To Build a Bildungsroman
⤏ A SECOND–GEN’S COMING OF AGE
⤏ WRITTEN BY PAULA MACENA
Suburbia has always sounded like a myth to me; tall tales of hometowns where the average American is born and raised, to later go on and raise their own average Americans in the same cul-de-sac. Each home makes the perfect backdrop for generations of white teenagers to have their first dose of existentialism at the cusp of sixteen years old as they come of age—this is the promise of the bildungsroman.
When watching Ladybird, I was struck by the uncanniness of her neighborhood. It felt like one big déjà vu, something I’ve seen before but never experienced in my own reality besides visiting the homes of my born-and-bred American friends. I’d marvel at the vastness of each ranch-style house, accustomed to growing up in a slew of cozy apartments and two-bedrooms. It’s rare, I thought, for these perfect 3-story homes to smell like anything but new and rich and entirely unfamiliar.
My family tried living in a suburban house for about a year, in a small town in South Jersey, and my mother hated its infinite space and empty rooms—Brazilians thrive on closeness, and our homes are designed to ensure it. American homes, on the other hand, provide more than enough space necessary to curate individuality and prompt the formerly mentioned coming of age.
I came of age in a small bedroom shared with my older sister, our parents right outside the half-open door as I attempted to carve out a place for myself within the confines of Tumblr. I’d listen to Troye Sivan’s Blue Neighbourhood and fantasize about the mundane—sneaking out with friends, riding my bike in the middle of the street, and growing up in a neighborhood I knew like the back of my hand. I started writing at a young age, and all my stories followed the same narrative of what I ultimately aspired towards: being a white teenager in America.
I watched movies and read books about teens reaching an epiphany, resulting in them “finding themselves”, and I wondered if it could really be that simple. And if it was, then why didn’t it feel that simple to me? Early on, I was hyper aware of my identity and the complexities that came with it, and there was no form of media that provided me with an accurate representation of my own upbringing. I tried to warp my life to fit the shape of an entirely different and unachievable reality—I stopped speaking Portuguese, was embarrassed to wear those Brazilian tees that are currently trending, and did a great job of my own erasure. At some point after moving out, I had a heated discussion with my father that resulted in me telling him I needed to set a boundary. He told me, “That’s what white people do. Did I raise you to be white?” I wanted to say no, but if boundary-setting was something that came with a different culture, I was almost willing to adopt it.
”Early on, I was hyper aware of my identity and the complexities that came with it, and there was no form of media that provided me with an accurate representation of my own upbringing.”
In coming of age films, the protagonist often connects with a mentor or parental figure for guidance. Where does that leave those of us whose parents had almost an entirely different childhood than we did?
Coming of age simply means to come into adulthood; it’s a symbol of maturity, the start of leaving your youth behind you. But the moment that comes with it, the aforementioned great epiphany, is something in and of itself. It’s branded in a way that we’re able to recognize a coming of age moment when we see it, even if it’s not necessarily at the brink of our youth. However, most of the best-known films that cover this trope—Juno, The Breakfast Club, The Edge of Seventeen—essentially marry it to white teenhood. For second-generation immigrants, our struggles with identity are piled sky-high, not to mention far different from what we see on screens. Our journey to individuality, a key trait of your classic coming of age, tends to come either much earlier or much later than our wholly American counterparts.
If you were to play a game of build-a-bildungsroman, you’d be able to string together hundreds of narratives from their most common traits: a sprinkle of a newfound mentor, a dash of an ex-friend, stirred together with an impending graduation date. A strained parental relationship, a best friend that’s likely to drift, and a hatred for hometowns. Or you could easily combine all of these into a single film. Still, more than anything, these movies display a loss of innocence, a universal experience. Yet it feels so far off from my own reality and the realities of other second-generation immigrants.
Although none of the previously mentioned tropes directly have anything to do with whiteness, the bildungsroman still inclines us in its direction. While white Americans see their own lives reflected back to them on the screen, we see a means of escape. As the characters find their identities, we invest ourselves in them so we lose our own. Consuming this media can make its viewers aspire toward whiteness.
Many of my friends with similar backgrounds to mine realized that they left their childhoods behind sooner than others who struggled less with their identities. Looking back, it’s usually because our first existential crisis reaches us early on. We witness and experience drastic events in our communities and families from young ages; we’re expected to mature and adapt to any new environment that we’re dropped in, where it’s often rare to find someone who looks or acts like us, and we want to know why. We’ve already wondered about who we are, we’ve tired ourselves from asking these questions, and we want to know what’s next. But at the same time, our upbringings could also send us in an entirely different direction.
“If you were to play a game of build-a-bildungsroman, you’d be able to string together hundreds of narratives from their most common traits: a sprinkle of a newfound mentor, a dash of an ex-friend, stirred together with an impending graduation date. A strained parental relationship, a best friend that’s likely to drift, and a hatred for hometowns.”
I personally found myself having a coming of age moment while I was already in college. The freedom needed to find yourself tends to come later for those of us with heavier familial obligations. Growing up, it was a running joke in my family that moving out at eighteen years old was a “white people thing”. In immigrant households, it’s common for the children to live with their parents well into adulthood. It’s difficult to find yourself when your every move is being watched, when you have to prioritize living up to familial expectations before your own.
When I wrote about my college coming of age, I hadn’t made the connection yet that my reason for a late bloom was tied to my cultural identity. It was later on, while analyzing my dislike for Ladybird, that things began to make sense. I came across a TikTok, which I very luckily stumbled upon while writing my essay on Ladybird, that put my exact feelings into words.
At the time, I latched onto specific quotes by the creator of this video—about how a movie by Greta Gerwig would be impossible to relate to as someone with an entirely different background; how we don’t need Western filmmakers to stop telling their stories, but we do need “to have more stories stand alongside these Western (often white) narratives.” Now as I rewatch the video, I find myself drawn to the creator’s closing statements: “What makes art good and what makes us feel something is its ability to communicate universal themes. (...) I just really wanted to know who I was and if I belonged somewhere, and doesn’t that make me exactly like Ladybird?”
If we were to build-a-bildungsroman for our very own coming of age, we’d find that we’re surrounded by themes that are explored in these white American stories. Real Women Have Curves, a coming of age film featuring America Ferreira about a Mexican-American girl who’s unsure about her impending future, has such distinct similarities to Ladybird that folks have claimed that Greta Gerwig copied it, despite Gerwig stating that Ladybird is inspired by her own life. Of course, Ladybird is the better-known film due to its one glaring difference, but its themes are inarguably universal. We can use many of the same tropes for our narratives, because they’re still applicable, but we can add to it to build a bildungsroman that’s accurate to our coming of age experiences.
Ferreira’s character in Real Women Have Curves has a similar personality to Ladybird, shared struggles, and even a comparable character arc. But this film adds her heritage and her culture, which ultimately adds to her struggles with her identity, building a world and a character that first- and second-generation immigrants can relate to. No, I don’t want Gerwig to write and direct a Latinx film; I want the very thing that prompts a coming of age: space. Space for immigrant coming of age stories, space for these universal themes to be told through our lens. I want to watch a movie or read a book of this genre that is a reflection of our reality instead of escapism. Suburbia will always be a fairytale to me, but films such as Real Women Have Curves are a familiar truth that deserve to be embraced by the masses.