Penny O'Neal
Immigrant Literature
July 7 1999

Be Careful What You Wish For

Many immigrant and minority narratives concentrate their efforts on the positive side of the American dream. These particular stories narrate a person's struggle and rise through the ranks of the Am6rican hierarchy focusing on the opportunities that seem to abound in this country. While these stories are well and good. they do seem to soft peddle the flip side of this country's attitude toward the immigrant and minority. America is a land of milk and honey and opportunity, but unfortunately most new officiates or unwilling participants in the American culture face an American nightmare that leaves its effects on the individuals, families and cultures for generations to come. America has its own deeply seated prejudices and stereotypes of people from outside its walI5 and these prejudices force some immigrants and minorities either to abandon former cultural ties in order to assimilate or to strap on the baldric of equality that changes their lives forever.

Two authors, in particular, will help explore this idea that an immigrant or minority experiencing the trauma of bigotry must in some way attempt to reconcile their own cultural heritage with the demands of a new society that objects to their very cultural difference. James Baldwin and Richard Rodriguez experienced this type of immigrant and minority angst regarding their own ties to their cultural and racial backgrounds. Baldwin struggled with the desire to be a writer, not just a black writer, amidst the chaos and protests of the 1960's political movement and Richard Rodriguez battled between the pull of assimilation and the success it promised and his own feelings of familial betrayal.

There seem to be two commonalties between these two authors: both are well educated and in some way have had to engage politics in order to re-infiltrate their cultural heritage. The purpose of this paper will be to explore the role of education and politics, in these authors' lives, as tools used to create paths of advancement and as the bridge that spans the abyss that now lies between themselves and their respective cultures.

James Baldwin grew up in the slums of Harlem within a family dynamic that was less than ideal) Struggling to reconcile his adolescent feelings of inferiority, placed on him by his stepfather, Baldwin also dealt with the bigotry and hatred that existed between white and black Americans. Trudier Harris writes of Baldwin's adolescence by saying, "He had to find a way of reconciling bitter memories and hatred with the need to move forward into a healthy and hate-free future" (3). Baldwin managed to find solace, in part, within the realm of creative writing, and his excellent abilities helped him to gain entrance into the prestigious DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. David Leeming, in his biography of James Baldwin, explains that DeWitt Clinton had been the previous learning center of such notable names as Burt Lancaster, Paddy Chayefsky and Neil Simon (26). Baldwin's admission was certainly a personal coup and revealed an upward momentum in his own scholastic life that would be the basis for his astonishing success. His scholarly pursuits did not end with his graduation, but continued on with him to the streets of Paris, where as a young man, he wrote, struggled with his personal identity and contemplated the civil rights movement gaining momentum in America.

These early experiences of Baldwin's were possible due to his focus on education and the doors he knew it would open for him. One threshold of opportunity that Baldwin received, thanks to his academic career, was a voice with which to speak to an audience that otherwise would not necessarily have heard him. During his lifelong education, Baldwin recognized that there was a cultural language that attached him to his own people, but that particular language was not necessarily the voice of authority. In order to be heard and respected in the majority culture, Baldwin educated himself, not only on the classics, but also on the ways and means with which to be heard within the arena of power. His education, in a sense, gave him the ability to move and be seen and heard within a society that had written off his culture as illiterate and incapable of the type of eloquence and potency that charged his very conversation.

Furthermore, Baldwin's education not only gave him a voice with which to speak to a white audience, but also allowed him to speak with a white man's authority. Horace Porter writes in his book, Stealing The Fire, "Acutely aware of the social climate of the time, he strikes the pose of a thoughtful and knowledgeable white who speaks in a representative tone about the history of race relations in America7 (76-77). Baldwin accomplishes this feat through the use of his white education. By speaking to Americans, in the voice of a white unbiased American, Baldwin removes all substance of his own identity and replaces it with the familiar and understandable of a larger audience. This is a key to Baldwin's success, for through the anonymous face of writing he became not a mouthpiece for a downtrodden culture, but a neutral observer of the wrongs perceived around him. This method of subtle attack allowed Baldwin a forum that was not restricted to his own culture, but that spread out into the mainstream of Americana.

However, Baldwin's success is not without it's ironies. The irony of Baldwin's success is twofold. The first being that he is able to make a white America stand up and take notice of him and praise his writing while he points his finger accusingly at them and shakes his fist in their faces, and he does so by using the education of the white majority. Baldwin has taken the podium of the majority culture and made it his. American education created him, but he took that education and made it his weapon against an American society that did not believe his race capable or worthy of such opportunities that he now possessed thanks to that very education.

