Enrique Canales

The Effect of Assimilation and Ethnic Separatism in Literature.

In our study we have discussed the effects of assimilation on immigrant and minority literature.  Traditionally, we see that the immigrant groups, Italian, Chinese and Irish to name a few, generally tend to shape their literature to mainstream American culture.  As seen in cultural objective number three of our course syllabus, these ethnic groups were largely cut off from their homeland by physical barriers such as difficult sea travel.  Immigrant groups then are historically forced to assimilate to American culture in order to survive.  The resulting effect on their literature is that it tends to blend in with “normal” literature, meaning American literature.  Ethnic groups are forced into Eva Hoffman’s “norm’ (Hoffman 220).  “Being an American means that you feel like you are the norm” (220).  It is that urgency to be part of the norm in an environment that is far separated from home that supposedly drives the immigrant literature to leave ethnicity behind and embrace Americana.  Minority literature on the other hand, is not plagued with such urgency.  The main minority groups, African-American and Native-American, seem to not find satisfaction in the prospect of assimilation.  The early distinction made between “real” Americans and slaves (African-American) and savages (Native-Americans) crated a rift that continues to dictate the relationship between the two groups and mainstream America.  The minorities remain in the US but separate, and their literature shows it.  While the stories of African-Americans may be closer to immigrant literature than those of Native Americans, they keep a distinct flavor of strong familial ties and a greater anxiety over other ethnic issues, mainly focused on the particulars of ethnicity.  In fact, regardless of the status of an ethnic group, be it immigrant or minority, the legacy of their writing both influences society and it’s influenced by it, the degree, and desire of assimilation being the major influence on style and theme. 

Immigration isn’t always geographical, but socio-economic too.  Moving up or down in social strata produces an experience similar to immigration.  The experience of entering a different class produces effects similar those of geographical migration (although social migration may be a factor for geographical migration).  As discussed on our course objectives, a sudden change in social standing confronts the individual against changes in traditions, behavior and most importantly, language and ideals. (Against usual accepted writing style, I will insert my personal family history as a way to present my experience in the issue being discussed).  My parents were divorced when I was three years old.  The divorce forced us to move into a lower class neighborhood a few years later.  My father did not continue to support us after the divorce so our finances suffered.  After moving constantly for about four years, we finally settled in a mid-lower class neighborhood.  The change was dramatic for us, especially for my sisters, who are ten years older than me, since we came from a wealthy area.  We had been going to fine schools and were surrounded by people with higher education so moving to the new place was a challenge.  Most of the people in our new home were very young couples (eighteen to twenty five) with young children, usually two or three, and whose culture was completely different from ours.  Upon moving there I had to adjust to a new language, games, foods, traditions, and ideology.  When I say languages I mean of course the local slang, not a new language per say.  At first, and for a long time, being used to a different form of speech greatly affected my relation with my peers.  In fact, had not it been for the fact that there were only two other boys on my street; I probably wouldn’t have been able to make friends whatsoever.  Most of the kids I met didn’t like me for my ignorance of the slang and my reluctance to use it.  I was raised to believe I was well educated and that I should speak properly.  Needless to say that with time I did in fact adapt a large part of the slang, albeit somewhat reluctantly, and mostly because at times it was necessary to even get any type of information across.  I also had a profound influence on my friends as I was a dictionary fanatic and spoke English well.  Over tie our speech became a blend of proper Spanish, street slang and English.  The same difficulties applied to other areas I mentioned, games, food, traditions and ideology.  The later being the most challenging in the end.  You see, we were used to a more tolerant culture regarding religious beliefs and the new place was extremely devout to Catholicism.  It is almost comical to think that as if my life there wasn’t complicated enough, I should add Protestantism to the mix.  Like many Americans who grow up in the stereotypical small town, I couldn’t wait to leave that place.  Had I desired to prosper there, like some of my peers, be it by starting a local family business, or working at one of the many supermarkets and other businesses that quickly proliferated in the area, I would have had to become one with the place.  But my ideals of life and education kept taking me away from becoming so, they kept me separate, a minority.  My conversations weren’t about the future of the neighborhood or what was I going to do there in the future, but about taking off and remaining myself, to fulfill my dreams somewhere else.  I thought that leaving after all those years would finally turn into smooth sailing for me.  But coming to the US proved me wrong.  After living here for a few years, things have become even more complicated than before.  But one thing I did learn is that if being here is what I wanted then I had to blend in, unlike before.  My desire for success drove my effort.  Since I want to be a professor and do some writing, I have been trying to be more and more like the people here, to assimilate.  It is that desire for success that influences me to try and write more like my current peers.  I try to stay away from writing ethnic pieces because I want to be seen as one more person and not as a novelty.  The current essay is perhaps the most consciously ethnic thing I’ve written thus far. 

