I have a friend named Sarah Drake. Her surname is obviously of Irish descent, which is rather unexciting because most of her ancestors emigrated from Ireland. She still has extended family in Ireland who she visits every few years. But, even though her immediate family has been living in the United States for at least three generations, the Drakes still consider themselves Irish. They frequently wear Irish pride clothing and adorn their house with Ireland-inspired decorations. The Drakes also celebrate St Patrick's Day with an Irish passion. My last name, on the other hand, which was shorten when some long-dead relative first immigrated to the United States, is of Polish origin. I do not actually know from what "Kosur" is shortened, just that the original surname sounded something like "Kosuralski," which is more obviously Polish. However, I do not consider myself Polish for two main reasons: I also have ancestry from other European countries and my immediate family has lived in the United States for four generations.

As Salman Rushdie asserts in "Imaginary Homelands," an essay that explores how memories of the past are examined, "the past is home, albeit a lost home in a lost city in the mists of lost time." (9) He uses the analogy of piecing back together the shards of a broken mirror; the fragments can be reassembled but some of the pieces will inevitably be lost forever (11). Likewise, the memories of the past can be reconstructed but never completely nor accurately. Rushdie further asserts that home is merely an idea: "we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities of villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands..." (10) People, particularly members of diasporic communities, try to understand the past by creating fictional ideas of home that develop from memories of their actual experiences. However, since memories are never fully reliable because of the complexities of thought, the idea of home becomes a version of the past as opposed to a truth. In other words, "my" idea of home is based on real events and experiences but is only an imperfect picture created from select pieces of my past much like a repaired mirror missing a few fragments. Although all people create their own versions of the past, members of diasporas particularly cling to the notion of "imaginary homelands." As defined in Beginning Postcolonialism by John McLeod, diasporic communities are "communities of people living together in one country who 'acknowledge that "the old country" — a notion often buried deep in language, religion, custom or folklore — always has some claim on their loyalty and emotions." (207) Diasporic individuals often create "imaginary homelands" so as to experience a sense of belonging in a state that is otherwise "in-between," which is a term used to describe the difference in the way in which diasporic individuals think about the "home and host countries" (208-209). Because of a sense of "unbelonging" to neither their new country of residence nor their old place of origin, members of diasporic communities construct their own fictional homelands to which they can then belong. So, why do the American-born Drakes find pleasure in classifying themselves as Irish?

When first immigrating to America in the nineteenth century, the Irish landed in and settled around New York City. Historically, they were stereotyped as a beer-drinking, potato-eating working class. Then again, although viewed as a working class, Irish immigrants were also thought of as lazy and incompetent. They were heavily discriminated against and only allowed to work the worst jobs that non-Irish people refused to work. The Irish were placed on the bottom of the binary as inferior to non-Irish people such as native-born Americans and other immigrants. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, Irish immigrants migrated from northeastern cities to Chicago where they established themselves in government positions. Because of their working their way up from mediocre working-class jobs, the Irish were thus viewed as middle class in the Midwest as opposed to working class in the in northeast. Even now, Irish immigrants are viewed more positively in the central United States. Sarah Drake and her immediate family live in central Illinois. As I abovementioned, the Drakes consider themselves Irish because of their last name and their distant relatives in Ireland. Yet, they contradict the tradition view of Irish immigrants as working-class citizens by being members of the upper-middle class. In contrast to the idea of Irish immigrants as a working class people who perform hard physical labor, many of the immediate Drake family members work at the local bank. Now retired, Sarah's paternal grandfather worked in management at Heartland Bank and Trust Company where he earned a sizable salary. Sarah's father is also currently employed in management at the same bank. During the summer months, even Sarah works as a cashier at what is now know by friends of the family as the "Drake Bank." Sarah and her family live on the edge of a golf course, which their bank funded, in a newly developed suburb. Their huge house includes three-levels, counting a finished basement. They have their own personal swimming pool in their huge back yard and also a drawer fully of money — the "money drawer" as I called it — in their kitchen. Working-class citizens typically do not work in banks nor do they have drawers of extra money in their kitchens. Thus, although they consider themselves Irish, the Drakes are upper-middle class, which is in contrast to the tradition notion of the Irish as working class.

The summer after he graduated from high school, Sarah's brother, Jim, spent a few weeks designing and building a mediation garden in their back yard. As previously discussed, Irish immigrants are stereotypically viewed as the working class. Therefore, when Jim built his meditation garden, he was participating in the assumption that the Irish are the working class. He dug in the dirt, spread sand, and moved heavy gardening bricks. However, a meditation garden is not a staple fixture in Irish landscaping. In fact, meditation gardens are Eastern in origin where the idea of meditation developed. Even though Jim exemplifies the idea of the Irish as the working class by performing the physical labor associated with gardening, he put his effort into building a garden that is not Irish. He is both Irish and not Irish at the same time. Similarly, most members of the Drake family frequently wear clothing that asserts their Irishness such as shirts embellished with "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" and kelly green shamrocks. They proudly display their identity of Irish through their wardrobes. However, most Irish people who actually live in Ireland do not routinely wear such symbols of Irishness. By wearing clothing that asserts their Irish identity, the Drakes are not participating in tradition Irish customs but rather an Americanized version of Irishness. Because the Drakes have extended family still living in Ireland, they take summer trips to Ireland that are also Americanized versions of Irishness. For example, when Drake family members travel to Ireland, they tend to visit touristy places such as Blarney Castle. They do not really experience Ireland like an authentic Irish person. They basically stick to the tourist areas such as castle tours. Native-born Irish citizens definitely do not spend all of their time visiting their own national attractions and landmarks whereas the Drakes do, which demonstrates yet again that the family is both Irish and not Irish at the same time.

I always though the Drakes were a little strange for considering themselves Irish because they live in America and have lived in America for at least three generations. Just because their last name is of Irish origin did not make them Irish in my view of nationality. My last name was created from a Polish surname. My paternal grandmother has Czechoslovakian ancestors. My maternal grandfather is of German descent, which is from where I inherited my German hips, good for birthing oodles of babies, like my great grandmother and her eleven children. My maternal grandmother's maiden name is "Irish", which is the Americanized surname for someone from Ireland. I am also distantly related to Mary, Queen of the Scots through my maternal grandmother. I have never really considered myself anything but American, or at least living in America. I never felt any overwhelmingly strong loyalty to any European nation. I felt that since I was born in America to parents and grandparents who were born in America, then I was American. Even if I tried to trace my roots back to a European nation, the routes are from several countries all over Western and Eastern Europe. Thus, if I ever were to consider myself something else besides American, I would have to call myself a European mutt because I have such varied ancestry. Before reading Rushdie and McLeod, I did not have a word for why my friend and her family considered themselves Irish. To me, nationality depended only upon in which country a person was born. However, being Irish gives the Drakes a sense of belonging even if they only belong to an "imaginary homeland" created from bits and pieces of both Ireland and America. Diasporas such as the Drakes and their Americanized Irishness exist so that diasporic individuals can find a place in which they belong. Perhaps I should embrace my German hips and bear a dozen children in honor of my great grandmother. Then again, I can find nothing wrong with sweeping up the broken pieces of the European mirror and accepting myself as American.