nothin Accented American, & Proud | New Haven Independent

Accented American, & Proud

Elona Vaisnys.

Every time Elona Vaisnys speaks people want to know where she is from.

Because I have an accent,” she said. I was older than 9 when I came to the States, and by that age the cerebral cortex matures, and we keep the accent unless we work on losing it.”

But Vaisnys said she never felt a pressure to lose her the accent.

I studied other languages, and Americans are very tolerant and accept anyone speaking English with an accent,” she told WNHH-LP’s K Pasa” host Norma Rodriguez-Reyes on the latest episode of the show.

Vaisnys came to be an American who speaks English with an accent after her family left Lithuania to escape the Soviet Union when she was 13. We were refugees, just like the people who are running from Syria now,” she said of her family, which left Lithuania with the clothes on their backs and three suitcases.

Today she serves as co-president of the League of Women Voters of Hamden-Norrth Haven, as well as membership director of the state league.

Vaisnys spoke on the program about what it was like to be in need of refuge and to seek and find it in the U.S.

The family, which included her mother and father and two other siblings, lived in displaced persons camps in Austria for four years before being connected with a pastor at a Connecticut church in need of an organist. Her father had been the chief opera conductor of the state opera back in Lithuania and knew how to play the organ.

That’s how we got to New Britain,” she said.

You want to be Helen. Ellen. Or Eleanor,” she was told in school. I said, No. I am Elona.’”

Unlike immigrants of yore who wanted to shake off their old identity, or were forced to do so, her family found a vibrant Lithuanian-American community that helped them maintain their connection to their old home, while helping them navigate their new one. The community helps members of the community not only to maintain their identity today, but also to pass it on the generations of Lithuanians born in the U.S.

We reconstituted Lithuania in the U.S.,” Vaisnys said. We meet all over the U.S. We send our children to summer camp, some to language immersion camps and national events like last year’s song festival. We have Saturday schools to teach the children the language. We keep in touch with each other.”

Vasinys majored in French literature at Boston College. One day she noticed errors in a book for one of her courses; she wrote to the author — who happened to chair Yale’s French department. The professor invited her for a chat, and then arranged for her to receive a full scholarship to Yale, where she earned her PhD.

Vasinys went on to serve as a commissioner on a U.S. Presidential Commission, work in the Governor’s Office of Policy and Management and serve on the national state and local levels of the League of Women Voters, including her current positions.

A visit back to Lithuania struck home the importance of the civic sector, with volunteers supporting a civil society — a sector that thrives in the U.S., and was constrained in the former Soviet Union. Hence her commitment to organizations like the League.

To listen to the full interview, click on or download the above sound file.

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