National parks made my immigrant family American by Meena Venkataramanan

Here is another reason to support our amazing national park system.

“National parks made my immigrant family American,” a story in the Washington Post by Meena Venkataramanan, tells how the park system helped her Indian family become truly Americans. 

“For immigrants like us, the country’s national parks, often heralded as `America’s best idea,’ are more than picturesque retreats into the great outdoors. They have helped us define and shape our own American consciousness long before we had U.S. passports. They allow us to see ourselves in America’s evolving landscape.

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[After some time in the United Kingdom, the Venkataramanan family came to the United States.]  The U.K. doesn’t proudly brand itself as a nation of immigrants who can achieve the same as their natural-born counterparts, my parents told me. Only America could claim that label. There was no better way, we decided, for us to explore our burgeoning American identity than to indulge in an all-American pastime: road trips.”   Thus began many family road trips to national parks in the United States.  “Each national park we explored fostered a renewed appreciation for America and its possibilities, but simultaneously taught us something new about its blemished history and politics.”  Click the link above for details.

This blog post identifies seven national parks, starting with Ellis Island, which tell the U.S. story of immigrants.

KJ