Confused in Smart & Final

My grandparents and father immigrated to the U.S. from El Salvador in 1978 to flee from the Salvadoran War that later began in 1979. Upon leaving their motherland, they knew that the war in El Salvador was about to begin as violence was starting to strike; at four years old, my father and grandfather were walking near the capital in El Salvador when they saw a dead man lying in the middle of the street as a result of an attack; this was the moment that made my grandfather consider immigrating his family to the U.S. for their safety and for new opportunities.  

My grandparents and father then became refugees in the U.S., resettling in what is now known as Little Central America. The three of them moved in with my grandma’s friend’s family from her Salvadoran village. The six of them squeezed into a small apartment. My father also noted that a large amount of Salvadoran immigrants resettled in this same area as a result of word of mouth. While beginning their new journey in America, my grandmother became a housekeeper and attended a free night school to learn English, my grandfather worked to make leather pouches for construction workers, and my father began preschool (where he learned English). 

Connecting this back to my project, I created a comic which portrays an incident that resulted from a language barrier from the first time my grandmother and father went to an American grocery store; they walked to the store as they could not afford a car/to take the bus yet. Upon arriving at the grocery store, everything was written in English, but they only understood Spanish; this made navigating around the grocery store very difficult for them. My father was amazed by the abundance of American groceries and snacks. He proceeded to find what he thought was a box of cereal and begged my grandmother to buy it for him (they could not afford to spend money on treats on a regular basis). My grandmother bought him the “cereal,” but as my father was eating it, he expressed that his stomach began to hurt. My grandmother then found out that the “box of cereal” was actually cat food and that my father had consumed a large amount of cat food. This incident reveals the day-to-day struggles of refugees. Since my father and grandparents only spoke Spanish, it was difficult for them to navigate around America and perform daily tasks, such as going to the grocery store. Only understanding Spanish was a prominent barrier and pushed my grandparents and father to learn English as it would introduce them to greater opportunities and make them feel more at home in America.  

For my artwork, I decided to create a hand drawn comic which portrays the incident. The story that is expressed is a common inside joke in my family, and although we laugh about it now, it does reveal the hardships and discomfort that they once felt as refugees in America. I tried to portray that they were located in a lower-class area through drawing litter on the sidewalk and drawing creaks in their walls at home. In addition, on the border of my comic, I included words of different emotions that my father and grandparents expressed they felt amongst coming to America. The title of my work is “Confused in Smart & Final,” which is a play on words from the book “Crying in H-Mart;” my father and grandmother were extremely disoriented while walking around the store as they could not understand anything that they were looking at; being confused in Smart & Final acts as a greater symbol of them being confused in America.