LITR 4340 American
Immigrant Literature
2nd class meeting: Examples of the Immigrant Narrative
copies of Eileen's poem
take ID sheets to class
Af-Am assignments
more dramatic or oppositional than immigrant literature, more conflict between dominant and emergent identities
preview Equiano as "Founding Father" of African American prose (Phillis Wheatley, poetry)
Why read older literature? (cf. black and white movies)
discussion leader:
1. How does each story embody the immigrant story as an identifiable narrative or story-sequence? What symbols can be identified in and across both stories?
2. If you liked these stories, why? What cultural values or symbols? What "myths" or cultural narratives?
3. Can we celebrate yet criticize the immigrant narrative? What are the potential downsides to these stories? Who is left out? If we're reluctant to criticize, what testimony to power of cultural narrative?
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Celebrate: "Soap & Water," "The English Lesson," and The Cooked Seed are all popular, pleasant reads. Can this pleasure and populism be related to the American immigrant narrative and the American Dream? Why do we like these stories so much?
-
Criticize: What potentially dark or disturbing forces may be at work in the story of "The English Lesson," and how does the text avoid highlighting them? In "Soap and Water," is it possible to validate the villains? What cultural values or roles do they represent?
4. Where do the minority, New World immigrant, and "Model Minority" identities appear in these stories (Obj. 3)? How does the dominant culture appear (Obj. 4)?
Objective 6. The Immigrant Narrative and Public Education: To register the importance of public education to assimilation.
6a. Free secular
education as a starting point for the American Dream of material
progress. (first rung on the ladder available to all; instruction in
common language; separation from household or ethnic religious traditions)
6b. Teachers of literature, language arts,
and history must
consider a variety of issues relative to immigrant and minority culture
o Should we teach
/ practice
multiculturalism or
assimilation?
What balance between “identity,” “tradition,” and “roots” on one hand,
and “conformity,” “modernization,” and “mobility” on the other?
o How much does literature concern language
instruction and formal mechanics and terminology of literature, and how
much does it concern a student-friendly way to teach culture and social
skills?
o Do home-schooling and bible academies
constitute white resistance to integration, immigration, and
assimilation through a secular, multicultural curriculum?
Question: how does education enable (or frustrate) the American Dream (or not) in today's texts?
What are the dangers or risks of public education? Why are some "traditionalist" cultures (whether Muslim fundamentalists or Christian evangelicals) wary of it?
Anzia Yezierska, “Soap and Water”
[2] She told me that my skin looked oily, my hair unkempt, and my finger-nails sadly neglected. She told me that I was utterly unmindful of the little niceties of the well-groomed lady. She pointed out that my collar did not set evenly; my belt was awry, and there was a lack of freshness in my dress. And she ended with: "Soap and water are cheap. Any one can be clean.”
[8] Miss Whiteside had no particular reason for hounding and persecuting me. Personally, she didn’t give a hang if I was clean or dirty. She was merely one of the agents of clean society, delegated to judge who is fit and who is unfit to teach.
16 college as new religion x 17, 18 wall, x-belong
21 Whiteside - policeman
25 college x-democracy > class distinctions
32 instructor, woman
34 Miss Van Ness
36 telling story, unutterable
a friend
39 singing
English Lesson
22 Mrs. Hamma travels
23 tallest person in room
idiom
24 imitate her (mimesis, model)
feeling of control
27 "admirable" > equally > 33
28 NYC ethnic groups
Question: how does education fit in or enable the American Dream (or not) in today's texts?
Compare dynamics of today's education demographics?
An-Chee Min, Cooked Seed
Text discussion 1: Soap and Water
obj. 1 immigrant narrative + model minority
1. How does each story embody the immigrant story as an identifiable narrative? What symbols can be identified in and across both stories? (obj. 2)
assimilation?
What symbolizes assimilation? Since symbols can carry multiple meanings, what are some of the extra meanings of the symbols?
[2] She told me that my skin looked oily, my hair unkempt, and my finger-nails sadly neglected. She told me that I was utterly unmindful of the little niceties of the well-groomed lady. She pointed out that my collar did not set evenly; my belt was awry, and there was a lack of freshness in my dress. And she ended with: "Soap and water are cheap. Any one can be clean.”
[8] Miss Whiteside had no particular reason for hounding and persecuting me. Personally, she didn’t give a hang if I was clean or dirty. She was merely one of the agents of clean society, delegated to judge who is fit and who is unfit to teach.
