II. Long Essay

Log: 9:15-11 p.m. Friday night, writing

11:20 a.m.-12:20 p.m. Sunday morning, editing and revising

Stages in the Immigrant and Minority Narrative

by Kristen Bird

Since America was discovered by Christopher Columbus over five centuries ago, immigrants have been implanting themselves in America, often even against wishes of ethnicities and races now labeled “minority.”  Because America today is comprised of these sojourners and natives, immigrant and minority literature cannot be disentangled from American history or culture.  These narratives, which are usually comprised of five distinct stages, includes leaving the old behind, journeying to the new, encountering adversity, assimilating, and rediscovering a new identity in the melting pot of America’s dominant culture.

Leaving the Old World behind is the first voluntary step for any immigrant, and it is often the first involuntary demand the minority encounters.  Reasons for leaving home and tradition behind often vary for the immigrant, but may involve escaping religious, political or economic strife or oppression.  Through the1800s, most immigrants traveled from Europe, but after the turn of the 20^th century, many immigrants from Third World countries began to flow into America.  Many come seeking the sometimes elusive “American Dream.”  The number of immigrants leaving homelands to embrace American culture continues to increase.

In Edwidge Danticat’s “Children of the Sea” the reader experiences a firsthand account of a young Haitian’s attempt to leave behind his restless homeland and journey to America’s political freedom.  In a letter written by the girlfriend he left behind, she describes home as “just the way you left it.  bullets day and night.  same hole.  same everything.  i’m tired of the whole mess…” (IA 98)  The story unfolds further with the discovery that this young Haitian boy is wanted by the government and would have been killed if he had remained in his homeland.  Danticat also incorporates elements of the minority’s plight into his story by indicating that because of the Haitian’s certain death at home, the voyage is, in a sense, involuntary.  The story is also less hopeful than most immigrant narratives, an aspect often found in stories of minorities.

Danticat’s story describes the journey in full, merging elements of an immigrant’s travels with elements of many slaves’ journey over a hundred years earlier.  Olaudah Equiano’s slave narrative is a descriptive account of the journey he and thousands of Africans traveled involuntarily to America.  “Thus I continued to travel, both by land and by water, through different countries and various nations, till at the end of six or seven I months after I had been kidnapped, I arrived at the sea coast,” Equiano writes.  He continues, describing the fear and uncertainty he felt on arrival in the foreign land filled with European settlers who considered him mere property. (The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Gustavus Vassa, or Olaudah Equiano, The African London, 1789)  Equiano also describes the land in which he had arrived, a land filled with white men and women who mistreat the Africans.  In his account, there seems to be a reversal of the Color Code, which assigns symbolism to skin color.  The reversal is evident by the horrific way in which the whites treat the blacks, which is in not good or rational as “white” is typically portrayed.  The initial horrific treatment of the minority may be one reason that African Americans even today sometimes resist the social contract America offers and assimilation, choosing instead to remain within their cultural and family units.

While Equiano describes his struggle to arrive in America, Carlos Bulosan offers an immigrant account of the journey he takes after arriving in America, being forced to work for months at a time for small wages by his own people.  After seeing the corruption of his countrymen due to the struggle to survive, Carlos cries out, “Please God, don’t change me in America!” (IA 73)  Bulosan’s story is one of many in which immigrants hope to exchange their heavy burdens for the “American Dream,” but are often disappointed by the realities they encounter instead. Sui Sin Far in her story, “In the Land of the Free,” describes the grief a Chinese mother faces while her two-year-old son is held by customs for ten months. 

The adversity she meets strikes at the emotional level first, but then at the economic level when the mother sells precious family heirlooms to pay a lawyer to intercede with the government on her behalf.  Immigrant narratives often contain stories of people encountering struggles on several dimensions, such as social, political, economic, familial or emotional.  These difficulties arise as the traditional, often defined by the family unit, clashes with modernity, often defined by individuality and freedom.  Perhaps this is why the modern bureaucracy in Far’s story was not as concerned with the traditional value of home and family that the Chinese embrace.

