LITR 4340 American Immigrant Literature Lecture Notes
Lecture Notes
Afro-Caribbean Immigrants
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Midterm
Mrs. White returns Monday, so may be late to office hours
Edwidge Danticat, “Children of the Sea” (IA 98-112)
98 nightmares
98 Haiti is just the way you left it
99 closed the schools since the Army took over
all the other youth federation members have disappeared
manman says that butterflies can bring news
pregnant girl on board, face covered with scars
the hopelessness of the future in our country
I used to read a lot about America, university exams, Miami
no borderlines on the sea
100 lot of Protestants on this boat . . as Job or the Children of Israel, part the sea for us [preview Pilgrims]
some good wanga magic [syncretism, African traditions]
you have a name, you have a reputation
our neighbor madan roger came home with her son's head and not much else
the macoutes
101 charcoal layer of sunburn, x-mistaken for Cubans [color code]
some Cubans black too color code, mestizo, hispanic / latino
took the Cubans to Miami and sent him back to Haiti [differential treatment]
Beloved Haiti, there is no place like you. I had to leave
If I was a girl, maybe I would have been at home
102 all the American factories are closed
slapping me really hard
finally an African, even darker than your father
102 hoped the Coast Guard would find us soon
103 dreamt I died and went to heaven
starfishes and mermaids
make the son sleep with his mother, a daughter and father
104 you are an educated girl
104 feel like we are sailing for Africa
treat Haitians like dogs in the Bahamas . . . same African fathers
104 cf. slave ships
106 they are the law, law of the land, nothing we can do
sometimes hope is the biggest weapon of all to use against us
107 offering for Agwe, spirit of water
108 Do you remember our silly dreams?
my mother had a
kriz
111 live with Agwe at bottom of sea
112 another boat sank off the cost of the bahamas
Paule Marshall, “The Making of a Writer: From the Poets in the Kitchen” [handout]; Paule Marshall, “To Da-Duh, in Memoriam” (IA 368-377)
Paule Marshall, “To Da-Duh, in Memoriam” (IA 368-377)
“To Da-Duh”
368 ship that brought us from NY
alien sights and sounds of Barbados
caught between sunlight at her end of the building and the darkness inside-and for a moment she appeared to contain them both
white dress . . . sense of a past that was still alive
369 darkness . . . in her face
both child and woman, darkness and light, past and present, life and death--all the opposites contained and reconciled in her
369 wiped out the 15 years my mother had been away and restored the old relationship
369 not only did Da-duh prefer boys, but she also liked her grandchildren to be “white,” that is, fair-skinned . . . cousins, the outside children of / white estate managers [colonial tradition; hierarchy, inequality]
girl child takes after her father
370 why I don’t like to go anyplace with you St. Andrews people . . . You all ain’t been colonized”
371 the canes, as giant weeds
I longed for the familiar; for the street in Brooklyn
St. Thomas canes
371 purchased it with Panama money sent her by her eldest son, my uncle Joseph, who had died working on the canal [colonialism]
372 the names of the trees as though they were those of her gods
my world did seem suddenly lacking [cf. Coco Frio]
I bet you don't even know that these canes here and the sugar you eat is one and the same thing. . . . some damn machine at the factory [resources > industry]
inexplicably angry motion
I found myself in the middle of a small tropical wood . . . a violent place . . . earth smelled like spring
373 what's this snow like that you hear so much about
a dance called the Truck which was popular back then in the 1930s
as if I were a creature from Mars
374 refrigerators, radios, gas stoves . . .
I beat up a white girl
374 Beating up white people? Oh the lord, the world’s changing up so I can scarce recognize it anymore
375 Empire State Building
fight went out of her
like a Benin mask, ancient abstract sorrow
376 gazing out at the land as if it were already doomed
died during the famous '37 strike [British West Indies labor unrest, 1934-39] [resistance > self-government]
England sent planes flying low over the island, in a show of force
377 I went to live alone
thunderous tread of machines
“The Making of a Writer: From the Poets in the Kitchen”
87 [assimilation] graduated from the corner of the kitchen to the neighborhood library, and thus from the spoken to the written word
88 reading voraciously, indiscriminately . . . everything from Jane Austen to Zane Grey . . . Tom Jones, Great Expectations, Vanity Fair
[In other words, she's reading the classics of western civilization, England and western Europe, and thus assimilating to the best of the dominant culture]
88 sensed a lack
88 Paul Laurence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1872-1906 (Dayton, Ohio)
88 the closeness, the special relationship I had had with my father
88-89 No grade school literature teacher of mine had ever mentioned Dunbar or J W Johnson or L Hughes
89 What I needed, what all the kids—West Indian and native black American alike—with whom I grew up needed, was an equivalent of the Jewish shul, someplace where we could go after school—the schools that were shortchanging us—and read words by those like ourselves and learn about our history
Conclusion:
Afro-Caribbean writers, caught in the middle, may model a middle way between immigrant and minority stories
Marshall in "Poets in the Kitchen" is on a direct immigrant path to professional development, higher education . . .