[12] Often as I stood at my board at the laundry, I thought of Miss Whiteside, and her clean world, clothed in the snowy shirt-waists I had ironed. I was thinking—I, soaking in the foul vapors of the steaming laundry, I, with my dirty, tired hands, I am ironing the clean, immaculate shirt-waists of clean, immaculate society. I, the unclean one, am actually fashioning the pedestal of their cleanliness, from which they reach down, hoping to lift me to the height that I have created for them.
[17] At last I came to college. I rushed for it with the outstretched arms of youth’s aching hunger to give and take of life’s deepest and highest, and I came against the solid wall of the well-fed, well-dressed world—the frigid whitewashed wall of cleanliness.
[31] But to whom could I speak? The people in the laundry? They never understood me. They had a grudge against me because I left them when I tried to work myself up. Could I speak to the college people? What did these icebergs of convention know about the vital things of the heart?
Poetry Presentation: Papaleo, American Dream: First Report
Obj. 2: stages of immigrant narrative
immigrant generations
Question: Where in the poem do you see the stages of the immigrant narrative?
How do different generations react to immigration?
Objective 3. To compare and contrast the immigrant narrative with the minority narrative—or, American Dream versus American Nightmare:
· Differences between immigrants and minorities:
Identify the immigrant narrative
Other places?
Where does the minority narrative appear in today's readings?
“English Lesson”
27 NYC, ethnic groups > Dutch (x-Indians)
26 conflict between immigrants
25 Diego Torres as Hispanic / Afro-Caribbean
Dominican Republic
Text discussion 1: Soap and Water
obj. 1 immigrant narrative + model minority
1. How does each story embody the immigrant story as an identifiable narrative? What symbols can be identified in and across both stories? (obj. 2)
assimilation?
What symbolizes assimilation? Since symbols can carry multiple meanings, what are some of the extra meanings of the symbols?
[2] She told me that my skin looked oily, my hair unkempt, and my finger-nails sadly neglected. She told me that I was utterly unmindful of the little niceties of the well-groomed lady. She pointed out that my collar did not set evenly; my belt was awry, and there was a lack of freshness in my dress. And she ended with: "Soap and water are cheap. Any one can be clean.”
[8] Miss Whiteside had no particular reason for hounding and persecuting me. Personally, she didn’t give a hang if I was clean or dirty. She was merely one of the agents of clean society, delegated to judge who is fit and who is unfit to teach.
[12] Often as I stood at my board at the laundry, I thought of Miss Whiteside, and her clean world, clothed in the snowy shirt-waists I had ironed. I was thinking—I, soaking in the foul vapors of the steaming laundry, I, with my dirty, tired hands, I am ironing the clean, immaculate shirt-waists of clean, immaculate society. I, the unclean one, am actually fashioning the pedestal of their cleanliness, from which they reach down, hoping to lift me to the height that I have created for them.
[17] At last I came to college. I rushed for it with the outstretched arms of youth’s aching hunger to give and take of life’s deepest and highest, and I came against the solid wall of the well-fed, well-dressed world—the frigid whitewashed wall of cleanliness.
[31] But to whom could I speak? The people in the laundry? They never understood me. They had a grudge against me because I left them when I tried to work myself up. Could I speak to the college people? What did these icebergs of convention know about the vital things of the heart?
Objective 3. To compare and contrast the immigrant narrative with the minority narrative—or, American Dream versus American Nightmare:
· Differences between immigrants and minorities:
Identify the immigrant narrative
Other places?
Where does the minority narrative appear in today's readings?
“English Lesson”
27 NYC, ethnic groups > Dutch (x-Indians)
26 conflict between immigrants
25 Diego Torres as Hispanic / Afro-Caribbean
Dominican Republic
Dominant culture moment(s)
Miss Whiteside 1, 2
Soap and Water 17
34 Miss Van Ness
39 identification of "America" with its representative? No separation
Mrs. Hamma speaks inclusively, sensitive to class differences, esp. Europe
“Soap and Water”
106 slavery [how true? Metaphor or fact?]
Summary: The immigrant narrative doesn't exist entirely independently of the minority narrative, but defines itself against the minority narrative: we-they, etc.
Soap and Water”
106 slavery [how true? Metaphor or fact?]
Summary: The immigrant narrative doesn't exist entirely independently of the minority narrative, but defines itself against the minority narrative: we-they, etc.
2 upbeat fiction narratives ("Soap and Water" & "The English Class") representing generally sunny side of Immigrant Story / American Dream
“English Lesson”
22 Mrs. Hamma < grandparents from Germany—poor immigrants, work way up
24 improve my position
25 in search of a better future
25 classroom = America
31 improving yourselves
31 [class as second immigration]
“Soap and Water”
107 clothed in shirtwaists I ironed—fashioning their pedestal (cf. “cleaning toilets” in “English lesson”
109 dreams of America > shattered > deathless faith
109 people in laundry, grudge against me, left them
110 tied and bound > untied, freed
What are attractions? What are hidden costs?