Moreover, the irony of Baldwin's career shifts from the effects of his education to the motivations and desires Baldwin espoused for writing at all. Baldwin claimed many times that he was a writer for the artistry of the craft and would not consider himself writing for political or social reasons. Porter writes that "he embraces a Jamesian notion of the writer, as 'artist' (he does not use the word 'writer'). And the artist ... must recognize that 'the reality of man as a social being is not his only reality"' (78). This perception of his chosen career seems violated when one reads any of Baldwin's essays, for he usually reverts back to a criticism of the American racial scene. In fact, he does not seem able to focus on any other topic. His texts often explore the relations of Black America in a white-washed socie6~deavoring to reconcile for himself the struggle of inequality and insecurity that raged within his own breast. It seems that the irony in Baldwin's writing is that while he denied the reality of himself as a spokesman for his culture's woes and daily struggles he could not escape that very subject matter. Perhaps one could say that the artist within himself was forced to cover his canvas with only the experiences he knew firsthand, and given his upbringing and social history, that canvas gave off striking similarities within his own black community. Whether he admitted or ever reconciled his place, it seems obvious that he became an artist he championed his people with his pen.

In as much as anything concrete can be said about any individual, it does seem that Baldwin used his own education, given to him by a white society, to speak out and elevate himself as a writer within that very society. It is not to say that Baldwin accepted the role he was to play within the norms of American society, nor is it fair to say that he cast off his American role and became a freedom fighter for the Civil Rights movement, but it can be observed that he took what he learned in his schools and used it to his own and his culture's advantage.

The same sort of utilization of an American education occurs within the life of Richard Rodriguez. In his memoir, Hunger of Memory, Rodriguez proudly claims that he is "Assimilated" (3) and has managed this feat through his education. "I have taken Caliban's advice. I have stolen their books. I will have some run of this isle"(Rodriguez 3). Rodriguez clearly desired to have a role in this society other than that of the stereotyped Hispanic and he saw his way out as the way of the novel. Rodriguez became an avid reader in an effort to understand a white culture that was so foreign to him in their ways and their sensibilities. He later went on to Stanford and then to Europe to continue this quest of understanding, and like Baldwin, to cultivate that voice and language of authority that is so important in the American society.

Through his education, Rodriguez was able to realize his own personal dreams. This quest for Rodriguez, and Baldwin alike, required a pattern of thought and behavior that would allow them to overcome the obstacles associated with their cultural heritage and their social surroundings. Rodriguez explains, through the writings of Richard Hoggart, the behavior that came from men, such as Baldwin and himself, as the actions of the scholar boy who looks to education to purchase a better understanding of the world around him. As can be seen with both Baldwin and Rodriguez, the scholar boy "Use[s] education to remake himself ' (65).

Rodriquez explains that, "Only when I was able to think of myself as an American, no longer an alien in gringo society, could I seek the rights and opportunities necessary for public individuality" (27). Unlike Baldwin, Rodriguez sought this individuality amongst American streets and cities instead of European cobblestone, but the intent of both was the same. They each wanted to find a quality of life that was better than their early childhoods could allow. Rodriguez, as Baldwin makes so clear, desired to live untainted by the social stereotypes that affected his parent's and neighbor's ability to reach beyond their cultural comfort zone to seize more, and in order to do this he would have to accumulate the knowledge that would allow him to roam through a white society as one of them. He would have to become not only Caliban, but Prospero himself

However, this quest for a place in the world came at a high price for both Rodriguez and Baldwin. As many non-native Americans have discovered, this land of the free demands a price to be paid in order to succeed within its boundaries. As Rodriguez comes to understand, his assimilation and success within the American culture came at the cost of his own culture. His mastery of the English language forced his native Spanish into the closet of home life and that caused a breach within his own family relationships. Rodriguez explains that "once I spoke English with ease, I came tofeel guilty. (This guilt defied logic.) I felt that I had shattered the intimate bond that had once held the family close" (30). He was no longer able to function within the family as a cultural member of their society, and this break with his own past created a fissure between himself and his own cultural ties that would take time to heal.

Baldwin's experience ran along a parallel path, for he too was forced to resign the hold of his own culture on him in order to succeed within the American society. As was mentioned before, Baldwin took on the tone of a white man in his writings in order to be perceived as a writer for the inasses and not just a black author. Unfortunately, the roles that people assume do not often leave them untouched. Baldwin explained his own realization by saying, "The guilt of the survivor is a real guilt - as I was now to discover. In a way that I may never be able to make real for my countrymen, or myself, the fact that I had 'made it' ... meant that I had betrayed the people who had produced me' (Visions 285-86). This survivor guilt is shared by both Rodriguez and Baldwin, for they see themselves as in some way allowing themselves to have been cheated of their cultural identities in their climb for societal success and that they should *have prevented this loss by perhaps being more forceful about their cultural ties.

For both of these men the act of wanting an individuality that was not perceived by the color of their skin meant that they had to take over the role of the dominant culture in order to create the futures they wanted for themselves. As they both come to realize, this type of individual success often demands the ties of affection and culture be strained or even broken in order to come to fruition. In his essay, "No Name In The Street", Baldwin discovers that friendships that developed before he earned his success can not be sustained in his new position. "I was no longer the person my friend and his family had known and loved - I was a stranger now, and keenly aware of it, and trying hard to act, as it were, normal" (287). It is not just the effects of time and distance that have separated Baldwin from his former school chum, but a lack of shared experiences that creates this chasm between the two men. Baldwin, due to his success as a writ r traveled Europe and dined with famous men while the man that he left behind has had to struggle to overcome the adversities of his heritage and his average education.

