NEWPORT – For many years, I wanted to be “American.” Not on paperwork, but in spirit.

I grew up in Egypt. As an English major at Alexandria University, I studied the great American authors.

Some aspects of their writing were “local.” For example, it was hard to imagine frost as a “blond assassin” in Egypt’s eternal sunshine, as Emily Dickinson wrote about it in her poem, “Apparently with no surprise.”

And it was very difficult for a 19-year old to understand the profound despair mapped onto the stark New England landscape by Edith Wharton in Ethan Frome.

Yet, there was something about American literature that inspired me. It grappled with the problem of the frontier as an existentialist dilemma. Crossing the frontier still stands for the constant reinvention of self, which is the hallmark of what it means to be American.

When I came to the U.S. as a Fulbright scholar in 1994 and as a graduate student in 1995, I wanted to be part of this spirit. The demands were high: to be self-reliant, independent, irreverent, kind, to understand that an injury to one is an injury to all, to personalize the political and politicize the personal – that is a very tall order, especially when one is 24.

It is still difficult, albeit invigorating, to live by those ideals.

America needs you
On Sept. 1, 2016, I was naturalized. My journey took more than 20 years. I finally feel at home. I do not have to be anxious every time I go through customs or worry that a random ban maybe put on my country of origin.

When I arrived at the center for U.S. Immigration in Johnston to take the oath of allegiance, I joked with the immigration officer, “This is a very important day in the history of our nation.”

This was the first time I used “our” in referring to the United States. He responded: “Yes, America needs you.”

American ethos, Islamic faith
Now, I can choose from the best of what it means to be American and what it means to be Egyptian.

Here is an example of how this choice works: thinking about my life by way of a journey reflects both my American ethos and my understanding of the Islamic faith.

In Islam, the Prophet’s journey, or Hijra from Mecca to Medina in 622 A.D., does not simply represent a physical move from persecution to protection. The distance from Mecca to Medina is a mere 210 miles. Yet, this migration has been enshrined in our Islamic collective memory as a symbol of our potential for transformation from human to divine. Migration, thus, is a trope that allows us to think about the contemporary challenges that affect our world.

Today, more than ever, the question of what it means to be American is a relevant one. The current wave of anti-immigrant sentiment is tied to a culture of fear, hatred, and anger that is essentially un-American. It threatens what has made this nation great.

As a college professor, I teach from the perspective of what it means to be American. I encourage my students to take pride in their work. Not the pride that comes from entitlement or birthright, but the pride that comes from choice.

Courage, integrity and faith
To choose to be American is to have courage, integrity, and faith. My students have stories of their own frontiers, the psychological and metaphysical one. To tell those stories is to honor our American-ness.

As my beloved husband always says, “There is an American inside all of us.”

Sally Gomaa, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of English at Salve Regina University in Newport.