Fifties Americana

No one is more American than an immigrant.

I think of my family when the US  immigration reform discussion crops up again because we are all of us born in France and new to America. Yes, it is a peculiar feature of my life that despite having the most French of families my own mother and her parents lived outside of Chicago starting in 1953. In fact, they lived the American Dream.

Their house in the suburbs.

I think only a family as art directed by a French woman could capture 1950s America with this level of magazine perfection.

Posing with the new television is very American.

Love for your beautiful car is very American.

My mother dressed as a cowgirl ready to watch some American Westerns on TV.

Vacationing at a lake in Wisconsin. By golly, they’re not merely American, they’re MIDWESTERN!

My maternal grandmother wearing a water lily as a necklace.

We are super duper French but my mother and I sound like regular mid-western girls.

…with just that extra dose of continental glamor.

And in case it isn’t obvious by my own globe-trotting lifestyle, I’m pro immigrant–legal and otherwise. It’s the adventurous spirit that I applaud.

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