LITR 4340 American Immigrant Literature UHCL lecture notes

LITR 4340 American Immigrant Literature

Lecture Notes

South Asian / Indian & Pakistani American Literature

Sri Meenakshi Temple
in Pearland, TX

Thank for presentations

students take responsibility for learning

peer pressure to perform

what are students coming in with? what are they picking up?

Final class:

Course objectives > literary devices > cultural narrative

us-them? humans as social creatures, but primal, fundamental impulse to divide to social groups

Crevecoeur: nation of many nations > Enlightenment universalism (facts, logic, human nature)

Cavaliers (dominant culture waves) generally tolerant of cultural differences, open to immigration (Enlightenment)

Franklin

Declaration

Adam Smith

Constitution 1.8.4, 1.2.3, article II.1.5 (pres.), 14th amendment

The Triumphant Decline of the WASP (Constitution 1.9.8)

universalist vs. us-them

Final exam: one more offering in spring 2019

narrative & symbols > cultural narrative

class potentially overwhelming, try to do as much as possible while making overall sense

class originally developed to complement American Minority Literature, cover some multicultural groups excluded

I was like you were when you started the course: read fiction & poetry by immigrant ethnic groups in past century or two, discuss their adventures, contributions, adjustments

No end of who to include.

USA as nation of many nations, e pluribus unum

kicker for most students: learning history and geography, x-literature as identity and escape

> literature as engagement with world of difference

migration, immigration as part of human evolution (learning, adaptation, changing environment for better opportunity)

Mukherjee, Divakaruni, Maqvi (Hindu / Pakistani immigrants)

Asian-Americans as "model immigrants"

most distinguished immigrant literature of past generation

advantage: many arrive already literature in English (owing to British empire)

another advantage: distance is so great that only reasonably well-off immigrants migrate this far (poorer South Asian immigrants work in Arab oil states)

other model qualities: take advantage of and support public education system > professional classes esp. medical (recall that most immigrants don't transfer a lot of capital, therefore emphasis on human or professional development)

assimilation may be more economic than cultural--model immigrants may imitate dominant culture in not assimilating entirely (they assimilate economically and educationally, but hold on to separate religion, maybe separate language)

Asian Americans and Jewish Americans as "model immigrant groups"

Asian Americans today

Jewish Americans in twentieth century

both on way into dominant culture

"A Wife's Story" 60 " . . . they're not condescending to us. Maybe they're a little bit afraid."

"Thank God for the Jews"

229-30 Kamal at hospital, seeing patients [ > professional status]

232 A tall, handsome reporter, who, with his upturned coat collar and straw-colored, wind-swept hair, seemed to belong in an ad for Burberry's in The New Yorker, was saying something about "recent acts of terrorism" in a faraway voice. An Israeli School bus had been bombed. . . An Arab village in ruins. . . . An old woman cried without restraint . . . .

233 The handsome, roving reporter, unchanged in his appearance, disconnected still from his surroundings, was speaking in a crisp accent that wasn't anything like what she heard on the streets in New York or Westville . . . .

Qualities of dominant culture observable in this example and later in semester:

"detached" quality--dominant culture always pulling away, heading into future

This "detached" quality can make the dominant culture elusive, hard to pin down or criticize

"Detached" can turn into a quality of "purity" or resistance to others' efforts at assimilation to it

The ethnic identity of the dominant culture is "unmarked." Compare to "Israeli school bus" and "Arab village."

What ethnicity is the reporter?

Divakaruni 70 stewardess so blond, so American

Dominant culture is "unmarked." Immigrant and minority cultures are "marked," but by assimilation they can become "unmarked."

"Thank God for the Jews"

230-1 Islamic women between tradition and modernity . . . "All this nonsense about bleeding the animal . . . It's ridiculous!"

232 "They've already forgotten their ways."

232 custom and habit gone awry in Westchester County

235 "what's kosher is okay with us"--in America, ancient rivalries (as between Muslims and Jews) get starved, washed out--everyone's thrown together as "Americans" in the great American marketplace

Chitra Divakaruni, “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs” (70-83)

70 so blond, so American

71 Americans, I'd heard, like their privacy, x-relatives

72 so fair-skinned. [color code]

75 dark-skinned foreigners

Bharati Mukherjee, “A Wife’s Story” (IA 57-69)

60 left home, my husband, to get a Ph.D. in special ed.

