Tag: Immigrant stories

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Opinion The Last Word

Immigrant Stories: Anna Mashaljun and Denis Khantimirov

Denis Khantimirov makes a call to Anna Mashaljun. (Photo: Bryce W. Ashby)

Editor’s note: This is part five in a five-part series focusing on immigrant contributions to our nation and city. 

Anna Mashaljun was born and raised in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Denis Khantimirov is from Vladikavkaz, just north of Georgia (the European Georgia), and as white Europeans their immigrant story is somewhat distinct from the other stories featured in this series, but it’s just as compelling. It intersects in a number of ways with other immigrant stories and relies on one abiding constant: Many people — most young, the vast majority talented and hardworking, from every corner of the globe — are extremely eager to relocate to the United States.

Anna grew up in Estonia but is Russian on her mother’s side, and her father is of Latvian and Polish descent. She went to a Russian-language school and speaks Estonian, in addition to unaccented English. At 18 years of age, she left Europe for the United States, where she enrolled at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV) on a tennis scholarship. She studied marketing and finance, and America seemed like a big, scary place to the 18-year-old college student. “The food surprised me,” she says. “It was mostly burgers and pizza and … the portions were huge.” She remembers the warmth of the people she met in America at this time and was surprised to learn that even her professors at the university were friendly and approachable.   

For Denis, the early 1990s in Russia were “turbulent years.” Both his parents were professionals (a father who worked as an engineer, his mother an architect), but people in Russia struggled mightily as society transformed from a central, planned economy to the “new era,” which Denis described as “the Wild West.”   

“There was total chaos with the fall of communism,” he says, “and I was a young boy during the most difficult days, say in the early 1990s.” He remembers his first Snickers bar — which he was able to sample in 1993 as a 12-year-old. He knew when his father’s pay day was because that was when he could expect his next Snickers. “Despite the troubles, I had a relatively stress-free childhood, attended a solid school, and was a relatively privileged only child living in a transforming society.”

Thanks to a program administered by the United States government, Denis was able to attend high school for a year in East Texas, near the city of Tyler. He was given $100 a month as a stipend, and he was 15 years old during the 1996-97 school year. He remembers this experience with great fondness. East Texas was very different from his youthful expectations of an America crowded with skyscrapers, patrolled by Batman.  

“I’m still in touch with my host family from that period,” says Denis, describing the setting as “very rural” and the people “extremely warm and friendly.” He also remembers being better prepared than his American counterparts in terms of “basic academic subjects like economics and mathematics.” The kids in Texas were curious; they were never hostile or unkind, even when they asked him, “Are there TVs in Russia?”

A year in Texas as a high school student generated a strong desire to return to the USA. Denis applied to universities in the U.S. but received insufficient scholarship funding. He made the decision to stay home and study at a state school in Russia, graduating in 2004 with a degree in international economics.

Denis then worked in a hospitality management program in Switzerland. From there, he went to Arizona where he worked in a management training program at a resort in Sedona. He talked his way into an MBA program at UNLV where he received a last-minute offer after another student dropped out. “I was offered a student visa, an assistantship of $900 per month, and completed the degree. I met Anna in Vegas, delivered pizzas as a side hustle in the evenings. I remember wondering how I’d pay for the $600 radiator when it exploded from overuse in the scorching Vegas heat.”

A marketing professor at UNLV encouraged Denis to apply to the Ph.D. program at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Together with Anna, who studied sports management and marketing at the M.A. level, Denis completed his Ph.D. in 2015 and accepted a position as an associate professor of marketing in the business department at Rhodes College. For Denis, Memphis was and remains “real — it reminded me of Mark Twain from day one, and we all learned of the Mississippi River, and the music called the blues.” Memphis, for Denis, represents a “raw and authentic sense of America.”  

Anna and Denis moved Downtown in 2015 when they first arrived in Memphis; they were conditioned to live in a walkable city center. “We noticed there weren’t many people Downtown. Most of the families at the playgrounds Downtown were immigrant families.” They moved to Germantown after the kids (Alex, 9, and Alisa, 7) arrived. The kids are “fully integrated into their community and love it here.”

Denis and Anna fought and battled to get to the United States, then worked multiple jobs while studying to get ahead. Their type of tenacity and determination may seem unusual, but it’s the essence of a very typical American immigration story. 

Bryce W. Ashby is an attorney at Donati Law, PLLC. Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.

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Opinion The Last Word

Immigrant Stories: Manuel Rivera Martínez

Manuel Rivera Martínez (Photo: Bryce Ashby)

Editor’s note: This is part four in a five-part series focusing on immigrant contributions to our nation and city. 

