didn’t take any notes, and I didn’t take a picture of the plaque, which said who donated the recreation and where the original was. However, based on the architecture, I’d make an educated guess and say the original is in a larger town, because there is a lot more to this than just the chapel.

Next was an area dedicated to the festa queens. There were several different capes and some pictures of past queens. The first cape was a long, red, and very sparkly and from 2007.

The next cape was a baby blue color, with some roses along the upper back and what looks like lace along the edges and in a bow at the bottom of the cape. This cape was from the 1920s.

Last, there was a plain white cape (not sure if it was plain, I'm just guessing since the back of the cape was turned away from where viewers would stand) with a fur-lined hood from the 1940s, and a really, really pretty dress from 1925. I really want that dress!

There was a display case with several different crowns worn by different queens from different eras, but I decided not to take a photo of them, because they were boring. You’ve seen one crown, you’ve seen them all.

One of the big displays the museum had was about the Portuguese in Hawaii, but because I am focusing on San Francisco Bay Area and California, I didn’t spend much time reading this section, other than making note of the fact that Hawaii’s sugar cane plantations drew the Portuguese and that their food and music became ingrained in Hawaiian culture.

There was a section in this main area dedicated to books by Portuguese immigrants. This area just bummed me out because I saw one book I knew of and really wanted for my last blog post, but couldn’t find because its not in any local libraries and no one was going to Fort Bragg anytime soon to get the copy from my grandma’s house. And then there were a few other books that sounded really interesting that I’m hoping I can find and possibly use for a later post.

Also in this area was a focus on occupations and professions of Portuguese. Under the banner of “Making a Living” is a photo of a dairy farm, a typical occupation of Portuguese in California

Unfortunately, there isn’t very much about old world vs. new world jobs, and a plaque makes note of this, saying that will be the focus of a future exhibit. What they do have is information about the big industries that the Portuguese added to. Those industries are whaling, of course, sheepherding, agriculture, orchards, and canneries. Other than canneries, it seems that the industries Portuguese workers went into in California were pretty similar to those they worked in back in the Azores/Madeira/Portugal.  The biggest section about devoted to work is a section about dairy. Dairy was a huge industry for the Portuguese. In fact, whenever they have those “real California Cheese” commercials about the dairies in California being family owned, I always look at the names to see if it’s a Portuguese-owned dairy (I think I’ve seen one or two). This section about dairy featured a panoramic photo of a dairy farm in San Jose, which just gives a big culture shock to anyone who thinks of San Jose as basically a concrete jungle!

There are also many different tools from the dairy industry’s past that Portuguese dairy workers would have been very familiar with in the Santa Clara Valley. On the wall to the right, which you unfortunately can’t see, there was a picture of a man milking a cow. The docent working at the museum told me that that man came to the area in the 1950s and is now a millionaire who owns two radio stations. That’s a pretty good transition, from washing clothes in a river in the Azores, to milking cows in San Jose, to being a millionaire!

Next, I went downstairs to check out the rotating exhibits. On my way down the stairs, I noticed a piece of art on the wall, commemorating the Portuguese in whaling.

Once I got down the stairs, the first exhibit I found was on folk music and art, both on the islands and in California. There was a display case with several Portuguese musical instruments, including a ukulele which many people don’t realize is actually Portuguese in origin and adopted by the Hawaiians. Within the display case was a paper explaining what each instrument was and stating that, after the Portuguese immigrated, their musical instruments were a great comfort to those feeling homesick. And, as in the case of Hawaii, these instruments even seeped into local culture and became a part of the local culture.

  

Another display case featured typical pottery and crochet work of the Portuguese. Beside the red painted piece, many of the pottery looks pretty typical of what I’ve seen at Portuguese homes and events.

There was a section of mannequins dressed in traditional folk outfits that can be seen at festas or other events in the area. However, because none of the outfits were from the Azores, I chose not to take a picture of them. Sorry guys! However, next to the outfits was a wall of local traditional folk dancing troupes. There were around 20 groups listed, and I chose to take a picture of the group from Fremont. They wear traditional folk outfits and dance folk dances like the chamarrita, native to the Azores, and other dances native to Madeira and mainland Portugal.