In a sense, both Baldwin and Rodriguez lose their ties of recognition within their own cultural unit. Rodriguez endures his relatives scorn at his lack of Spanish language fluency. "Pocho then they called me ... (A Spanish dictionary defines that word as an adjective meaning 'colorless or bland.' But I heard it as a noun, naming the MexicanAmerican who, in becoming an American, forgets his native society" (29). Rodriguez is constantly reminded that his assimilation into the American culture has cost him a place within his own family unit. His immediate family were not so concerned with his drifting away from the native language and culture because they wanted to see him succeed in his new society, but they too realized that this success came at the cost of some of their son's ability to relate to them as a foreign element within American society.

Baldwin undergoes a similar torment as he wrestles with the gulf that now separates him and his friend and the reason for his visit, "Yet - it was only a suit, worn, at most, three times. It was not a very expensive suit, but it was still more expensive than any my friend could buy. He could not afford to have suits in his closet which he didn't wear, he couldn't afford to throw suits away - he couldn't, in short, afford my elegant despair" (287). Baldwin's painful realization is that not only does economics now separate him and his friend, but a wealth of knowledge and experience so far different from his friend's life that he can no longer even relate to his own people on a social level. He has lost the social recognition of his own people because he has not shared their social reality. He has had to examine the world and its prejudices, but his popularity as a writer over many years has turned him from the black man that still struggles to make ends meet to the black man that can afford to never wear a new suit again. That is where the gap lies.

As these two authors realize the painful truth of their cultural rupture, they begin to identify their role now as tillers of truths. Neither of these two men seemed overly political in their early beginnings. They both just wanted to succeed on their own terms, terms that perhaps cost them a great deal more than they gained, but they wanted a recognition that surpassed their racial identities. Both Baldwin and Rodriguez's careers took a new turn when this realization of cultural rupture became apparent. Baldwin had always maintained that his desire was to be an author, plain and simple, and not just a black writer and Rodriguez had maintained his persona as a scholar without any real claim to his heritage. These separate courses changed over time due to the influence of political action in both their lives.

It could be said that both of the writers became political heralds in an effort to purify themselves within the crucibles of their own hearts and minds. In other words, they both felt a need to re-establish some kind of connection to their respective cultures and they endured the heat of the purifying flame in order to examine their own roles in the creation of the chasm that now stood between them and their own social realm. When the flame is put out they are left with the un-reconcilable truth that they pursued a path away from their cultural heritage (hence the survivor guilt) and now they must somehow reach back for those who could not find a way out of the social prison that condemns them to a life of mediocrity.

Rodriguez does this by examining the argument over bilingual education in American schools. Surprisingly, or maybe not so, Rodriguez stands out against bilingual education as a way of schooling children from his own culture. He criticizes bilingual supporters by saying, "They do not seem to realize that there are two ways a person is individualized. So they do not realize that while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into public society, such assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality"(26). Rodriguez is endeavoring to convey the sense that he has of his own success. Yes, he realizes that his assimilation has cost him some degree of familiarity within his own cultural unit, but he has gained a sense of feeling at home within a larger society that depends not on its ancestral identity, but on its identity as a special ingredient in the American melting pot. His autobiography is in a way a map where X marks the spot to cultural and educational maturity. He does not see his education as being the false route, but as a means to an end and that end contains the promise of success within a larger cultural base while still retaining the ties of intimacy that bind a smaller cultural unit to themselves.

As for Baldwin, it seems that he might have unconsciously or consciously been making amends for his success all along. As was mentioned before, he constantly removed himself from the identity of black author, in favor of the title of simple artist, but his subject matter constantly emitted the beacon of the black plight in America. Ile could never fully tear himself away from the place and people he came from, perhaps due to the overwhelming guilt that both he and Rodriguez experienced as successful individuals, or due to the need that compelled him to write his story and that of his people over and over again in the pursuit of trying to make the answer to the overwhelming racial problem come clearer.

The academic and literary pursuits that these two men pursued created a gap in their ability to relate to their own cultural identities. Perhaps in an effort to confront this widening gap and reclaim their places in their societies, these men embraced political action. While doing so they both seemed to have somewhat reconciled their need to succeed with the price they paid, for their very words echo the sounds of their communities' cries for equal and peaceful co-existence. However, as both Baldwin and Rodriguez recognize and proclaim there will always be a need for their type of experiences because it is only through the loss of their cultural identity that they realized the precious gift it is.

Works Cited

Leeming, David. James Baldwin: A Biography . Alfred A. Knopf. New York, 1994.

Porter, Horace. Stealing The Fire. Weslayan UP: Middletown, 1989.