“Your thesis is like your first love,” writes Umberto Eco in How to Write a Thesis, “It will be difficult to forget.” Indeed, my thesis is like my first love – not in the romantic sense, but rather because writing was my first love. When I was young, I spent my summers in the Czech Republic writing in my journal and dreaming up stories. I declared, much to the amusement of the adults around me, that I wanted to grow up and become an author. My grandmother’s friends, older Czech ladies who brought over homemade koláče and kremrole, who sat in our living room and told tales of past times, called me Little Božena Němcová after the celebrated Czech writer. Completing my thesis, some 25 years later, is the realization of Little Božena Němcová’s aspirations; I finally wrote my first “book”.
Writing my thesis was also a deeply personal endeavor. My mother emigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1989 to California, and so my thesis topic – Czech immigration to California – touches on themes close to my family’s experiences: emigration, identity, belonging, and integration. While my thesis focused on Czech immigration to California in the 1960s, and not the 1980s when my mother left, many of the experiences of my narrators are similar to those shared by my grandparents and others in their generation.
The foundation of my research came from oral history interviews I conducted with five women who emigrated from Czechoslovakia to California. One woman emigrated in 1964, one in 1967, and three emigrated in 1968 shortly after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Four settled in Southern California, one in Northern California. Most of my interviews were conducted in the narrators’ homes; all were welcoming, generous interviewees, who let me record their life stories and never let me leave their homes with an empty stomach. In an effort to memorialize the experiences of these inspiring women and my own experience working with their personal histories, I have summarized my thoughts and the main findings from my research here.
The Project
The primary focus of my research was to examine the experiences of Czechs who emigrated from Czechoslovakia between 1960 to 1970 and settled in California. Current research on Czechs in the United States has centered mainly on New York, Illinois, Texas, and Nebraska, where large Czech and Czech-American enclaves have historically existed. While California was a popular destination for Czechs emigrating in the 1960s, there is little research on Czech migration to California. The reported total number of Czechoslovak immigrants in California between 1960 and 1970 were 10,847 and 12,790, respectively, marking an 18% percent increase between the start and end of the decade (Smith, 1992). California was the second most popular state in the U.S. for Czechoslovak immigrant arrival from 1950-1959, 1960-1964, 1965-1969, and 1970-1974 (Smith, 1992). Despite the state’s importance for Czech immigration in the 1960s, there are virtually no comprehensive research studies (to my knowledge) that have examined Czech immigrant experiences in California in the 1960s. (One study was sent to me only recently, a thesis titled Czechs in California written in 1978 by Sue Samuelson, an ethnologist and folklorist at UCLA. As is often the case, you encounter more information and potential interviewees after you submit your work.) Therefore, the aim of my research was to this gap in our knowledge.
Welcome to Praha, Texas, "Czech Capital of Texas". [Czech Americans, Wikipedia.]
Conclusions
Conditions and Motivators Leading to Emigration
For the narrators of my study, the motivation to emigrate involved experiences of seeking better employment opportunities; pressure and fear of repercussions for not joining the Communist Party; a desire for travel and freedom of movement; and hope for a better life elsewhere. Some described their emigration positively using words such as ‘hope,’ ‘happy,’ and ‘heaven’. These characterizations run counter to depictions of exile, such as Edward Said’s description of exile as a “condition of terminal loss” with the achievements of exile “permanently undermined by the loss of something left behind forever” (Said, 2021). The experiences of the narrators show how migrants can have positive motivations to settle elsewhere. That is why I avoided the term ‘exile’ to describe the experiences of the narrators and instead referred to them as migrants or used the language they used to describe themselves, such as refugees.
"I knew, and my husband knew, that there was something better somewhere else. I had everything I wanted, but I knew there is a better world." — Y.B., Narrator
Pathways to the West
Some of the narrators had a prior connection to California before emigration, such as relatives living in the state or family who had visited the state before, but others decided to emigrate to California due to work and study opportunities, or completely by happenstance. One narrator emigrated through the former Yugoslavia, while three emigrated directly through Vienna, Austria. Two emigrated through the UK, however, legally, using work and travel visas. For three of the narrators, emigration entailed spending months in limbo in Vienna, waiting for their U.S. visas to be issued. The American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees (AFCR) helped some of the narrators in Vienna receive funds that helped with emigration, as well as financial support while they awaited emigration.
Sokol Los Angeles and the Czech Catholic Mission at an event in Los Angeles, CA. [From the personal archive of a person interviewed on background.]
Arrival and Integration
The narrators arrived and settled in California between March 1965 and December 1969. In California, their arrival was marked by the immediate need to find work, a place to live, and a car for transportation. For most of the narrators, their expectations of California – especially about the physical landscape and their mobility within it – were different from their realities.
To fully integrate in California, many narrators turned to homeownership and establishing their careers. For example, homeownership was an important aspect of structural integration into society, as well as a way to achieve interactive integration by gaining acceptance and inclusion among Americans – the host society. The narrators also leaned on the existing Czech community; organizations such as Sokol Los Angeles and the Czech Catholic Mission; and other European immigrants for support.
The biggest contribution to us from the church [Czech Catholic Mission] was that it was a meeting place where people spoke Czech, and the kind of people whom we met there were good people, decent people. "— I.P., Narrator
Identity
My research took a transnational approach by examining the narrators’ connection and relationship between their home country and their receiving state, acknowledging the “long-standing forms of migrant connections to homelands” (Vertovec, 2001). All of the narrators exhibited transnational identities whereby they maintained and negotiated a relationship between Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic, their home country, and California, their host state. The opening of Czechoslovakia after 1989 marked a new relationship between the narrators and their home country.
On Oral History Interviews
In addition to the conclusions from my study, I walked away from my thesis experience with some observations about conducting oral history research. Firstly, oral history interviews require patience, empathy, and the ability to listen deeply. What surprised me more was how different it was to conduct an oral history interview with a family friend compared to a narrator whom one does not know. This might seem obvious, since the interviewer has a personal relationship with the narrator, the resulting narrative will be different. Having a prior relationship with the narrator can lead to a more open interview, or, as other practitioners have noted, one where boundaries need to be established.
In my experience interviewing a close family friend for my research project, the narrator worked on the assumption that I (the interviewer) knew about her personal history. There were several instances when she would refer to someone by their first name with the assumption that I knew who she was referencing. Another characteristic I observed is that the narrator may tell certain stories or anecdotes as a way of communicating something about the interviewer's family history or background. In my interview with my close family friend, there were occasions when she would speak about her shared experiences with my grandparents, as a means of sharing with me an aspect of my family history. Our family histories and personal connection no doubt influenced her narrative; our shared trust allowed her to perhaps be more vulnerable and open throughout our interviews. In the end, I came to understand that her story of emigration was, in its very essence, a piece of my own family history.