Christy Abshire
LITR 4333
Dr. White
November 20, 2003

Comparing Themes of the Immigrant Narrative in Literature:

Bread Givers, Monkey Bridge and How the Other Half Lives

            The Immigrant Narrative contains many aspects of the immigrants’ quest for the American Dream, once they arrive in America.  Two groups of immigrants who have come to America are the Jews and Vietnamese; they immigrated to America for different reasons, yet their stories share a common element: the struggle to assimilate into American society and in some cases even combine their homeland ideals with American ideals in order to become a true American.  

Certain elements of the Immigrant Narrative weigh differently among literary works.  For example, Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers contains a strong theme of the Immigrant Narrative in the struggle of Old World versus New World ways, as seen in the conflict between father and daughter.  Another major work is Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao, which exhibits a strong element of Old World ties in Vietnam during the war and New World beginnings with mother and daughter in America.  Finally, Jacob Riis’s novel How the Other Half Lives exposes an extreme case of immigrants suffering the American Nightmare in terms of poor living and working conditions, and the spread of disease among Asian Americans and Jews.  While all the above mentioned novels contain elements of the Immigrant Narrative, neither contains all elements and those elements that are illustrated are done so at different strengths. 

To begin with, thousands of European Jews have immigrated to America since World War II, and even more after the fall of the Soviet Union—Russian Jews (Jewish Museum).  Much like the Jewish family portrayed in Bread Givers, the Jews are living in tenement type neighborhoods, such as Chicago, where other Jews share their struggle to achieve the American Dream.  Also like the family in the novel, Jewish immigrants are deeply rooted in their religious beliefs, as seen in the father in Bread Givers with his faithful reading of the Holy Torah (Jewish Museum, Yezierska).  The Father’s religious beliefs far outweigh his concern for his family’s financial success, which is where the conflict between Old World ways and New World ways comes in (Yezierska 64-65).

The struggle between father and daughter in Bread Givers illustrates how

the Old World generation—the father—conflicts with the New World generation—the daughter, Sarah Smolinsky.  Sarah has set educational goals for herself and her father expects her to remain at home until he finds her a suitable husband, as is customary in the Old World.  She rebels against her father when she says:  “I saw there was no use talking. He could never understand. He was the Old World and I was the New” (Yezierska 207).  Sarah and her father have a bitter discussion over her life’s plans when he tells her that he gives up on her and that when she dies, she will be buried in a cemetery for “bums and outcasts of America” (Yezierska 207) because he just does not understand the New World American ways. 

            Sarah decides to leave home and go to a college in Chicago, despite her father’s wish to keep her home until he finds a suitable husband for her (Yezierska 209).  Sarah breaks the Old World tradition, which seriously displeases her father, while she strives for the American Dream of education and gainful employment. While looking out of the train window on her way to Chicago, where she will attend school, she sees a picturesque landscape with houses, and she daydreams about how wonderful it would be to get her college diploma and earn enough money to own her own piece of land—a part of the American dream.  Sarah’s thoughts about what she sees out of the train window are as follows:

Each house had its own green grass in front, its own free space all around, and it faced the street with the calm security of being owned for generations, and not rented by the month from a landlord.  In the early twilight, it was like a picture out of fairyland to see people sitting on their porches, lazily swinging in their hammocks, or watering their own growing flowers. (Yezierska 210)

            Sarah eventually graduates, and she and her father make an amends, so to speak, with each other in the end.  Sarah, not her father, finds a man that she is in love with and her father remains dedicated to the Holy Torah.  Sarah and her father each have their own ways, New Generation and Old Generation, respectively.  Sarah has become a teacher and her father learns to accept her male suitor because he is a man who desires to study the Torah.  Father and daughter each maintain their individual ideals of assimilation to American society:  Sarah is educated and she is gainfully employed, while her father realizes that he must work to survive and study the Torah in his spare time (Yezierska 294-297).  

