Q&A: European Americans

An excellent question! Thank you for asking it.

Whenever I travel to Europe, I feel geographically grounded. It’s very hard to explain but it’s like the time zone is finally right. My body knows that this is where I’m from and reacts accordingly.

That’s the body, though. As for the soul, I have the soul of an Anglo person. I always did, and that’s why I felt extremely out of place back in Ukraine. I didn’t emigrate “in search of a better life.” I was making an exceptionally good living in Ukraine back in the 90s. But it felt wrong. Everything felt wrong. I spoke, read and wrote English before any other language, and maybe that is what did it. I feel most at home, comfortable and understood among Anglophone people.

I left Ukraine in 1998 because I couldn’t look at what was happening. People were shitting away (pardon me, but I feel this very strongly even now) their historic chance of becoming something. And I didn’t want to watch them do it.

Today I turned back towards Ukraine in large part because it seems to me that America is shitting away its own historic mission and advantage. And once again, I don’t want to look. This is truly the best country in history, and instead of celebrating that and making sure it remains so, we are doing everything to unmake it. I’m very hopeful it’s a temporary glitch. When I talk to people in Ukraine, I feel like the biggest of Grinches, crushing their illusions about what America is. Of course, it’s best to know reality but we could all change what our reality is shaping up to be.

N never perceived himself as European because that’s not a thing in Russia. He’s not a group person at all, so I can’t pin any collective identity on him. But from the European side of me, I want to say that America was built by Europeans and should be proud of its great European heritage. On the other hand, Europeans should remember that America is the best that they’ve done and act accordingly.