Immigrant Odyssey: A French-Canadian Habitant In New England by Félix Albert is about the author’s life from birth to after he had immigrated to the United States from Québec and how he and his family rose from poverty, then fell back into it.
Albert was raised a hard worker in the little parish of L’Isle Verte, Québec whose family was struggling with growing enough good crop to live. Albert helped his family until his father’s passing when he gained the rights to the land. He had married a woman named Desneiges by this time, and had started their own family on the homestead. Inspired by others leaving for The States, and his wife’s cousin in Caribou, Maine, Albert reluctantly gave in and moved to Lowell, Massachusetts. Essentially dirt poor in America, Albert and his family had to stay with another, more established immigrant family until they could afford their own flat. To get along, their children had to be put to work on hard hours. This was very new for Albert’s wife, because “In contrast to her life on the farm in St. Eloi, Desneiges no longer had the oldest children, two girls in their teens, at home to help her. They, and at least one brother, Joseph, the eldest son, who was employed in the mule room of the Tremont Mills, left home before six o’ clock in the morning to labor all day in a factory.” (Albert 13). But she did not mind too much.
This can also be seen in the Ted Talk speech Why Children of Immigrants Experience Guilt by Sahaj Kaur Kohli in which Kohli states that “…a lot of children of immigrants may act as a translator, may help pay the bills, may help take care of younger siblings…” (Kohli). Félix and his wife Desneiges had 19 children who, like mentioned as quite common among immigrant children in the Ted Talk, helped their parents earn a living, and integrate into American society.
What is an example in your book in which the children of immigrants have to work to help keep their family afloat?
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