In literature you don't just learn "affirmation" but "criticism."
Therefore we don't just celebrate the immigrant narrative, but we criticize it.
To criticize doesn't mean tearing it down but continuing to learn instead of stopping at some smiley moment.
"Soap and Water"
109 people in laundry, grudge against me, left them
"English Lesson"
30 Rudi’s ambivalence re gender roles
30 x-help of man, dependent
Anzia Yezierska, “Soap and Water”
Miss Whiteside's name as symbol
fences, walls, "gatekeeper"
clean x dirty
educated x ignorant
unmarked appearance x marked appearance
1 my personal appearance.
2 the little niceties of the well-groomed lady. [teacher talk; cf. Mrs. Hamma]
4 a private conference* [*dominant culture associated w/ privacy + cool impersonality & science & technology / antiseptic cleanliness]
[5] She never looked into my eyes. She never perceived that I had a soul. She did not see how I longed for beauty and cleanliness.
5 dead toil and exhaustion* [*work ethic = essential dynamic of immigrant narrative, but new immigrants do dirty work from which previous immigrants graduate]
6 Soap and water are cheap. Any one can be clean,”
6 the suppressed wrath of all the unwashed of the earth break loose within me. My eyes blazed fire*.
6 clean, immaculate, spotless Miss Whiteside
[9] While they condemned me as unfit to be a teacher, because of my appearance, I was slaving to keep them clean. I was slaving* [*"slaving" = identification w/ stage 3 of immigrant narrative, where immigrants may be temporarily treated as "minorities" like African Americans]
11 no such things as bathtubs in the house where I lived.
12 Miss Whiteside, and her clean world, clothed in the snowy shirt-waists* I had irone
13 at sea how to fathom and voice* those feelings
14 The girl in the cigar factory, in the next block, had gone first to a preparatory school*. Why shouldn’t I find a way, too?
15 the dream* of the unattainable was the only air in which the soul could survive. [*"dreams," "dream": cf. American Dream]
[16] The ideal of going to college was like the birth of a new religion in my soul.
17 the solid wall of the well-fed, well-dressed world—the frigid whitewashed wall of cleanliness.
["frigid whitewashed wall" as symbol of USA dominant culture's coldness and exclusion]
20 I longed for the larger life, for the stimulus of intellectual associations. . . . big fences put up against me
21 big, fat policeman with club = Miss Whiteside
23 because my wages were so low and so unsteady, I could never get the money for the clothes to make an appearance to secure a position with better pay.
24 a hidden enemy
25 college was against democracy in education, that clothes form the basis of class distinctions
[28] Inside the ruin of my thwarted life, the unlived visionary* immigrant hungered and thirsted for America.
30 find some human being . . . to begin again my insatiable search for America.
31 the people in the laundry? They never understood me. They had a grudge against me because I left them when I tried to work myself up.
31 college people = icebergs
32 an instructor, a woman, who drew me strangely . . . her dreams
34 10 years later Miss Van Ness*
35 one from the clean world human enough to be friendly
35 burst out crying in the street
36 heard myself telling her the whole story of my life
36 all so unutterable, to find one from the other side of the world who was so simply and naturally that miraculous thing—a friend
38 sunrise
39 singing a song of new life: “America! I found America.”
Nicholasa Mohr, “The English Lesson” (IA 21-34)
21 "I'm so confident that you will all do exceptionally well!"
21 everybody speaks Spanish
22 working harder and longer, if necessary
22 immigrants as legal aliens
several Chinese, two Dominicans, one Sicilian, and one Pole (4th wave)
22 working all day at those miserable, dreary, uninteresting, and often revolting jobs
My grandparents came here from Germany as poor immigrants, working their way up. I'm not one to forget . . .
23 tallest person in the room (nutrition, + contrast William)
23 an idiom!
23 same height standing as sitting, sense of equality
23 Mr. Colon
24 learn and speak and read English very good. To get a better job . . . help my mother y familia
24 get a ball rolling . . . is idiot! . . . What I said!
24 working delivery food business and live with my rother and his family in Chinatown. . . to speak good and improve my position better in this country . . . become American citizen
24 feeling of control over the situation gve her a pleasing thrill
25 living with relatives, unskilled laborers
25 Diego Torres, young man from Dominican Republic
25 there is political. The United States control most the industry
25 I no be American citizen, go back home, Dominican and proud
25 defend your right to an opinion
26 classroom = America
26 Lali: help husband and do more for myself
26 Aldo Fabrizi > American citizen
26 Pole, business suit, briefcase, reserved but friendly [dominant culture]
27 professor of music, history of music
27 read from his notes carefully
27 Jewish parents
27 return to my position
27 she seemed unable to move
27 everybody here must be treated equally. This is America!