but . . .
something's missing, and the need is met by the color code
p. 88 And I began to search then for books and stories and poems about "The Race" (as it was put back then), about my people. While not abandoning Thackeray, Fielding, Dickens and the others, I started asking the reference librarian, who was white, for books by Negro writers, although I must admit I did so at first with a feeling of shame . . . .
Marshall's resolution: try to balance, juggle both dominant culture and ethnic difference
Standard, well-intentioned curricular answer: balance, inclusion
Main catch: only so much time in a semester or term, so constantly adding new groups eventually passes point of diminishing returns
Need for a way to make differences talk to each other within a unified scheme instead of just taking turns
purpose of course . . . all Americans can talk through the immigrant story, even if it doesn't exactly apply to them
Compare Hispanics
Both groups want a part of the American Dream of economic success but also want to hold on to part of their traditional identity
Is it desirable for everyone to assimilate?
Is it necessary?
Not yet at a stage of history where we can answer the question, but these comparisons give us the ability to put together an answer and think about it critically--like your midterms!
New World Immigrants as possible future?
identify with more than one culture? Multicultural?
Dominant culture and minority culture(s) will persist, along with immigrants who assimilate completely to dominant culture, but increasingly outnumbered by groups who don't completely assimilate but combine or exceed such identities?
June
Jordan, “Report from the Bahamas” (VA
305-315)
306 history begins 1492—legitimate history tracks white
306 Black Americans [tourists]
306 intruders from North
307 Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska
308 a grad student [i. e., white] [cf. American American]
308 Federal Student Loan Programs . . . do not affect him. . . . My own son, however, is Black. . . . if Reagan succeeds
fiction-nonfiction
Roman poet Horace on purpose of literature: "to entertain and educate"
Different genres may emphasize one or the other
Fiction emphasizes "entertain"
Nonfiction emphasizes "educate"
In fiction, one aspect of the "entertainment" is the audience tends to get "drawn in," to "inhabit" the scene, to "feel a part of" whatever's going on, as though it's happening to you
In nonfiction, the audience keeps more of a distance, which is less emotionally powerful, but that cooler "critical distance" may be essential to the operation of the intellect, analysis, reason.
Effects on setting:
fiction sets a scene that you reader moves into--but surprisingly, it does so with less detail--the less detail, the less obstruction to identification
nonfiction gives more detail, but that detail can actually obstruct the reader's inhabitation--the more historical detail there is, the more you know "This isn't happening to me"
“Kitchen” 84 FDR
hero, Garvey god [history]
But these aren't rules, and either genre can bend. For instance, "To Da-Duh" is in our fiction collection, but these historical details are more like nonfiction:
356 a dance called the Truck which was popular back then in the 1930s
357 Over the weeks I told her about refrigerators, radios, gas stoves, elevators, . . . .
359 the famous ’39 strike
historical details become dated, can interfere with identification by later readers.
Fiction avoids too much detail to maintain universal attraction, identification.
Effects on language:
Fiction uses simpler language, more down-to-earth--fiction is not directly about ideas but about sensation, feeling
352 caught between the sunlight and the darkness [particular / universal moment]
Nonfiction uses more abstract language because it's more about ideas than identification and absorption into action
"Kitchen" 86 hyperbole [note educated language, distancing or generalizing of phenomena] [f-nf]
86 taken the standard English taught them in the primary schools of Barbados and transformed it into an idiom . . . changing around the syntax and imposing their own rhythm and accent so that the sentences were more pleasing to their ears.
87 Why the antonym, the contradiction, the linking of opposites?
87 theory in linguistics: very conception of reality: a thing is at the same time its opposite