Anzia Yezierska’s novel “Bread Givers” also incorporates the merging of the new and the old as her main character, Sarah, faces assimilation as a Jewish immigrant growing up in New York.  Sarah is raised in a traditional Jewish family, with three older sisters, a loving, submissive mother and a domineering father.  Yezierska’s semi-autobiographical account shows the process of assimilation through Sarah’s character, starting with her desire to be free from her father’s authoritarian ways to which her mother and older sisters submitted her entire life.  Individuality, a significant aspect of America’s dominant culture, reaches its climax when Sarah leaves home to receive an education and earn a living on her own.  She fulfills her desire for the “American Dream,” although this dream is transformed slightly overtime to be less pomp and frills and more realistic and simple. 

But unlike Yezierska’s immigrant narrative, many minorities resist assimilation by staying within the cultural circles of their ethnicity or race and by refusing to intermarry, which is one of the fastest ways to assimilate.  But although assimilation may be resisted, elements of the dominant culture often still creep in slowly.  In “The Man to Send Rain Clouds” by Leslie Marmon Silko, the Native American people incorporate elements of the priest’s ritual of sprinkling holy water at the burial of a revered member. But the natives assign their own meaning to the act, hoping it will bring rain for the crop.  The Native American and African American cultures are true minorities and most often follow the minority patter of being more transcultural, less accepting of the dominant culture’s infringement and more loyal to their own culture.

But the social contract offered to minorities makes these attributes understandable.  Minorities are offered the opportunity to join a culture that opposes and discriminates against them and yet demands sacrifices of their culture.  It is no surprise that they often resist assimilation or face despair in the face of such an offer.  Immigrants, however, are offered an idea more along the lines of the “American Dream,” being essentially told that if they work hard and persevere, they will eventually succeed.  And for immigrants of European descent, even less barriers are placed in their path because skin color does not cause as much bias and prejudice in many cases. 

Out of all of the ethnicities and races, New World Immigrants including the Mexican American, Latino and Afro-Caribbean cultures are some of the most difficult to classify because they contain aspects of the minority and immigrant narrative.  For example, in “El Patron” by Nash Candelaria, Papa chose to migrate to America from Mexico in search of a better life, a characteristic typical of the immigrant narrative.  But he remains loyal to the ideas of war formed in his home country, resisting the dominant culture’s idea of freedom of speech and individuality that Tito embraces.  In this story, the view of women is also divided from one generation to the next.  And in “The Making of a Writer: From the Poets in the Kitchen,” Paule Marshall, born in Barbados and raised in Brooklyn, paints a picture of the parallel existence of the old and new cultures.  The old culture is comprised of her mother and friends maintaining their cultural identity through community with one another.  At the same time, there exists the new culture, evident through herself as a child reaching outside of herself (by reading Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, etc…), while learning to appreciate her racial identity (by discovering James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, etc…).  In many minority narratives, aspects of the immigrant and minority meet, forming a coexistence of characteristics. 

Despite the differences between immigrant and minority literature, they share a few elements, such as being unified in their victimization and in the offering of a social contract.  But whatever the similarities or differences between the immigrant and minority narratives, the characteristics of the two are revealed in the unfolding of stories that incorporate the stages of the narrative as characters leave, journey, struggle, resist or assimilate. 

By studying immigrant and minority literature in this course, I have recognized a foundational element of America that I took for granted in the past: the people.  America is not merely a set of ideals set forth by the founding fathers; America is necessarily a combination of cultures, of ideas, of traditions, of people.  And these people come from a variety of countries, political, economic and social backgrounds and bring with them a myriad of characteristics to offer America.  I now feel strongly that it is important for these differences to be talked about, rather than made fun of or suppressed.  Yes, the dominant culture requires assimilation, but the dominant culture is also dictated by the people who live in America.  And I am now more convinced than ever that these people should be valued, appreciated and helped to succeed “in the land of the free and the home of the brave.”