Immigrant Tells Stories From Heart

In her native India, Usha Jain was known for talking too much. Friends and relatives said she ought to keep quiet, that no man would marry a woman who spoke in public the way she did.

Here in the United States, where she has lived for the last 30 years, Jain is paid to speak. She travels throughout Orange County sharing stories of what it’s like for a woman from India to adapt to the strange, funny and sometimes frightening ways of America.

She calls her program See America Through My Eyes, and her mission isn’t just to entertain: She hopes her listeners will gain an understanding and tolerance for others and a fresh perspective on the land they call home, whether they were born here or moved here from another country.

No matter which country they’re from, immigrants usually identify with Jain’s initial fears about living in America.

At a luncheon meeting of the Exchange Club of Irvine, Jain spoke about the difficulty of overcoming cultural and language barriers, such as her struggle to adhere to a strict vegetarian diet in the days when it seemed everyone ate hamburgers for lunch. At one of her first clerical jobs, her co-workers frequented a local restaurant where the only things she could find on the menu that didn’t involve beef were French fries and banana splits.

“I figured, ‘Why have potatoes when I can have a banana split? Bananas are nutritious.’ So I ate banana splits for lunch. The other ladies would ask, ‘Aren’t you worried about calories?’ But I had no idea what calories were.

“I used to worry about how I would fit in. I look different,” Jain said. “Today I say, ‘Hey. Look around you. Everyone’s trying to look different. It’s a multibillion-dollar industry.’ ”

People pay to stand out in a crowd; they dye their hair orange or purple, tattoo their bodies and pierce their bodies from ears to toes with jewelry, she said.

“I don’t have to do a thing,” she joked.

Jain gives the $75 fees she makes from her talks at club meetings and fund-raisers to the Bowers Kidseum in Santa Ana.

“America has been very good to me, and this is one way I can give something back,” she says.

Jain, a 51-year-old Irvine resident, has enjoyed a good yarn for as long as she can remember. As a child growing up in a small village in India 80 miles north of New Delhi, she would listen to her grandmother tell stories to her at night. She would watch her father--a prominent attorney--speak at public functions.

“He would always take me with him, and I’d recite a poem,” she said.

Jain lived in a “sheltered, controlled environment.” She was the first woman in her family to go to college, at an all-women’s school 16 miles from her village, where she excelled at speech and debate. In 1968, she received a gold medal in speech from the state of Haryana, India.

“A lot of relatives would ask my mother, ‘Who’s going to marry this girl? She talks so much,’ ” Jain said. Her father, however, encouraged her public speaking, and Jain did marry.

“Our marriage was arranged by our parents,” she said.

In 1969, at the age of 20, she moved with her husband, Jay Jain, to Florida. “I came with $8 in my pocket and a suitcase full of clothes,” she said.

When she began looking for work, she found her degree from India was worthless.

“I was told, ‘The only thing you’re qualified to do is clean homes and baby-sit.’ I had to look within myself to see what skills I had.”

Her English was not good, but she caught on to the language quickly and got a second degree in public speaking from the University of Florida in 1972.

She honed her speaking skills while working at the mailing house and print shop she and her husband own in Santa Ana. The Jains started the business 10 years ago.

“We were so scared. We worked 14- to 16-hour days,” Jain said. Now their company, United Printing and Mailing Inc., has 19 employees.

To draw business, Jain began speaking at breakfast meetings for local chambers and professional associations. Though most people used the 30 seconds allotted for introductions to talk about themselves and their accomplishments, Jain would tell a story.

Those 30-second stints gave her the confidence to do what she’d always wanted: Tell her “human touch” stories.

Four years ago, she started speaking at various networking groups, including the Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis, Soroptimists and seniors organizations.

“She tells stories from the heart,” said Marie Evans, an Exchange Club board member who encouraged Jain’s speaking engagements. “She shows us things so many of us take for granted.”

Jain began donating earnings from the talks to the Bowers Kidseum after she was invited there to show the children how to put on a sari and decorate their hands with henna. She also shared her stories at a recent Kidseum fund-raiser for adults called Party ‘Round the World.

“People identify with her stories,” said Genevieve Barrios Southgate, director of children’s education at the Kidseum. “Sometimes, they think they’re the only ones who experience confusion and insecurities about coming to a new place. She helps them realize, ‘Ah, I’m not the only one who feels that way.’ It can make them feel at ease.”

Parents can appreciate her stories about the trials of raising three children “in two different cultures.” She has a 25-year-old son, Manav, who recently passed the state bar exam, and twin 20-year-old daughters, Mamta and Samta, who attend college. Seeing them through their teen years wasn’t easy.

“The mentality and expectations are different here than in India,” Jain said. “We didn’t question our parents. Here, everything we say we have to justify. I have to tell my kids why we go to temple or why they can’t stay out late at night.”

Jain likes to remind people about the advantages of living in America.

“The world wants to come to America. Why? It’s not Disneyland, blue jeans or Hollywood movies. It’s because America is so advanced technologically.

“Yet, somewhere in the advancement of technology we have forgotten the most important people we have are in our homes. We’ve given children cell phones, pagers and the World Wide Web at their fingertips, but they still don’t feel connected.”

She sees stories as a way for families to get reconnected.

During the summer, she presented an after-school storytelling program at Kidseum to encourage some of the young visitors to tell stories of their family’s immigration.

“She encourages children to collect stories from older family members to understand their history and their lives,” Southgate said.

Jain also hopes to collect stories from the public about how they or their ancestors settled in America, “whether 20 or 200 years ago.” She plans to turn the stories into a book, with proceeds going to Kidseum.

“People have many stories of love or dreams. We need to share them,” she said. “These stories connect us with the past and reconnect us with each other.”

* If you wish to contribute family stories, send them to the Bowers Kidseum, attention Usha Jain, at 1802 N. Main St., Santa Ana, CA 92701 or e-mail them to: UJain@aol.com.