Thirty-one years ago, Manuel Rivera Martínez, from Morelia, made the difficult decision to follow his father to California. He was 15. Morelia, the capital of the state of Michoacán in Central Mexico, is a lovely colonial city that has been ravaged, recently, by gang-related violence.

Martínez grew up in a house with seven siblings and developed his entrepreneurial skills from his mother. “My mother, who recently passed, would sell menudo [a traditional tripe soup] and quesadillas out of our house to earn a little extra money,” he says.

When Martínez followed his father to California a few years after his dad left, he hoped that an opportunity for an education awaited him. Instead, father and son worked in Pomona for a company that repaired and resold wood pallets. Then Martínez moved to Merced County and worked on a dairy farm. He worked for Gallo picking grapes and made about $180 or $190 per week. “People worked 12-hour shifts — 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and then 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.,” he says. “Hard work, and people worked constantly, there were few breaks in the fields, even for water.”

From California, Martínez moved to the Pacific Northwest and worked in restaurants. He eventually made it to Memphis and found employment in a Japanese restaurant where he met his wife Lisha. Initially, they were just friends, and he did not pursue a romantic relationship because he knew inside that he had “no chance.” When he finally asked her out, she said yes! Years later, they’re raising two children: Preston, who attends Dexter elementary, and Mia, their 2-year-old daughter.

Martínez landed in Memphis about 16 years ago and is proprietor of the popular taqueria Maciel’s. The business started Downtown on South Main; now, Martínez has a restaurant on South Cooper, a newly opened location in Bartlett, and plans are underway for another on Summer Avenue. “Memphis is a welcoming city,” he says. “We have issues, but I want people to see the bright side, and if you love what you do, Memphis has the potential to let you do it.”  

Martínez illustrates this by reminding us of a tragic event at his Downtown restaurant. “In July 2017, the roof caved in while patrons were dining, and I was ready to shutter the business, but the Downtown community came together and held a fundraiser.” No one was seriously injured and approximately $8,000 was raised. “This money allowed me to pay my employees for three months” while the restaurant was rebuilt, he says. The generosity and kindness of the Memphis community gave Martínez strength, encouraging him to stay in business.   

After Maciel’s reopened, Martínez developed a deep love for this community and the neighbors who literally saved his business. He works 12- or 14-hour days to keep the business moving along. And he explains the origins of the name Maciel’s: “It’s my father’s name, Manuel, but they misspelled it on his birth certificate as “Maciel” and it sort of stuck. But we’ve kept the name; in fact, my 9-year-old boy is named Preston Maciel Rivera.”

He credits Lisha, who he refers to as his best friend and most trusted advisor, with pushing him to open the first restaurant. Many advised him against trying to open a business because he had only $40,000 in savings for start-up capital. “In fact, one real estate professional told me to open a food truck,” he says. Martínez wasn’t offended by the off-hand comment; rather, he saw it as a challenge.

While walking down Main Street, Martínez and Lisha saw a “restaurant for sale” sign. They were able to “buy all the equipment from a pizza restaurant that occupied the space.” The landlord was excited about a family starting a business in the location. The stars aligned, or as Martínez says, “I believe we all have a destiny. That there is a book with something written for each of us and that it is designed for you. You have to be sure not to miss the signals. This place was there for me.”

Martínez seems likely to stay put here in Memphis. “People come here because they find what they like to do and you should always follow your passions.” Neither Martínez nor his father, who now lives in Mexico, were able to continue their formal education. “I want my kids to be able to attend college or start their own business or combine the two.” 

For Martínez, the ideal business is one where everyone working makes a decent amount of money and only works one job. Because of this ethos, many of his employees have been with him since he started nine years ago.

“Everyone needs to be treated with dignity, no matter what job they have,” says the man who has worked his way up to ownership of a successful restaurant enterprise here. “I’m really fortunate that I chose Memphis, which is a long way from Morelia, Mexico, but this is a great place to raise a family and run a business.” 

Bryce W. Ashby is an attorney at Donati Law, PLLC. Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Three American Stories …

These, too, are American stories.

She must constantly remind people that she was born here, born in the same land that her ancestors had occupied centuries before, during the time when America’s forefathers were striding Westward. Her ancestors had remained standing in opposition to the divine mandate of the no-longer-quite European colonizers, but they were not a match for the systems arrayed against them.

