By Poupeh Missaghi
Personal statements highlight what CVs cannot about students: their character; their approaches to facing challenges, both personal and professional; their strengths; and their knowledge of and their ability to express themselves as individuals. For immigrants, refugees, and foreign students, oftentimes stories of immigration and relocation become central to their statements, so much so that a lot of them feel that these narratives are the only way to stand out in their audience’s eyes.
I have often worked with students and talked with friends who offhandedly and willingly amplify or embellish the issues in their home countries, the difficulties of their immigration journeys, or challenges of their personal and professional lives in between two cultures and languages, all because they have heard and learnt that “this is the story that sells.” This to me has always been problematic and saddening; it is similar to books written to fit the larger political narratives of the times and the publishing market’s demands for certain narratives of non-white people and far-away places.
I had, however, never really thought about how the mere inclusion of such stories, regardless of the level of detail or exaggeration, is really complicated and political. I only recently realized this when working with a friend who completely resisted the inclusion of such stories in his statement of purpose. I was explaining to him that sharing his recent immigration story will provide him with an opportunity to show how he overcomes challenges and grows through them, while also pointing to his multilingualism and multiculturalism. He stopped me short and firmly told me, “No, I won’t do that!” His reaction gave me pause, but I tried to make him see things through the lens of the purpose of the piece and his readers’ demands. He then continued in a sad tone, “No. Why does that need to be part of it? What if that is something about me that I don’t want to reveal? Why should my being “a recent immigrant” always be part of the conversation? What does it even matter that I am an immigrant?” He felt it offensive that in various situations he had to constantly tag himself as an “other” in the U.S., as an “outsider,” and be treated as if none of his capabilities and his accomplishments other than those related to his immigration counted, that he could only be “an immigrant” and nothing else.
His explanation and the conversation that followed were really eye-opening for me. They made me realize how I need to be careful when providing such advice to my students, and how I need to be more aware of all the layers of complexity in personal statements. Both the exaggeration of details and this resistance to telling the story reveal how the need for these “immigration” stories in statements of purpose is not simply about writing to the demands of the genre and the audience, but a sign of a larger problematic political narrative of “othering,” which could actually work against the diversification that we hope for.
Interestingly, a few days later, I came upon this essay on the same subject, which beautifully lays out the issue in more depth: How Applying to Grad School Becomes a Display of Trauma for People of Color by Deena ElGenaidi in Electric Lit (April 17th, 2018). Don’t miss reading it.
Published May 16, 2018