In the course of this class we have learned about the writings of important ethnic writers.  Their writing style is different from one another depending on their level of assimilation.  From the most assimilated, Eva Hoffman, Anzia Yezierska, and Lan Cao, to the ethnic, such as Sandra Cisneros and Sherman Alexie, writing styles vary undeniably according to the individual’s desire for the “American Dream” or the angst of “American Nightmare.”  In an essay entitled “Universalisms and Minority Culture”, David Palumbo quotes Henry L. Gates as saying that “the command of written English virtually separated the African from the Afro-American,” the assimilated from the separated.  Ones’ proficiency with the local language is an important dictum of belonging.  As long as the foreigner holds too much on to his first language, he remains ever excluded from mainstream America.  The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros depicts the everyday “American” life of Hispanics in Chicago.  The characters in the story deal with life’s hardships much like any American, except the hardships aren’t “all American” (by “all American” I mean all the issues and experiences commonly associated with middle white America and that are supposed to be the standard of all those who live there and throughout the world).  Her characters deal with problems almost entirely excusive to her race.  Probably the most significant event is the rape of her protagonist.  Although rape is common to all races and ethnicities, her rape is a representation of racism.  The event is full of references to the diverging racial backgrounds of the attacker and victim, thus becoming an ethnic experience and not an American one.  But writing about issues exclusive to ethnic groups isn’t the final sign of the work’s nature (assimilation or separatism).  A story can revolve around issues of immigration and minorities but still be a tale of assimilation.  There exist other signs of the nature of the work, namely writing style and language proficiency.  In The Bread Givers, Anzia Yezierska’s writings do not seem to possess a writing style that at first glance one could relate to the theme of assimilation.  Her writing is in fact very similar to that of Cisneros in that it too deals with the hardships of migration and uses Yiddish heavily as Cisneros uses Spanish.  But unlike Cisneros, who exalts the immigrant/minority experience and attempts to empathize us to it, Yezierska is more interested in showing us its ugliness as opposed to the beauty of the American dream (American Dream vs. American nightmare).  Where Cisneros’s work maintains the use of marked ethnic speech to soften us to the experience and remains focused on the American Nightmare, Yezierska changes the tone and language of her work during its second stage, the assimilation stage, when the protagonist’s father has died and we are introduced to the new world.  Yezierska utilizes the characteristic bland style of the Pilgrim culture to show her adaptation.  According to Delia Caparoso in an article titled “Administered Identities and Linguistic Assimilation,” “for the most part, Yezierska continues to be regarded as a patriotic assimilationist who wrote sincere but technically deficient short stories and novels in a poor and broken English”(Caparoso 595).  Yezierska then is not necessarily good in the English language but her assimilationist tendencies show themselves in her theme.    

Lan Cao is another proponent of assimilation in her writing.  In her story, The Monkey Bridge, Lan Cao, like most writers with an ethnic (immigrant or minority) background relates the tale of her coming to America and its hardships.  But unlike most ethnic writers, Lan Cao’s proficiency of the English language is astonishing.  She has no problem using the high language and the obscure vocabulary of the Ivy League graduate. (Not to say that her editor didn’t have a part in the final product, but her elegant style and language are entirely Lan Cao’s, and entirely American).  Her tale evolves in two paths, her relationship to her mother, and her happy assimilation into America.  Her character revels in the joys of American education, in Hoffman’s “norm.”  Another sign of Lan Cao’s assimilation tendency is her tale’s concern with universal human issues.  In one of the Monkey Bridge reviews that appear on the book cover, the reviewer from the Chicago Tribune praises the book for its “visual illustration of what it means to be human”(Cao cover).  The protagonist’s struggles with her mother and the challenge to enter college are definitely “all American” issues.  David Palumbo identified this phenomenon and quotes William Saroyan’s introduction to a collection of stories by a notable ethnic writer, Toshio Mori, as saying that “Mori realizes this identity (the ethnic and racial) precisely in creating narratives that represent human conditions that are only later identified as having Japanese protagonists”(Palumbo 205).

