Anonymous (violet)
19 April 2001

Immigrant Fiction Literature as a Reliable Source for

Studying the Immigrant Narrative: A Realistic Look at Bread Givers and

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

America is a country that was created and settled by immigrants from many different lands. These immigrants came to America in search of the "American Dream" of freedom and a better way of life, and their narratives have been recorded by various authors in both fiction and non-fiction stories. But can the fiction genre be considered a reliable source for studying the immigrant narrative? If American immigrant literature is to be used as a reliable source for understanding the immigrant experience, one needs to justify that this literature properly tracks the history of the immigrant narrative.

In an effort to justify the fiction genre as a reliable source for understanding the immigrant narrative, we will look at the personal life and fictional works of both Anzia Yezierska and Julia Alvarez, two second generation immigrant authors, who have written about immigrant experiences. In doing so we will determine if the personal stories of these ladies follow the basic immigrant narrative, if their fiction stories convey a realistic depiction of the immigrant people they write about, and as a result can we surmise that American immigrant literature can be a reliable source for understanding the immigrant experience?

The American immigrant narrative starts with the immigrant’s decision to leave the old world. The reasons for leaving may vary from person to person and country to country, but all come seeking a better life than they had in the old world. The narrative continues with the actual journey to the new world and the struggles that are encountered along the way. Once in America, many immigrants face shock at the new culture they encounter and some may resist assimilation as long as possible. Eventually the second, third or fourth generation immigrant will assimilate to the dominant American culture and a loss of ethnic identity will occur. The final step in the narrative can be seen as these later generations attempt to rediscover their ethnic identity.

Anzia Yezierska’s personal immigrant narrative began in Russian Poland. She was born around 1885, and immigrated to America with her family when she was 15 years old. Yezierska’s family were Jews who escaped from the anti-Semitic government that was in control of Russia at that time. They settled in New York’s Lower East Side, along with millions of East European Jews who fled to the United States ("Anzia" 28:332).

Yezierska’s personal experiences were not unlike those of other Jewish immigrants. Her father was a Talmudic scholar, who in the old country relied on contributions of food and clothing from neighbors and the occasional earnings that his wife would make selling small items in the local market (Harris vi). However, according to Maxine Seller in To Seek America, Talmudic scholars were no longer valued in America.

As a result, Yezierska, her mother and her siblings were forced to work while her father spent his days in Talmudic study ("Anzia" 46:440). Since most Jewish women were not educated, many went to work in the sweatshops and laundries. Others opened their homes to boarders, and "by cooking, cleaning and washing for ten or more boarders, such women often earned as much or more than their husbands" (Seller 111). Yezierska herself worked in the sweatshops and laundries to help her family and later on to support herself while attending school ("Anzia" 46:440).

Women in the old world Jewish communities were not allowed to pursue an education beyond the basic understanding of Hebrew or to become literate in Yiddish. In the "Introduction of Bread Givers," Harris states that "a woman’s virtue was measured by how well she helped her husband to live a pious existence, free from daily worry and encouraged by her orthodox observance of ritual in the home" (vi). She also goes on to say that "too much learning, even for the well off, was frowned upon, for a girl who developed a ‘man’s head’ would not make a good wife" (vii). But America offered new opportunities for immigrant women who were willing to break away from the old country traditions. Seller states that "Jewish women began to limit the size of their families, to enroll in night school in massive numbers, and to see that their daughters as well as their sons got higher education whenever possible" (129).

Yezierska left her family and the old world traditions at the age of seventeen to seek a new life for herself in America, and in doing so she began the process of assimilation to the new culture. She paid a janitor’s daughter to teach her lessons from her school books. She attended night school to learn English, and eventually attended college and graduated with a teaching degree (Harris ix). After an unsuccessful marriage, she began to write. In 1921, film producer Samuel Goldwyn purchased the movie rights to her book of short stories titled Hungry Hearts, and Yezierska moved to Hollywood to become a script writer. She soon found out however, that she could not write separated from the ghetto of New York City, and she moved back home ("Anzia" 46:440). In all of her books she wrote of the "dirt and congestion of the tenement, the struggle against poverty, family, and tradition to break out of the ghetto, and then the searing recognition that her roots would always lie in the old world" (Harris v). Yezierska’s life followed all the phases of the immigrant narrative. She left Russian Poland, journeyed to America, was faced with poverty, discrimination and language barriers, and finally after she became assimilated to the new culture, she hound herself drawn back to the ghetto from which she fled.

Yezierska’s novel, Bread Givers closely follows her own personal experiences. Sara Smolinsky, the main character in her novel, is the young daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants. Sara, her mother and sisters are responsible for the financial support of their family, while Sara’s father, a Talmudic scholar, studies scripture during the day. Sara eventually leaves home to strike out on her own. She enrolls in college during the day, studying to become a teacher, and works at night in a laundry to pay for books, tuition, a small one room apartment and her food. But she finds that she is caught between two worlds. The people that she works with look down on her saying "give only a look on her, the lady! Who does she think she is?…Leaves a father and mother for God knows why" (179). Yet she doesn’t fit in with the people at school either. "Even in school I suffered, because I was not like the rest...Maybe if I could only live like others and look like others, they wouldn’t pick on me so much, I thought to my self" (181). Sara struggles with assimilating into a new culture, and in doing so loses the ethnic identity of the people from which she came. Yezierska’s character Sara, like herself, is drawn back to the neighborhood of her family as she takes a position there as a teacher. Not only does Sara return to her old neighborhood, but she also returns to her father, whose power and control she had despised. At the end of the story Sara realizes that her father, a first generation immigrant, will never adjust to the new world and that she is his only hope for survival.

