Poetry Selection 2: "American Dream: First Report" by Joseph Papaleo

The poem reflects the many aspects of the immigrant narrative from the voyage to the new world to the hardships of assimilation. Clearly, the voyage of hope is met with shock, discrimination and rejection by the dominant culture. The immigrants must endure the status of second-class citizenship as they submit to squalor and repression. Yet assimilation becomes possible through exposure to the world of television as it reflects American lifestyles and values. As in the experience of most immigrants, a sense of erasing their heritage and ethnicity occurs through the images of cleansing with soap and disinfectant. The final irony of the poem lies in the image of the sanitized home as grandpa’s dream— something far removed from his natural habits and probable expectations. The poetry format allows the writer to include the many stages of the immigrant narrative concisely yet powerfully. [YH 2001]

In "American Dream: First Report," Joseph Papaleo explores the immigrant narrative within the scope of a horrific journey, discrimination, and subsequent assimilation. The underlying tone of the "agony of steerage" that brought them to this country is laced with tones of discrimination. The family is not "liked" by the "insult" slinging dominant culture that thinks that they smell. It is almost as if the narrator came to this country with the hope of attaining the American Dream and is met with discrimination, which brings them into stage three of the immigrant narrative. Television offers a hope that the "palaces of soap" will wash them clean enough to assimilate into the dominant culture. They eventually conform and become "well-dressed citizens." This implies that they have reached a socioeconomic immigration as well as assimilating because they have gone from living in "tenement rooms" to conforming into a white-collar American. The author recognizes the American Dream while simultaneously seeing the loss of his culture. Even though Papaleo is a third generation immigrant, through vivid imagery the poem typifies the struggles faced within the immigrant narrative, the evolution of assimilation, and the feeling of loss that sometimes accompanies these issues. [SK 2001]

1^st exam-poetry selection 1

This selection is taken from "American Dream: First Report" by Joseph Papaleo and centers around the theme of assimilation. The narrator, probably a second-generation immigrant, views her family and herself as being assimilated, but questions the cost of having done so (cult obj 2 and Lit obj 1b).

One of the themes of the poem, in addition to assimilation, is discrimination and non-acceptance. When the speaker’s family first came to America, no liked them because they "smelled and looked too short and dark." They were outsiders.

Only after the family assimilated or had a union (marriage) with the dominant culture were they accepted into the fold. The only way to blend in more readily with the dominant culture was to do things the right way, also known as the American way. They were, in essence, forced to cleanse themselves of their ethnic roots, traditions, and immigrant identities in order to become a part of the main stream. The usage of the disinfectant and cleaning language are metaphors for this idea of cleaning away their sense of self-identity and self-worth. [VK 2001]

This poem is "American Dream: First Report" by Joseph Papaleo. In a way, this little poem tells a complete immigrant narrative. It tells, not of their immigration from the old country to America, but instead of their assimilation from their old world selves to their new world selves. It starts with a glimpse of their old world selves when it says "First nobody liked us. They said we smelled and looked too short and dark.." Then, it tells of the journey to their new world selves when it says "then the tv proposed marriage and we said yes, Momma and sisters kept the commercials going, to prove we were married in the palaces of soap." Here, they are beginning assimilation and leaving their old world selves behind. Finally, the journey ends with their new world selves "as well-dressed citizens devoted to disinfection of our carpets." Now they are assimilated into the society.

I think the poem also comments on the fact that Grandpa probably didn't fully realize that these are the people his children would become. I don't think Grandpa could have guessed that the American dream he was going for was so different from his ways, the ways of a man "who liked to spit on floors while he talked." [CS 2001]