The next major section was about Portuguese bands, both in the old world and in California, and a section about John Philip Sousa, a Portuguese musician who wrote “Stars and Stripes Forever” and invented the sousaphone.

This whole section basically shows a major part of Portuguese culture that made it to California and thrived in the new land.

Finally, a really interesting, but very small section featured a Portuguese Christmas Nativity scene.

Unlike traditional American nativity scenes, the Portuguese one doesn’t feature Jesus’ birth at all, but instead features a typical village scene, even including slaughtering pigs and reserving the blood for Morcilla (blood sausage).  It was really interesting to see that their culture put the focus on every day people and their activities, rather than on just Jesus, Mary, Joseph, animals, and maybe wisemen.

While I learned a lot about the Portuguese in California, I would have liked to have learned more about every day life transitions, like if professionals in the Azores (lawyers, police, etc) were able to transfer into the same profession, or if they had to move to blue collar jobs, and if so, how they felt about that transition. I also wanted to learn more about education differences between here and there, and especially on Azorean parents’ views of education for their children: was it pushed and drilled into their minds that they must succeed and go as far as possible, or did the parents just think of it as killing time until the child could work for them? This will hopefully be the focus of my next blog.

From all the research I have done, Camarillo’s article about minority on minority tensions in California doesn’t seem to apply to the Portuguese. From what I have read and researched, it seems that the Portuguese were really focused on assimilation and becoming all American and really engrossing themselves into the culture, while still maintaining parts of their Portuguese culture. There doesn’t seem to be much mention of any racial tensions among other minority groups and the Portuguese, but I can do some more research into this for a later blog. One source I read, which I’m not too sure if I can use because I don’t entirely know what it is, stated that Portuguese people pretty seamlessly transitioned into the workforce and people didn’t think of them as different, but just as hard workers. 

Delving deeper into Azorean culture in California

This was a fun blog for me, because I came across a few surprises. My first surprise was when I went to the library to check out the three books I used. One book, The Holy Ghost Festas: A Historical Perspective of the Portuguese in California, I had seen before at my grandparent’s house and knew what it looked like…or so I thought. I was expecting a small book with less than 100 pages, but instead I found a huge, over 500-page coffee table book! It’s actually a really informative book with a lot of great pictures, but its not a very fun book to lug around places, that’s for sure! My second surprise was when I was checking out the books, all three very clearly about Portuguese in California, and the woman checking out my books said “looks like you’re gunna be reading about all my relatives!” To which I said “yeah my relatives too!” It was really fun and made me want to delve into the books! Just to keep things simple for this entry, I decided to write book by book, instead of topic by topic. I know it might seem kind of lazy, but it was just the easiest way for me to write and keep my sanity!

Alameida, Carlos. Portuguese Immigrants: The Centennial Story of the Portuguese Union of the State of California. Hayward: Suburban Press, 1978.

As the title suggests, this book is about the story of Portuguese immigration to California, and the community that sprang from the immigration. Alameida starts off talking about immigration, and specifically the problems with immigration statistics before 1930. In the US, record keeping wasn’t standardized until about the 1930s, and records in Portugal were full of holes, and it was only worse in the Azores. Because of this, the statistics that do exist are skewed. What I mean is that, when Azoreans did immigrate, they often didn’t distinguish between Portugal and the Azores as the country they emigrated from, so the numbers are skewed to show more Portuguese immigrants than Azorean immigrants. But whatever the actual numbers might be, the records do show that from 1820 to 1855, 3,562 Portuguese immigrants entered the US (12).