28 history of NYC as far back as the Dutch
28 aware of dwarfishness
Anchee Min (1957- ) from The Cooked Seed
novelist and memoirist
193 Red Guards, actor in propaganda films
Status reduced > apply to universities in U.S. (friend
actress Joan Chen)
1960-80 Chinese immigration totals double every decade
Students and professionals
ESL
194
Red
Azalea,
The Cooked Seed
Education > acculturation + student status
American race relations
194 my cousin, my aunt’s son
Mandarin x Cantonese
155 confessed I was guilt, ready to accept punishment
> Debt, borrow more from aunt
deadpan
Takisha, my first American friend
Hot water 24 hours, a princess
Own desk and closet
Laughter, loud knock, dark-skinned person
196 African freedom fighter . . . breathing sculpture
A cripple, didn’t act like a handicapped person
Alabama
Don’t look at your book. Look at me.
197 home – motherland
Accepted me without reservation
China: hung but don’t die
198 Takisha studies to be doctor, cure mother
English sentence structure
199 couldn’t waste any time
200 no English, no job
English class, students from all over world
Black people looked alike, as did whites and Hispanics
To them, Oriental people all looked the same
201 unsatisfied by the speed of the teaching
Only one who really drilled at grammar
202
[free association;
fnf internality]
“excuse me” very useful > friendliest looks
x-students do the teaching . . . language cripples
203 like a parrot ;-)
African b. Germany > France
Japan? China? > silence
204 her original story was lost
205
Kate – Esmeralda? . . . cover girl. [Esmeralda from
Hunchback of
Notre Dame?]
Brightest eyes, worry-free smile, trusting and child-like
206 x-suffered any hardship
Takisha x-Kate: “She is rich.” Room to herself + TV
207 real American classroom? > business marketing
Pretend you do speak English
“salad”
208 share my salad . . . your first American experience
Speed up learning English > TV: Mister Rogers
Withdraw from English tutorial > hour with Kate
209 Takisha visibly upset
Share
American history:
slave
210 no idea who Mao was
Differences between African blacks and American blacks
211 fight for the same freedom?
MLK > death showed American society evil
Takisha: “It is.”
212 ask Takisha if Dr. King had achieved his dream
I am not a slave, but—
What it’s like to be owned, never understand
In
fact, I didn’t know what it was like
not to be
owned.
In China . . . one never owned oneself
Takisha too provoked to come out of her own world.
213 government run by all colors
What that had to do with Kate
Poor and lower classes took over government
Being illiterate became glorious
214 hospital operating tables
Good things about poor people being in control?
215 grandmother with bound feet
No difference between old and new society
Dominant culture moment(s)
Miss Whiteside 1, 2
Soap and Water 17
34 Miss Van Ness
39 identification of "America" with its representative? No separation
Mrs. Hamma speaks inclusively, sensitive to class differences, esp. Europe
“Soap and Water”
106 slavery [how true? Metaphor or fact?]
Summary: The immigrant narrative doesn't exist entirely independently of the minority narrative, but defines itself against the minority narrative: we-they, etc.
Soap and Water”
106 slavery [how true? Metaphor or fact?]
Summary: The immigrant narrative doesn't exist entirely independently of the minority narrative, but defines itself against the minority narrative: we-they, etc.
2 upbeat fiction narratives ("Soap and Water" & "The English Class") representing generally sunny side of Immigrant Story / American Dream
“English Lesson”
22 Mrs. Hamma < grandparents from Germany—poor immigrants, work way up
24 improve my position
25 in search of a better future
25 classroom = America
31 improving yourselves
31 [class as second immigration]
“Soap and Water”
107 clothed in shirtwaists I ironed—fashioning their pedestal (cf. “cleaning toilets” in “English lesson”
109 dreams of America > shattered > deathless faith
109 people in laundry, grudge against me, left them
110 tied and bound > untied, freed
What are attractions? What are hidden costs?
In literature you don't just learn "affirmation" but "criticism."
Therefore we don't just celebrate the immigrant narrative, but we criticize it.
To criticize doesn't mean tearing it down but continuing to learn instead of stopping at some smiley moment.
"Soap and Water"
109 people in laundry, grudge against me, left them
"English Lesson"
30 Rudi’s ambivalence re gender roles
30 x-help of man, dependent