60 We've made it. Patels must have made it.

64 more privacy than we ever had in India

64 another shopping scene! [compare "Thank God for the Jews"]

65 absolutely sure he doesn't want to see Harlem + 69 "I am not understanding these Nergo people's accents."

66 I've been trained to adapt

66 Statue of Liberty

67 We have spent our life's savings to see this skyline, this statue

Bharati Mukherjee, “Love Me or Leave Me” (VA 187-194)

189 mighty shoulders and toothy smile, a woman who said exactly what was on her mind and said it in a nearly incomprehensible American accent with stereophonic loudness

189 all right to love precisely because she was American

190 I identified with her totally. I, too, intended to go places, be somebody.

Conclusions indicate immigrant narrative, American Dream

Chitra Divakaruni, “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs” (70-83)

75 But I know the sky outside is filled with strange and beautiful stars, and I am suddenly angry with him for trying to ruin it for me

77 The skyscrapers of downtown Chicago float glimmering in the distance,, enchanted towers out of an old storybook . . . makes me suddenly happy, full of hope [cf. heaven]

83 I step outside onto the balcony, drawing my breath in at the silver marvel of it. . . . now it makes sense that the beauty and the pain should be part of each other.

Bharati Mukherjee, “A Wife’s Story” (IA 57-69)

67 We have spent our life's savings to see this skyline, this statue

69 In the mirror . . . . the body's beauty amazes me

Shoba Narayan, from Monsoon Diary (IV2 217-239) [Dom Cult]

217 b. Brahmin caste near Madras

Christian schools > sister college Mount Holyoke, Foreign Fellow, 20 years old

Immigrantiona nd Naturalization Act of 1965

overwhelmingly urban and educated, nearly 40% on student or exchange visas > grad degrees > permanent residence

ethnic population 113% growth, U.S. popn 13%

After 1 year, returned to complete degree at Women's Christian College

arranged marriage to Ram, western-educated financial consultant

218 to U.S., M.A. Journalism Columbia

2000 "The God of Small Feasts" (essay)

2004 Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes.

columnist Mint Lounge Indian business daily, The National newspaper U.A.E.

218 terrifying airport shuttle: pickpockets, muggers, drug addicts

219 Quatrina Hosain

Dickinson House

Seema in hysterics: ground floor . . . stories about American muggers

Harriet . . . not used to volatile displays of emotion [Dom Cult]

lifetime of proving myself equal to any boy

room spacious, linen > warm nightgown x cotton clothes

219-20 study whatever (class: x-vocation)

220 a tabula rasa, eager to learn

American as vast, noisy metropolis

Everything new

cleaning lady drove a Cadillac (cf. 221) x Ayal, who came by foot

x-haggle

strangers smiled and said hello. Nobody littered, spit, or cursed. [so there is a code of manners even within freedom?]

dizzying array of food . . . overwhelmed by choices

impatience

220-1 not used to choosing something and having it lead to another choice

221 Japanese student: rice & salty muso: first lesson in globalism

host family

[mixed metaphor]

essentials I didn't realize were essential

great, sprawling shopping mall; Elizabeth Arden makeup box

Mary church and part-time work; Doug bank + Cadillac (cf. 220)

222 Margie Peace Corps

beans for me, Chicken for them

American family life, the soap and suds of it

smelled of linen and rose potpourri

classes: fantasies come true

thrill of creation

223 mine. Gloriously, totally mine

Threater class: Ayckbourn, Medea, O'Neill and Shakespeare

girl had to work hard to gain trust

professors displayed faith in our abilities without a hint of condescension

224 loved power tools

myself in a mirror . . . a space alien . . . Superman . . . Superwoman

rich, poor, or middle class?

India . . . stereotype

224-5 My ideas of beauty were different from theirs.

