Tuesday, 14 February: American Indian Minority vs. the immigrant narrative.

·        Web highlight (midterms): Linda Castro

Midterms: students from 2003

Introduction: First, you view the sample midterms on the course site. Then you pick out the most helpful ones. Lastly, you describe the important points and objectives to the class.

These identities can be separated into three separate, yet somewhat similar, categories.  The first category is one in which most people would identify immigrants.  It would consist of those people who immigrated to America by choice.  Another category is composed of those who were forced to immigrate, such as the Africans who were brought to America as slaves.  Finally, the third category is comprised of people who were here before others began to migrate here.  These would be the American Indians and Mexicans.  Although the narratives and stories are written by people who represent the different categories of the immigrants and whose stories are diverse in nature, they all tell of experiences of people who once lived in another country and who now call America home.

Of the three groups of people mentioned above, two of the groups of people left their homeland to live in a new country.  The first group, the ones who chose to come to America, usually tell stories about their searches for a better way of life.  This can be seen in Nicholasa Mohr’s narrative, “The English Lesson.”  In the story, Mrs. Hamma is teaching English to a night class of immigrants.  When asked to tell their story of why they want to learn English, one student responds, “I study Basic English por que…because my ambition is to learn to speak and read English very good.  To get a better job.  Y—y también, to help my mother y familia…Y do better, that’s all.”  Although this student seems to have had a good experience as an immigrant to America, that is not always the case.  In Anzia Yezierska’s “Soap and Water”, a young woman from Russia is working in a laundry in order to make money while she is trying to earn her college education.  She is stunned to learn that the dean of the school is refusing to allow the student to receive her diploma because she is not clean.  The dean feels that the student did not have the cleanliness required of the American teacher.  This is devastating for the student and her dream of America was shattered.  She prays the “inarticulate prayer of the lost immigrant: ‘America! Ach, America!  Where is America?’”  Her experience of America is one of disappointment.

            African Americans who make up the second group of immigrants, were also were a group of people who left their homelands and came to America.  However, this move was not one of choice.  They were taken from their country and forced to work as slaves in America.  They present a different view of the immigrant. They are both immigrants and minorities.  For these people, the American Dream is, in reality, the American Nightmare.  They did not choose to come to this country and have often been discriminated against.  They sometimes find their culture unacceptable and strive to become someone they are not.  This can be seen in the poem by Patricia Smith, “Blonde White Women.”  Although she embraces her culture and her diversity now, this was not always the case.  As a child she mimicked being a white girl because she felt that it was more acceptable.  At the age of five she remembers “toddling my five-year-old black butt around with a dull gray mophead covering my nappy hair, wishing myself golden.”  Her experience as part of a culture of minority immigrants is not one whose stories are always pleasant to read [KM].

The Native American narrative is similar in its resistance and a wanting to return or hold on to the past is evident.  Native Americans were forced from their lands, killed, forced to assimilate (children taken from them and sent to “white” schools), and then shoved into a remote pocket of land and romanticized by the dominant culture.  It was seen as better for them if their children were taken and brought up proper as seen in Erdrich’s “American Horse” Buddy is taken from his mother and uncle because the poverty and problems surrounding the house were seen as not fit to dominant culture standards.  (Why were they in poverty in the first place?)  Also shown is the minority culture resistance to the law and other dominant institutions.  Buddy whispering to his mom says, “cops suck the worst because they’re after us” – even as a child he understands the relationship between dominant and minority culture and knows that he is seen as lower in status.  The authority figures are not seen as protectors, but as disrupters because they are symbols of the dominant culture, who have tried to take away their culture and give them a new one.  To assimilate would be to agree with the dominant cultures view of superiority and so they must resist.  “The Dream” is to be treated as equals in the dominant world while holding onto one’s own culture [GH].

Conclusion: The sample midterms are extremely helpful because they give you an idea of what professor White is looking for. You can focus on similarities and differences in the readings, you can analyze the objectives, and you can give personal experiences that will help yourself and   others understand the meaning of the stories.