Beside this statistical problem, Portuguese immigrants faced many other institutional obstacles. For example, from the early 1900s until 1952, there were immigration laws requiring immigrants to pass literacy tests to enter the country. This dealt a blow especially to the Azoreans because illiteracy on the islands “where illiteracy was very high (estimated eighty per cent [sic])” (13). This, coupled with harsh immigration quotas, lead to a sharp fall in Portuguese immigration. In the 1950s, immigration issues for Portuguese were slightly abated by the Azorean Refugee Act, but it only allowed “a few thousand victims of the volcanic eruption off the islands of Faial (Capelinhos) to immigrate to the U.S.A.” (13). The point that immigration troubles really came to an end was when President Kennedy’s immigration bill, posthumously passed by President Johnson, eliminated immigration based on quotas and “allowed immigration based on the skills needed in the country” (13). This allowed many more Portuguese to enter the country, leading to the population boom of Azoreans in America from 1960-1980.

Once Azoreans immigrated to California, they often sought out the same areas that friends and relatives from their home villages had settled in. Because of this practice, San Leandro, CA became the Azorean home away from home. It was here that, in response to racial discrimination, the Uniao Portugesa do Estado da California (UPEC - Portuguese Union of the State of California) was established. This gave Azoreans a social and support network and made San Leandro a destination for Azoreans (31). To this day, San Leandro is still has a huge Azorean community. UPEC not only stood as a sense of community for the Azoreans, but it was also a network of protection for families, offering death benefits, similar to social security (55). Most of the Azorean immigrants chose the San Leandro area to settle in not only for community bonds, but also for the job opportunities. Many of the Azoreans sought out San Leandro’s fertile agriculture to work in (31). Agriculture was something almost all Azoreans participated in, so coming to a fertile area would be an easy job transition.

This book was a very dry, straightforward approach to history. The author looked at generalities of Portuguese immigrants, rather than looking at specific stories, or even including names of prominent Portuguese-Americans. Thankfully, the next book I read was really interesting and took a lot of individual stories to make up their narrative.

Lick, Sue Fagalde. Stories Grandma Never Told: Portuguese Women in California. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1998.

This book, as I said, focused and relied almost completely on interviews with Azorean immigrant women. The author chose to interview immigrants, their first generation children, second-generation grandchildren, and even third generation great grandchildren. Not everyone in the book was related, but many were, which offered several different views of the same issues. This also allowed Lick to trace how attitudes changed through the generations.

To begin with, Lick addresses the historical researcher’s absolute nightmare—changing names. In the Azores, the islands, especially the smaller ones, were basically like small villages where everyone knew everyone. Also, in all honesty, there aren’t many names in Portuguese, so when you have a family with 17 kids, names start to repeat themselves, and nicknames are relied on to identify people. In my extended family alone, there is an Old Joe and a Young Joe, and Old Tony and a Young Tony, and a woman named Mary who, because Mary/Maria is such a popular name, goes by Conceicao. Last names could also be arbitrary. Of course there would be the family last name, but if there was a situation where, say, a man’s wife died and he remarried and continued to have children, he would name those children after their mother, like Dela Rosa. There is even an example from my family of a son who was born on Christmas, so he was given the last name Nascimento instead of the family name. Despite the arbitrary nature, the small community would still know who you were and wouldn’t have a problem finding you even if your name was wrong. Once the Azoreans began coming to America, they encountered another name problem. Of course there were the immigrants who changed their names to more Anglo sounding last names, but there were also immigrants who ran into some different problems. Because many immigrants were illiterate, they weren’t able to spell their names, and often ended up with a spelling different from the traditional spelling. Lick gives the example of Sousa becoming Souza and even Souxa (xv). Another problem immigrants ran into was having to give their names to clerks who aren’t fluent in Portuguese. Lick gives the example of Joaquim whose name became Joe King because that’s what it sounded like to the American ear (xv). As I already stated, this arbitrary nature of names on the island, combine with problems of illiteracy and language barriers upon immigration, lead to a lot of dead ends in historical research.