Many years later, she was born where they’d once stood, but her parents realized that the Dream she’d been sold wasn’t for people like them. They’d retreated South, and she spent her days after school feeding chickens alongside her grandmother or watching music videos on an ancient TV, the screen and speakers distorting the words and images she consumed.

Something draws her back. Perhaps it is her ancestors, calling through time removed, imploring her to understand that borders are man-made but birthright is forever. She returns, the lyrics she’s learned from American pop stars serving as her language training. She is born to lead; in a fairer world she would be a freedom fighter or a business leader. Instead, she works tirelessly to better the lives of her neighbors, her community. She spends long days on the phone with unfriendly agency representatives, completes applications for schools and benefits, translates medical instructions that somehow manage to be utilitarian and gibberish. She meets a man whose smile sets her heart ablaze. They decide that the struggle is sweeter together than apart, and their destiny leads them away from the land of her ancestors. He was not born here. His forebearers do not call to him from America’s soil, but he is a hard worker. He loves her and wants the best for them, loves that she dedicates so much of herself to those who need her. Thirteen years pass, bringing with them two children and, now, a new reality that threatens to upend her family. Clarity: She has become her mother, with complete understanding. The Dream has withered; is reviving it worth the battle?

He carries fear alongside him always and wonders if the constant companion is just the burden of fatherhood. The fear bleeds through his skin, announces itself in the twitch of his fingers, makes itself apparent in the sprinkle of sweat across his forehead and his upper lip. He is allowing himself a rare moment of excited joy: His son is very close to arriving to the United States, the culmination of a series of plans that he set in motion nearly 30 years prior. He himself had landed on these very shores in the days leading up to his son’s birth, missing the sight of his firstborn son’s emergence into this world. A small price to pay. At least he could leave the boy a name, the same name as his grandfather. He hoped it would bring the boy good fortune.

His life in pursuit of the Dream was work. Sweat was the great equalizer in the land of the free, and he was hearty, hale, and driven. Every day since his inauspicious arrival in New York City, he had worked. Long hours, thankless jobs. Sometimes he drove, contorting his lips and tongue to make jokes in English despite the distrustful stares and indifferent nonchalance of the corporate-styled passenger sprawled across the back seat. Money that he’d worked for but somehow wasn’t quite his to spend or save traveled across his palm, but he wrapped himself in the Dream. Work would see him through. He remained steadfast. He prayed. He skipped meals. He left New York because the rent was too damn high and the casual indifference had become outright hatred since The Attack. A friend had mentioned that the living was easier down South. Somehow he knew that this was best, knew that this move would bring him that much closer to his dream, to his son’s dream.

After 30 years of sweat, he finally embraces his son, who has become a man: He carries along with his luggage broad shoulders and a patchy beard. Twenty days after this embrace, chaos: a list, seven countries, a ban. His old burden — a gigantic wave of fear — slams into his chest as if to punish him for the audacity of joy; he feels as if he has been thrown into a freezing ocean. After a strained breath, he settles into the one thing that he knows will save him, save his son. He gets to Work.

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They tell her that she’s crazy to try for college when everything is falling apart around them. They say that it is not becoming for a woman to be so selfish, that she needs to dedicate herself to a family, that there are more pressing issues. That she doesn’t have what it takes. They say, they say, they say, but there is always a they and there is only one chance to follow your dreams, so she leaps and lands, all praise due to God, on her feet in a new country, the Dream in her sights.

She is 20, faithful, and unafraid. In this, she is not so different from the women who have made this leap before her. The theys are different when she arrives. They’re bowed beneath the impossible weight of the Dream: her brother, her cousin’s wife, a friend of a friend. Their message is more foreboding, their attitudes more urgent.

It is different here, they say. It has never been easy, but it has always been possible. Something wicked is in the air. They have only ever tolerated her family, but now they were whipped to hateful frenzy, removed from even the semblance of the love that they claimed to give to their neighbors. Had she heard about the man out West who had been shot and killed for simply existing near an ignorant and fearful man? Most of them think like the murderer, beloved.

She was not a black American (despite the incorrect assumptions of those who read her skin and lips), but she knew of their art. She had read their poets. She knew of Langston Hughes and his question that had been asked by the children of slaves well before he had articulated it clearly enough for all to understand. What happens to the Dream deferred?

She would not give up. There was nothing to do but try. She had been warned. They had explained. But she would persist.

These, too, are American stories. These, too, are Memphis stories.

Troy L. Wiggins is a Memphian and writer whose work has appeared in the Memphis Noir anthology, Make Memphis magazine, and The Memphis Flyer.