225 no prejudice . . . didn't know enough

x-peers > simply me . . . Shoba the student

enamored of America's newness, espansive embrace

approach total strangers

women, not girls

long dinners and lunches . . . learned aobut the country

American holidays, baseball

226 proud people, New Englanders, directness unencumbered by eons of tradition

representative of my country

working kitchen at Rockefeller cafeteria

227 let me stay away from the meat

fare from around world -- all but meat

always returned to Indian food

yogurt rice [fnf] > 228 room thinking about Uma

228 [scene > Blue Light story]

story never ended . . . we simply grew up

228-9 finished play started at WCC, accepted

229 melodramatic tragedy cf. Indian movies [Bollywood]

They thought it was satire

critical faculties underdeveloped

Fridays dorms dozens of parties

230 Natasha > frat party

nob on rampage . . . terrified

231 realized I wouldn't get assaulted

at Mount Holyoke encountered feminism for first time

Frances Perkins Scholars . . . older women

about choice and freedom

x-defer to a man [meritocracy[

I came from a society in which women deferred to men in public but ruled the roost in private

anger . . . comparing . . . women in my family

232 mother x-anger, x as free

rules and tradition, vision of herself

ought to act their age [America as youth culture, infantilism]

Was it better to question and overghrow the system as these women did or to navigate within its confines like my mother had done?

first time asking those questions

contradictions between my two cultures

India's fatalism x America's flux

Everyone was moving, searching, asking for more

changing spouses, jobs, homes, sexes

more choices, more search for something else

Turkish cabbage dolma

233 Susan Smith, sprawling wooded estate < Whitney family

father groundskeeper and manager

tea at the owner's mansion

Greek dorm mate . . . boisterous family . . . rice wrapped in grape leaves

Greek salad

Thanksgiving, colonial house, Winthrop and Muffy

[Dom Cult] menu < Pilgrims in Boston

so refined compared to family feast in India

relatives insulted, abused went off in huff

nightly "Milk and Cookies" ritual

235 snowing, first time

New England = white Christmas

Madison Wi

Ayesha, a girl from Pakistan, burgeoning international population

236 daughter of Turkish diplomat; Carlos, Mexico; Reza, Iranian; Emilie, Cameroon; Elizabeth, Ethiopia; Todd, English; Polish professors and Russian poets, Thai sciencists, Vietnamese musicians, Indian philosophers . . . homesickness < music from home countries

[< fnf plotting >] intimacy, family, nostalgia

NYC apt > new goldfish

237 cab driver from Kerala

come to my house

Claire squirmed . . . "Tell your friend to trust me . . . family temple"

238 first time at our house, must eat something

sublime, memory of bus trips in Kerala

239 from my town . . . like a sister . . . x-$

language skills and literacy--compare to Jews, Puritans and Pilgrims--all highly literate peoples

Minority Literature objective: "literacy = path to empowerment"

Indian immigrant writers are extraordinary because it's not their children writing literature, but the immigrants themselves

Why?

British empire!

British empire influences or establishes Indian schools

English becomes language of convenience for multilingual India (14 major languages, 700+ dialects)

Not only do Indian writers often know English beforehand, but often with prestige of British accent.

Both Jewish and South Asian immigrants to US often arrive with strong commitment to education and professional advancement.

Divakaruni 76 imagination . . . Modern Novel class at the university

Compare to central American immigrants, who are often (not always) poor and lacking education traditions

Here's why South Asians show up in such good shape:

1. The trip is so far and long that only fairly well-off people can afford it.

2. Poor and uneducated workers of South Asia emigrate to nearer areas to sell their labor: especially oil-rich Arab countries. . . . "guest workers"

what is the dominant culture that they join?

Where did it come from? How did it start? What are its qualities?

"Thank God for the Jews"

229-30 Kamal at hospital, seeing patients [ > professional status] Model minority as math, music, medicine

Qualities of dominant culture observable in this example:

"detached" quality--dominant culture always pulling away, heading into future

This "detached" quality can make the dominant culture elusive, hard to pin down or criticize

"Detached" can turn into a quality of "purity" or resistance to others' efforts at assimilation to it

The ethnic identity of the dominant culture is "unmarked." Compare to "Israeli school bus" and "Arab village."

What ethnicity is the reporter?

detached as unmarked?