    Sherman Alexie is almost entirely opposed in theme and style to Lan Cao, and his separatist tendencies are painfully obvious in comparison.  As a Native-American, he finds himself in a different position than Lan Cao due to personal perception of American Culture and the uneasy and awkward relationship with it.  Unlike Lan Cao, who has much to be thankful to the US (for rescuing her family from death and providing her with an education), the Native-American was instead uprooted and murdered in mass in their land.  But I digress, that old conflict is not central but merely a background force in the issue at hand.  In Alexie’s short story, “A Drug Called Tradition,” he tells the story of a group of kids after they leave a party.  It is difficult for the reader to realize at first that the protagonists aren’t typical American boys.  The characters talk like any other American using common slang and even cursing.  Alexie’s dialogue and dominion of the language apparently makes him an assimilation writer.  But for all his dominion of the language, his theme remains ethnocentric.  Unlike Lan Cao, Alexie is not one to praise American institutions.  Quite the opposite, he ridicules them and their treatment of the Native-American when the characters tell of a large sum of money paid to them by a corporation that wishes to use some of their land.  The protagonist takes wide advantage of the situation, and unlike Lan Cao’s character, does not truly wish to be a part of America.  The rest of the story deals with the young men reasserting their ethnic identity through a drug induced trance common to Native-American peoples.  Alexie does not deal necessarily with “human issues” like Lan Cao, but with happenings specific to his culture and the difficulty of remaining true to tradition in the middle of America and its influence.  The clearest example of that is the protagonist comparison of his grandmother’s little drum to a bipper. 

We have seen that it isn’t easy to identify the influence of assimilation or separatism in immigrant and minority literature.  Some critics, like Gates, argue that proficiency in the language is the determining factor of a work’s nature, be it assimilation or separation.  But others, like Saroyan, believe that it is the theme of the work that reveals its nature and that a work which portrays issues common to all humans (in this case Americans since they are supposed to be the norm of humanity) is about assimilation, while one that deals exclusively with ethnic issues is separatist.  But in reality, both ideas must be factored together to attain a better understanding.  Writing style can be either ethnic or all American but in the end that doesn’t reveal everything.  Cisneros writes with heavily Spanish-influenced language, while Alexie writes in distinctive American slang, yet both works are separatist.  On the other hand, Yezierska writes with Yiddish influenced English and Lan Cao in highly educated one, yet both are works about assimilation.  In the end, the distinction between assimilation and separatist literature is made mostly by its theme.  Language plays a big part in both types of literature, but more as a basic prerequisite to write than a determining factor.  It is logical to assume that the best representatives of literature of assimilation would be those which both present a theme of assimilation and a proper dominion of English, the later being less significant.  In the end, it is the intention of the story that determines its nature.  If a story supports separatism, then ethnic identity and pride will be focused on.  While if the work is about assimilation, it will tend to focus more on what may be considered general human experiences such as family conflict, work related problems and love, without necessarily bringing ethnicity as a factor.  

Nowadays it can be argued that the story of the immigrant and the minority is as American as any story of the commercial American media.  But Palumbo asserts, “the minor (minority that is) is contained within the universal by virtue of the terms of universality, and yet is always only marginal to it, for reasons of its minor status”(189).  The ethnic is then not truly part of American culture until it ceases to be ethnic and becomes American.  According to Caparoso, Yezierska took significant steps in that direction with her blending of Yiddish with English.  As expressed by Dr. White, Yiddish heavily influences much of today’s American slang.  Caparoso says that Yezierska “in making both English and Yiddish susceptible to foreign elements, she(Yezierska) resists and subverts the principles of acculturation and claims to a national or cultural identity that underlie the use of a standard language”(597).   Not until ethnic factors in human issues become accepted as part of the “norm” in literary conflict, will the separated, the minority, will remain such. 

 Works Cited

Alexie, Sherman. “A Drug Called Tradition.” Imagining America.  Ed. Wesley Brown and Amy Ling.  New York: Persea  2002.

Cao, Lan. Monkey Bridge.  New York: Viking 1997.

Caparoso, Delia. “Administered Identities and Linguistic Assimilation: The politics of         Immigrant English in Anzia Yezierska’s Hungry Hearts.” American Literature. 69 (1997): 596-619, MLA Directory 12 Nov 2003 http://nola.uhcl.edu/databases.html#

Cisneros, Sandra.  The House on Mango Street.  New York: Random House 1994.

Hoffman, Eva. “Lost in Translation.” Visions of America. Ed. Wesley Brown and Amy Ling.  New York: Persea  1993.

Palumbo, David. “Universalisms and Minority Culture.”  Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies.  7.1 (1995), MLA Directory 12 Nov 2003 http://nola.uhcl.edu/databases.html#

Payant, Katherine and Toby Rose, ed.  The Immigrant Experience in North American Literature: Carving out a Niche.  Westport: Greenwood 1999.

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