Yezierska once stated that she wanted "to build a bridge of understanding between the American-born and myself…to open up my life and the lives of my people to them" (Harris x). Her novel Bread Givers did just that. She was able to create a fiction novel that depicted a realistic account of the immigrant narrative based on her own life and experiences.

Julia Alvarez is also a second generation immigrant writer, who like Yezierska’s family moved to America for political reasons. Alvarez was born in New York city, but was raised in the Dominican Republic until the age of ten. Her father was a doctor who was involved in an underground plot to overthrow the dictator Rafael Trujillo. Their family escaped to New York in 1960 and moved to the Bronx, where her father set up a medical practice ("Julia" 93:1).

Alvarez and her sisters initially had a more difficult time adjusting to America than their parents. Her parents were both fluent in English, having been educated in American boarding schools; however, the girls spoke only Spanish when they arrived in the states ("Julia" 93:1). Along with the trials of learning a new language, they were faced with discrimination for the first time. Alvarez describes her first experience at an American school as follows:

The school yard wasn’t the only place that the family experienced prejudice. While on a trip to the market, Alvarez recalls in her book Something to Declare, that "an elderly shopper, overhearing my mother speaking Spanish to her daughters, muttered that if we wanted to be in this country, we should learn the language. ‘I know the language,’ my mother said in her boarding school English, putting the woman in her place" (61). Alvarez states that for several years after their arrival, her and her sisters spoke what she called Spanglish, a mixture of Spanish and English, before they were able to fully master the English language. As an adult she now says that she speaks her native language, Spanish, with an accent (Alvarez 24).

For Alvarez leaving the old world behind meant leaving behind a large extended family. In the Dominican Republic her immediate family lived in a house on her grandparent’s property where her extended family also lived. They were surrounded by grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins ("Alvarez" 93:10). In contrast, Alvarez states that "when my parents and sisters and I came to this country (America), we left behind the protection and patronage of the larger familia. We were on our own. In this country, we had only ourselves to count on" (119).

After living in America for several years, Alvarez’ parents began to worry that their daughters would totally forget their heritage, and began to send the girls back to the Dominican Republic each summer. Alvarez speaks of these visits in her book Something to Declare:

Alvarez remained in America as an adult, and chose writing as a way to reconnect herself with the past and the culture that she left behind. She too, like Yezierska, experienced all aspects of the immigrant narrative.

Alvarez’ fiction novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, closely follows her own personal immigrant story. It is the story of a doctor and his family who flee to America while running from political strife in the Dominican Republic. The story mainly focuses on the four Garcia daughter’s and their struggles as they begin to assimilate to the new world, and the strife they face as their parents try to cling to the culture that they left behind. On the night that the family is readying to leave for America, Chucha the maid remembers back to her own immigration experience and says of the girls, "I see their future, the troublesome life ahead. They will be haunted by what they do and do not remember. But they have spirit in them. They will invent what they need to survive" (223). Once in America, the Garcia family struggled to adjust to their new surroundings. Though they were not destitute like the family in Yezierska’s novel, their social status had been lowered. "We had only second-hand stuff, rental houses, clothes at Round Robin, a black and white TV afflicted with wavy lines. Cooped up in those little suburban houses, the rules were as strict as for Island girls, but there was no island to make up the difference" (107).

Fear of complete assimilation to the American culture is a prevalent theme throughout Garcia Girls. The first generation parents resist assimilation not only for themselves, but also for their daughters. Meanwhile the daughters begin to lose touch with the old world as soon as they break the language barrier in America, and just as Alvarez was sent back to the Dominican Republic every summer to reconnect with her heritage, so are the Garcia girls.

Just as Alvarez reconnects with her ethnic identify as an adult through her writings, the character of Yolanda returns to the Island as an adult and attempts to reclaim her old world culture as well.

With the inclusion of Yolanda’s desire to reconnect with her homeland, Alavarez’ novel also touches on all aspects of the immigrant narrative.

The personal stories of Yezierska and Alvarez both closely follow the immigrant narrative pattern. They both experienced leaving the old world, and the journey to the new world. While their parents continued to cling to the customs and traditions of the old world, they were both able to assimilate into the American culture. Yezierska and Alvarez were drawn to the new freedoms and ideas that America had to offer. However, even after they both totally assimilated, they found a need to reconnect with their past and chose to write about their immigrant experiences.

By comparing Yezierska’s and Alvarez’ fictional narratives with their personal lives, we are able to see that the fiction genre can be a reliable source for understanding the immigrant narrative. This is especially true if the author has experienced the immigrant narrative first hand. However, all fiction should be read critically. The author’s background and history of the time period of the work should also be consulted when determining the historical accuracy of the fiction piece. The immigrant narrative is an important part of the culture in America, and the fiction genre can be a reliable and enjoyable source for understanding the immigrant experience in this multi-cultural society we call the United States of America.

Works Cited

Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. New York: Plume, 1992.

Alvarez, Julia. Something to Declare. Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 1998.

Contemporary Authors. Vol. 147. Detroit: Gale, 1995

Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 46. Detroit: Gale, 1988.

Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 93. Detroit: Gale, 1996.

Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 28. Detroit: Gale, 1984

Harris, Alice. Preface. Bread Givers. By Anzia Yezierska. New York: Persea,

1975. v-xviii.

Seller, Maxine. To Seek America: A History of Ethnic Life in the United States.

Englewood: Ozer, 1977.

Yezierska, Anzia. Bread Givers. New York: Persea, 1975.