If anything, Anglo-American or Northern European, but hard to say.

Divakaruni 70 stewardess so blond, so American

Dominant culture is "unmarked." Immigrant and minority cultures are "marked," but by assimilation they can become "unmarked."

"Thank God for the Jews"

230-1 Islamic women between tradition and modernity . . . "All this nonsense about bleeding the animal . . . It's ridiculous!"

232 "They've already forgotten their ways."

232 custom and habit gone awry in Westchester County

235 "what's kosher is okay with us"--in America, ancient rivalries (as between Muslims and Jews) get starved, washed out--everyone's thrown together as "Americans" in the great American marketplace

Chitra Divakaruni, “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs” (70-83)

70 so blond, so American

71 Americans, I'd heard, like their privacy, x-relatives

72 so fair-skinned. [color code]

75 dark-skinned foreigners

Bharati Mukherjee, “A Wife’s Story” (IA 57-69)

60 left home, my husband, to get a Ph.D. in special ed.

60 We've made it. Patels must have made it.

64 more privacy than we ever had in India

64 another shopping scene! [compare "Thank God for the Jews"]

65 absolutely sure he doesn't want to see Harlem + 69 "I am not understanding these Negro people's accents."

66 I've been trained to adapt

66 Statue of Liberty

67 We have spent our life's savings to see this skyline, this statue

Conclusions indicate immigrant narrative, American Dream

Chitra Divakaruni, “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs” (70-83)

75 But I know the sky outside is filled with strange and beautiful stars, and I am suddenly angry with him for trying to ruin it for me

77 The skyscrapers of downtown Chicago float glimmering in the distance,, enchanted towers out of an old storybook . . . makes me suddenly happy, full of hope [cf. heaven]

83 I step outside onto the balcony, drawing my breath in at the silver marvel of it. . . . now it makes sense that the beauty and the pain should be part of each other.

Bharati Mukherjee, “A Wife’s Story” (IA 57-69)

67 We have spent our life's savings to see this skyline, this statue

69 In the mirror . . . . the body's beauty amazes me

compare Whitman

South Asian backgrounds

Compare with 2nd class of East Asian immigrants

Asian immigrants are the "model immigrants" in the late 20th, early 21st centuries--especially South Asian immigrants

Comparable to Jewish immigrants in early 20th century

What makes these groups so outstanding or exemplary?

What are the qualities of a "model immigrant?"

What makes these groups so outstanding or exemplary?

Both groups immigrate from far away, across ocean--increases commitment (compared to New World immigrants, who may not lose connection to home country)

Both Jewish and South Asian immigrants to US often arrive with strong commitment to education and professional advancement.

Divakaruni 76 imagination . . . Modern Novel class at the university

Compare to central American immigrants, who are often (not always) poor and lacking education traditions

Here's why South Asians show up in such good shape:

1. The trip is so far and long that only fairly well-off people can afford it.

2. Poor and uneducated workers of South Asia emigrate to nearer areas to sell their labor: especially oil-rich Arab countries. . . . "guest workers"

Bharati Mukherjee, “Love Me or Leave Me” (VA 187-194)

Cars and movies

187 officials

187 coming to school in States had been his [father’s] idea, not ours

188 meanwhile, he was interviewing Bengali Brahmin bachelors in order to find me the perfect groom

188 married American citizen, scrapped all plans for ever going back to live in India

188 no son; thus his financial empire could not be passed on

188 education and independence for his three daughters = dowries

188 progressive man in traditional context: Doris Day an empowered woman

188 America b/c in love with the world of Doris Day and all MGM musicals

188 x-United States, > “America”

188 To him, America was a realistic-looking façade on an MGM backlot, where fantasies about young women achieving fulfillment could be acted out as they couldn’t in tradition-bound Calcutta

188 our day off from school, a neo-colonial establishment run by Irish nuns for Calcutta’s most proper girls

188 chauffeur, bodyguards

189 “Que Sera”—more a mantra than a song; it synthesized a New World pleasure in risk taking with a fatalistic Hindu acceptance of disastrous outcomes

189 human debris from famines and religious riots

189 Doris Day was an abstraction for democracy. A person with gumption . . . could turn her grim life around. The handicaps of caste, class, and gender could be overcome.

