"I would love to know how to be more American, but I can't find any books or courses on the subject."

A question for the WaPo advice columnist:

My family and I came to America from the Soviet Union when I was a teenager. We became citizens. I got educated here and own a successful business. I write well and speak correctly, with almost no accent. I feel like I am an American.

I love America and try to learn new things every day, but I feel like something is missing in me.

Since I was born and spent my formative years in a communist country (truly like another planet, compared to the USA), my "autopilot" reactions are not like those of typical American-born people. For instance, my manners, topics of conversation, humor, dress, attitude toward money and even body language sometime seem "foreign."

I feel like it is hurting me to be "culturally different." I don't think I say or do anything straight-up offensive — it's more like a lot of subtle little things.

How can I fix this "handicap?"

I would love to know how to be more American, but I can't find any books or courses on the subject.

I haven't read the answer yet, but I love the question, and the predictable answer seems obvious: America is (or should be) about diversity, and you shouldn't think of yourself as foreign, but another great part of nation of immigrants. Thanks for contributing your special, individual mix of manners, topics, and attitudes. You belong here, and we love you. The only fix for your "handicap" is to stop thinking of it as a handicap.

The columnist, Amy Dickinson, does begin with something like that: "[H]ere is a beautiful 'American' ideal (so different from the culture you were raised in): All Americans have the right to be uniquely themselves, and that definitely includes you."

But she does give him some ideas to transform himself into a person who comes across as more stereotypically American:

1. Commit to some community activities. Amy suggests volunteer firefighting, teaching English as a second language, and poll working.

2. Consume cultural materials: study American history, watch some movies that embody Americanness (“Singing in the Rain,” “Goodfellas,” “Barbershop,” “13th” and “Ramy"), read some novels (Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Sherman Alexie, Gary Shteyngart and Jericho Brown), and listen to music (the only music suggested is... Dolly Parton!).

3. Get a friend to keep prompting you about each little thing you say or do whenever it seems less than American. And the punchline is that this person might say that "your effort makes you the most 'American' person they know." To which I say absolutely not. Your effort is the most foreign thing about you. Be yourself, with whatever set of quirks and predilections you've got — that's the American way... at least it was or should be... but those bastards want to take it away from us....

By the way, Gary Shteyngart was a good suggestion for something for this guy to read:

Born Igor Semyonovich Shteyngart... in the Soviet Union, he spent the first seven years of his childhood living in a square dominated by a huge statue of Vladimir Lenin in what is now St. Petersburg—which he alternately calls "St. Leningrad" or "St. Leninsburg". He comes from a Jewish family, with an ethnically Russian maternal grandparent, and describes his family as typically Soviet.... Shteyngart immigrated to the United States in 1979 and was brought up in Queens, New York, with no television in the apartment in which he lived, where English was not the household language. He did not shed his thick Russian accent until the age of 14....