            Shifting gears a little, Vietnamese Americans are also struggling to obtain and fit into the American Dream.  To begin with, the Vietnamese began an exodus from Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in April of 1975 (Vietnamese Immigration).  During the Vietnam War in April 1975, the immigration of Vietnamese is seen in Monkey Bridge when Mai’s mother sends her to the U.S. via a military plane under the protection of a wounded American soldier named Michael (Cao 97).  Mai’s mother later joins her in the U.S. six months after Mai arrives.  The major reason for Vietnamese immigration to the U.S. was so they could provide a better life for their families (Vietnamese Immigration).  Many elements of the American Dream are portrayed in Monkey Bridge, but the strongest are the ever-present ties to the Old World—both in mother and daughter.

             Mai is taking care of her ill mother who is in the hospital after suffering a stroke.  As far as taking care of her mother, Mai is following the Vietnamese custom of taking care of the “elderly parents…until they die” (Basic Vietnam).  Mai’s mother keeps chanting her father’s name, “Baba Quan, Baba Quan” in her altered mental state between consciousness and unconsciousness (Cao 19).  Baba Quan is Mai’s grandfather and she promises her mother that she will find Baba Quan and bring him to the U.S. to be reunited with the family (Cao 4).  Mai’s search for Baba Quan and taking care of her mother are two aspects of her ties to the Old World. 

            During Mai’s search for Baba Quan, she is frequently reminded of her early childhood in Vietnam during the war where she spent time wandering around in a military hospital.  She vividly recalls the sights and smells of her surroundings (Cao 2).  Mai also talks to Michael about his memories in hopes of finding out more about Baba Quan.  Michael tells Mai of the terrible battles and describes the land where he and other American soldiers would travel and witness its destruction.  Mai’s memories are also spawned by television news reports that sensationalize the war to make the War look better in favor of the American cause, but she knows first hand about the devastation and chaos in her homeland during the war (Cao 99).  Mai is tied to the Old World by graphic memories of her homeland during the Vietnam War.

            Mai’s mother is tied to the Old World with the company she keeps and her way of doing things, but she still manages to capture a piece of the American Dream.  Mai talks about the small Vietnamese community she and her mother live in, Little Saigon, where the people, including her mother, “continue to hang on to their Vietnam lives, caressing the shape of a country that was no longer there” (Cao 255).  The immigrants living in Little Saigon hold on to their ethnic ideals of family and religion, but they assimilate to the American culture enough to be able to survive on the small businesses they own—part of the American Dream.  Mai’s mother owns her own shop in the back of a grocery store where she sells small trinkets and decorative items (Cao 141).   Although Vietnamese immigrants hold on to their Old World values, they are also able to assimilate to the American culture in order to make a profit and survive.

            Mai’s life is a combination of the Old and New World ways.  Mai is tied to the Old World because of her first hand observation of the war in her homeland; her memories are vivid and haunting.  However, Mai is able to assimilate into the American culture by translating her mother’s words.  Early in the novel, Mai and her mother move into a small apartment in Little Saigon.  The mother does not like the apartment and, in Vietnamese tongue, tells the landlord exactly what she thinks about the apartment by giving specific orders on how she want the apartment to be.  Mai knows how landlords work, and that they could careless about their tenants, by Mai is very diplomatic about her approach.  Instead of translating exactly what her mother is telling her to say to the landlord, Mai takes it upon herself to sugar-coat some of the orders and persuade the landlord to move them into a more suitable apartment (Cao 20-23).  Mai’s diplomatic approach is part of her assimilation process to American Society; her approach also earned her a more suitable apartment.

            Monkey Bridge contains a strong element of the Immigrant Narrative in the ties between the Old World and the New.  The Old World is demonstrated in Mai’s care of her sick mother and Mai’s memories of Vietnam during the war before she left. The Old World is also seen in the mother when she argues with the unconcerned landlord, and Mai translates her mother’s demands in a more pleasing and diplomatic way to the landlord, earning success in their efforts. 

Finally, the Immigrant Narrative is strong in Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives.  Riis’ exposes the American nightmare in Asian American and Jewish immigrants living in tenements in New York. From drugs, to crime, to disease, the American Nightmare is shared by Asian American and Jewish immigrants alike. 