Stories Grandma Never Told looked at different aspects of life from the Portuguese woman’s perspective. Lick looks at work, domestic duties, education, and even issues of disparity between sons and daughters. According to Lick and her interviews, Portuguese women have pretty much always done hard manual labor, on top of their domestic duties. In the Azores, the ideal was to have a stay at home wife, but that often, because of financial needs, the wife had to work as well. One particularly sad story was about a woman who’s mother got pregnant when she was 16, and she was convinced her mother would die in childbirth and that she would be stuck taking care of the child and her other siblings until her father remarried. The story wasn’t very clear, but it sounded like even though the mother didn’t die, the daughter was still stuck taking care of her brother; so much so that her brother began calling her mom. A similar thread though many of the stories of these young women shouldered with adult responsibilities from a very young age was very young marriage. My assessment from this fact is that, to escape the sometimes-borderline abusive control of their fathers, the young women married at really young ages so that they could have some form of autonomy. This made me really sad for the women, and made me think of my grandmother’s life, and how it most likely mirrored this story pretty closely, at least from what I’ve heard (my family tends to be very quiet about aspects of life and really not elaborate on their stories unless poked and prodded into it, so I know very little about my grandparents lives).

Lick had some interesting facts in her book that stuck out to me. First, she noted that “today, there are more people of Azorean descent in California than on all nine islands. In 1996, the Azorean population was 240,000 while there were nearly one million Californians of Portuguese ancestry” (43). This would probably be an even more extreme fact if she noted the populations of each island, giving a comparable American city. Another interesting fact was that “in the old country, everyone married in the Catholic Church. To do otherwise was a sin” (80). According to my mom, when she and my dad were going to get married, one of his crazy aunts told them they were going to Hell because they were getting married in a Lutheran church. Oh well, who’d wanna be in Heaven with that nut anyway?! This and other parts of the book were kind of a confirmation of aspects of culture, rather than people just being weird. The last little bit of Lick’s book was about the relationship with the Azores after immigration. Many women never made it back to the Azores, either because they didn’t want to go or because they couldn’t afford to go. Families drifted far apart in that time, but the familial ties still held for children and grandchildren who had the opportunity to go back and visit long lost relatives. My dad, grandpa, and one of my dad’s cousins went back to the Azores when I was a baby, but my grandmother wouldn’t even think about going back. She was convinced that my grandfather would decide to stay in the Azores and that she would have no choice and be forced to go back to hand washing laundry in the river and taking hours to cook dinner.

Goulart, Tony P. Editor. The Holy Ghost Festas: A Historical Perspective of the Portuguese in California. San Jose: Portuguese Heritage Publications of California, 2003.

The third book I worked with was The Holy Ghost Festas: A Historical Perspective of the Portuguese in California. Unfortunately, I think this book was written with the idea that it’s readers would be Portuguese people who like hearing about themselves and want to know what goes on in other parts of California, because the book didn’t even have a concise description of the history of and basis for the festas. I think it would do an injustice to just assume everyone reading my blog knows the back story or will go and look it up themselves, so I’m going to try to provided that story. Just be forewarned—my parents aren’t Catholic, I’ve only ever been to Catholic churches for funerals, and I don’t speak Portuguese. I’ve also been given several varied accounts of the story at different times from different people—my dad trying to explain it, one of the queens at a festa tried to explain it, and even in reading there are varied accounts. I ended up turning to the website for the Sausalito Portuguese Hall to help me, and I’ll add in some of the pieces I have heard but weren’t included on this website. The basic element every person knows is that there was a famine in Portugal. The farmers weren’t producing enough to feed everyone, and the poor didn’t have enough to buy the food. Of course, the rich upper class royalty weren’t starving. The people prayed to the Holy Ghost to save them from the famine, and Queen Isabel took it upon herself to be the savior. She sold her gold and jewels to pay for food for the hungry. To honor her charity, Queen Isabel actually became a saint, and the festas celebrate the miracle that she brought in unselfishly helping her people to survive the famine. In festa celebrations, a local girl is chosen to be the queen of the festa, representing Queen Isabel. I have been told that there is a story to this as well—that Queen Isabel chose a girl from the village to be queen for a day each year, and that’s why there are queens of the festas. However, the festas are patron saint celebrations too, so it’s a mix of history and religion. Like I said, I haven’t been able to find a concise telling of the story anywhere really, so another person would probably tell you a slightly different account of events than I did. The main thing you need to know to understand festas is this: it’s basically a community celebration with religious undertones revolving around feeding the community and dancing. On the islands, the celebrations look slightly different depending on where you are. For example, the island Tereceira’s festa feature a running of the bulls and bullfights, but other islands don’t do this. According to a 2003 article from Via Magazine, the town of Gustine, CA still takes part in bloodless bullfights. Depending on where you go in California, festas can be really different. I’ve only ever been to one festa in Fort Bragg, and that one keeps just the essential elements of the festa—the sopas dinner for the community, the parade with the queens, and dancing the chamarrita (a traditional folk dance).

