While since the time of my great-grandparents, younger generations have pursued higher education and a broader array of careers, the “communal culture” still very much exists today. As a Gen-Z Rusyn-American, I find that many examples from my own life involve how I interact within subcultures, hobbies, and academia. I grew up with the notion always in the back of my mind: if I’m being too creative or having too much fun, I must be doing something wrong. Success, in my family, was defined by practicality and not simply “doing what you enjoy”. I had to avoid becoming attached to interests that wouldn’t benefit my future studies or career. That said, I had to move on quickly from any books, shows, or musicians I enjoyed. So I never looked at a work of fiction and felt it could influence my long-term identity.

This isn’t to say Rusyns are immune from attachment to popular culture – there are always exceptions, and there isn’t one singular work ethic or upbringing that encompasses our entire community. Therefore, I am not promoting the idea that all Rusyn families are strict, old-fashioned, or even traditionalists. The “ethnic parent” stereotype has quickly become an outdated caricature in numerous cultures, and we should be past the point of over-exaggerating it.

I believe that to some degree, many of us, both Rusyns in the homeland and America, have a complex relationship with individualism, more specifically balancing it with communalism. As you ponder on this statement, do not ask yourself if you have felt that way or not. Instead, ask yourself, why might our community struggle to adopt the western notion of individualism? What events in our history may have contributed, beyond the scope of familial hardships? I would argue that it is not only the policies that have restricted Rusyn identity, but also that we have learned to comply with them over generations. We have learned to be passive about several of our most outward areas of identity: culture, ethnicity, language, and even religion. This includes hesitance in explaining one’s Rusyn identity to those who are unfamiliar or resorting to claiming a larger culture for the sake of ease or conformity.

These generational habits we have become accustomed to, of course, are not demonstrated exactly the same with each generation. In my own experience, I did grow up valuing conformity over individualism. This applied to my ethnic identity too: even when I learned I was Rusyn (not Slovak), I was hesitant to claim the label of “Rusyn”, in part because I didn’t know other Rusyn-Americans in my hometown, outside of my immediate family. There was also a sense of “elitism” in the diasporas I grew up around, a sort of hierarchy based on which county or town one’s relatives came from, and which religion they adhered to. In the local Slovak-American community, you were expected to be Roman Catholic. In the Hungarian-American community, you were expected to have family from Győr-Moson-Sopron and also be Roman Catholic. As I grew older, this selectiveness became more apparent to me, and I realized that even within my own diaspora communities, there would always be a sense of “us versus them”.

This is what I believe helped me to adopt the identity of “Rusyn” and delve deeper into the concept of individualism. My internal conflict with individualism was something I needed to reckon with. Unlike the generations before me, I was not surrounded by other Rusyns, and so the communal culture was more limited to my family, not a larger community (like in Pennsylvania). Confronting and ultimately accepting my Rusynness was the first step in telling myself, I can be an individual but also accept communal culture as an indisputable part of my family’s history. As I adopted the Rusyn identity, in the midst of other restrictive diaspora communities, it also became easier to participate in mainstream youth culture when I wanted to. I had already seen the repercussions of being Rusyn in a Slovak-American community, and being from a non-Catholic background. I thought to myself, at this point, it won’t make a difference if I also have colorful hair and wear Demonia platform boots occasionally!

Although I was able to ease my way into some mainstream trends gradually, I still hold the belief that families heavily assimilated into Anglo-American culture have the privilege of being able to devote much more energy towards popular culture and youth culture. This is especially prevalent in Americans whose families have been in the US for centuries. Most have long been removed from the traumas of their immigrant ancestors, and now look to mainstream American culture for structure and community. This is most frequently manifested in the products they consume, including but not limited to politics, film, literature, fashion, and music.

As I stated previously, those of us with a more recent immigrant family might only be 1-3 generations removed from a relative who directly escaped war, famine, disease, or economic corruption. They taught their children based on the worldview they knew, regardless of whether or not the child was born in an entirely different country. Their family would also be inclined to spend most of their time with groups of people who shared their language and religion. This is important in the case of Rusyns, as we already have a very limited sphere with both our language and religion. Even if the child did not marry a fellow Rusyn, the familial and communal influence would still remain long after. This was true in the case of my grandmother, who married an Irish-American man. Even after the marriage and birth of two children, she remained on the same street as her relatives and even lived with her Rusyn parents, who helped raise my mother and uncle.

As I dwell on my own family’s experience, I think back to my friend in small-town Indiana. At first glance, she is the representation of small-town Americana – yet to me, she also represents generations past; leading back across the ocean, not far from the place my own family left. I have to wonder what our conversations would be like if we both lived in our respective homelands. Would we still be critiquing angsty young adult novels? What topics would influence our creative works? This is the intrinsic nature of belonging to a diaspora community. We face both the reality and the “what if”. Perhaps that is what intrigues me about fiction: an intertwining of the real, the imagined, and the sought-after.