In Chapter IX, “Chinatown,” Riis exposes the dark and dirty elements of Mott Street in Chinatown, New York.  Drugs, namely opium, are sold on the street and in dark rooms of building where the cops rarely go.  Mott Street is the scene of violent crimes and prostitution in young women.  Riis exposes this sad scene where Asian Americans call home once they come to the U.S. in the hopes of finding employment and finding the American Dream—instead they suffer the American Nightmare.

In Chapters X, “Jewtown” and XI, “The Sweaters of Jewtown,” Riis exposes the nightmarish quality of life that Jewish immigrants find once they come to America.  “Jewtown” talks about the tenements and the sweatshops within the living quarters of the residents, and “The Sweaters of Jewtown” discusses not only the deplorable living conditions in tenement housing, but also Riis exposes the illegal job of the “sweater” who runs the sweatshops.   

“Jewtown” talks about the Jewish clothing industry, where they are working unregulated hours with unregulated wages.  The tenements where the Jews live are over crowded and over charged by the landlords; they are also the sight of illegal sweatshops.  These sweatshops are also known as “fever nests” because the people who work in them contaminate the clothing they produce if they are sick.  The common illnesses of the time were small pox and typhus, so any clothing produce by an infected person was sold to the general public within their community; the clothing would contain the disease, and consequently spread throughout the community thus creating more nightmares for the immigrants who lived there (Riis).

“The Sweaters of Jewtown” discusses the illegal job of a “sweater” who exploits immigrants.  The sweater would run the illegal sweatshops in the tenement homes of the immigrants.  The workers were overworked and severely underpaid.  The sweater would then take part of the immigrants’ wages to supplement his income and force the workers to work even longer hours so they could pay the rent and feed their families.  The sweater’s job was to ensure quotas were made at any cost.  Labor was unregulated because the labor laws only covered industry workers, not illegal sweatshop workers.  Jobs were hard to find, so the immigrants were forced to make money any way they could, even at the cost of their own lives (Riis). 

Jacob Riis exposes and illustrates the horrible living and working conditions of Asian American immigrants and Jewish immigrants in New York.  Riis began his career in American, as an immigrant from Denmark, as a reporter for the New York Times, then he later became a photo journalists.  Riis is known for his work as a “crusader for better living conditions for the thousands of immigrants flocking to New York in search of opportunity” (Boise State).  Riis’ narrative How the Other Half Lives made him famous for encouraging immigrant reform (Boise State).

In conclusion, the Immigrant Narrative can be traced throughout immigrant literature.  As seen in the three major works:  Anna Yezierska’s Bread Givers, Lan Cao’s Monkey Bridge, and Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives, various elements of the Immigrant Narrative are stronger or weaker in different works.  Bread Givers has a strong element of Old World versus the New World where as Monkey Bridge exhibits a firm grip on ties to the Old World.  Riis’ How the Other Half Lives exposes the shameful and horrible living and working condition of immigrants in New York tenement houses.  All immigrants in the U.S. have one thing in common; they are all in search of the American Dream. 

Work Cited

Basic Vietnamese Customs.   http://www.pacificu.edu/as/students/vietnam/aja.html. 11 Nov 2003.

Boise State. http://www.boisestate.edu/socwork/dhuff/history/gallery/gallery/Gallery-JR/BIO.html.  19 Nov 2003.

Cao, Lan.  Monkey Bridge. Penguin: England, 1998.

Jewish Museum. “American Immigration.”

 <http://www.jewishmuseum.net/American.htm>.  November 19, 2003.

Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives. “Studies Among The Tenements of New

 York. The Hypertext Edition.

www.cis.yale.edu/amstud/inforev/riis/title.html.

Vietnamese Immigration Post WWII. 23 Apr 2000

                        http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/maxpages/classes/soc248/Asians%Post%20WWII%204-24-00%20.html. 11 Nov 2003.

Yezierska, Anzia.  The Bread Givers.  Persea Books: New York, 1999.