189 a physical curiosity . . . so tall, so big

189 The bedtime stories my mother told me had been about teen-age Bengali freedom fighters rather than the traditional ones about gods fighting shape-changing demons.

189 Fan worship of a British film star would have seemed to me treasonous regression.

189 mighty shoulders and toothy smile, a woman who said exactly what was on her mind and said it in a nearly incomprehensible American accent with stereophonic loudness

189 all right to love precisely because she was American

189 slow to catch the ironies of undeclared imperialism

190 an icon of spunk

190 decided that he had to protect us from the sex and sleaze it revealed about adult life just ahead

190 French chiffon

190 titillated > uplifted

190 I identified with her totally. I, too, intended to go places, be somebody.

190 “It” was my own desire to be a writer and touch people with my novels.

191 regarded fiction writing as a womanly accomplishment

191 I substituted “write” for “work”

191 heard my own community’s censure of women whu didn’t accept their place

191 Bengalize Fuch’s Chicago-Brooklyn

191 huge and wholesome Doris Day

191 couldn’t quite sanitize her character’s moral ambiguities x “Moral Science” of nuns

191 not at all unethical for the Woman as Artist to lie and cheat and use men on the way to stardom [cf. “A Wife’s Story”?]

192 nuns: how played the game; D Day: The end justified the means

192 The woman artist combined smart-cookie-ness with integrity and innocence

192 Marty ambiguous villain . . . . more a raw force than a villain. In his crooked, dog-eat-dog world, his crook’s-eye view made sense.

193 missionary-educated postcolonial adolescents

193 Marty trying to control his wife didn’t shock me. In traditional, patriarchal Hindu families like mine, men commanded and women obeyed; to love was to protect. [cf. IA 66]

193 How could I know then—coming from an overdetermined, confident hierarchical culture in which everyone knew the most minute detail of everyone else’s life, in which a family name revealed caste and region—that the ambiguously named, mysteriously unrooted Marty Snyder was, in his splendor, his power, his pathetic hollowness, an American arechetype?

[American names may indicate nothing—only chance of who’s male]

Alluring x-stagnant steadiness of Calcutta upper classes

194 She hadn’t asked Marty for “breaks.” Marty had sensed her wants. He’d given; she’d grabbed.

194 drove through a city awaiting Marxist revolution

194 worldliness of Calcutta youth > more honest with myself than Ruth had been

fiction-nonfiction: instructor follow-up

Bharati Mukherjee, “A Wife’s Story” (IA 57-69)

fictional elements:

58 dialogue

59 characterization of Imre

nonfiction elements:

57 David Mamet, Glengary Glen Ross

57 list of "insult kits"

58 "the tyranny of the American Dream"

Bharati Mukherjee, “Love Me or Leave Me” (VA 187-194)

nonfiction piece,

188 our day off from school, a neo-colonial establishment run by Irish nuns for Calcutta’s most proper girls

but fictional scenario:

188 meanwhile, he was interviewing Bengali Brahmin bachelors in order to find me the perfect groom

188 married American citizen, scrapped all plans for ever going back to live in India [fact]

188 no son; thus his financial empire could not be passed on

188 education and independence for his three daughters = dowries

[language becomes more nonfictional--abstractions like "education" and "independence"]

USA voting by counties, 2016 presidential election
Red = Republican, Blue = Democratic
(Republican nominee won a vastly larger number of counties and states, but . . .
Democratic nominee won more votes on account of concentrations of Democratic voters in cities and near coasts.)

Demographic trands (lots of overlap and exceptions, but statistically true):

Red: older, whiter, less educated, more religious, lower taxes, less population density, old manufacturing or resource-exploitation economy, dedication to "nation,"

red migration: inward to interior states, outward from inner cities to "exurbs," but overall less mobility

Blue: younger, more diverse, more educated, more secular, higher taxes, greater population density, "new economy" of digital economy, health / education, finance, service; cosmopolitan or trans-national identity.

blue migration: toward coasts (or port cities), from city to city, from one nation to another