Festas in California, like on the Azores, are community events. The whole point is to bring as many people together for good old country food, dancing, and socializing. What’s special about California is that the festas are all scheduled from April-September and each Portuguese Hall has a different date in that period, so for the entire summer you could feasibly travel up and down California, hitting a festa every weekend. This fosters a really great sense of community within a state that’s larger than all 9 Azores islands combine! Queens will travel to different areas with their sashes and crowns just to take part in the other celebrations. Like I said, I don’t speak Portuguese and I don’t know many of my extended family (grandma and grandpa both had 16 brothers and sisters!), but it is pretty amazing to go to a festa with one relative and have them just work the room, finding people we are vaguely related to, or who come from the same village we are from, or who has a mutual friend. It’s like an interactive family tree. Probably the most interesting part of the book was their really detailed accounts of California festas, current and former. I read through the Fort Bragg section and learned that the Portuguese Hall was actually going to be a Catholic church, but the church abandoned the site and the Portuguese decided to buy it and use it as their hall for festas, weddings, and other community events. The section also listed several last names that I recognized and had to wonder if we were related. One picture was listed as courtesy of Mary Rodrigues. My grandmother’s maiden name was Rodrigues—could this Mary be a distant relative. Another last name I noticed was Moura. Could this person be related to Mrs. Moura, my grandma’s best friend at the nursing home, who spoke only Portuguese and didn’t listen if you told her you only spoke English? The book was very thorough and included a lot of information that would entice anyone who has been to a festa to learn more about their history and culture. 

This was a really long post, so I'll try to give a concise conclusion. The basic point of this post was to show how Azorean Portuguese immigrants in California changed the culture of California and were changed by California. Events like the festas changed California culture by adding a huge, multi-city Portuguese cultural event to the summer of the state and becoming a destination for many non-Portuguese Californians. The article in Via Magazine was about the author bringing members of her family to the big festa in Gustine, in the Central Valley. One fact I didn't actually have earlier in the blog is that San Jose has a 3 day Portuguese cultural event every June. Its not a festa, but its a cultural celebration including traditional food and folk music and dancing. While the festas changed California, they were also changed by California. With Portuguese people so spread out throughout our large state, festas became a cultural destination event, with people traveling to the festas of different communities, but still being able to find people they can identify with at these events hundreds of miles away. Azoreans also changed the look of San Leandro by making it a Portuguese "home away from home". San Leandro became a destination for Azoreans and a home base for those living in California. I'm not sure of the current make up of San Leandro, but tat one time there was a proliferation of Portuguese businesses catering to the Portuguese people in the community. I know for sure that Fremont has a liquor store owned by a Portuguese guy that is a destination for my dad because he sells good linguica (Portuguese sausage) and Azorean cheeses. Finally, in Sue Fagalde Lick's book, she really examines the struggles of the young Portuguese immigrants, or the first generation children of immigrants and how hard it was to want to assimilate into American culture, but coming across barriers of either inability to assimilate, or not being allowed to assimilate by hostile parents.