Donny Leveston

Part II: Long Essay

Various Aspects in Multicultural Literature

            From the time of the thirteen colonies in America until present-day times, America has been viewed as the “land of opportunity.”  The immigrants that migrated from Europe help build this country while invading the territories of Native Americans, and forcing Africans to come to America as slaves.  This transition spun a whole new philosophy on American immigrants, minorities, and those who may fall somewhere in between.  This idea can be followed by “Hegelian Dialectic” concept that goes something like this:

                        Thesis: Not of African or Native American descent→ immigrant

                        Antithesis: Of African or Native American descent→ minorities

                        Synthesis: Afro-Caribbean, Afro-British, etc. → “new world immigrants”

All of the aforementioned groups’ narratives may fall into one or several of our course’s objectives.  For the purpose of this essay, I will examine six of our course’s primary texts that incorporate Objectives one, two, and three and/or their variants in relation to the immigrant, minority, and the ‘new immigrant” narrative within the multicultural context.

Objective one is “designed to identify the immigrant narrative as a fundamental story-line of American culture and to recognize its relation to the ‘American Dream’ story.”  In addition, Objective 1a focuses on the importance of public education and higher learning that may be a part of the immigrant’s dream in coming to America as demonstrated in Anzia Yezierska’s “Soap and Water.”  For example, the narrator states, “The dean of our college, withheld my diploma,” (105).  In this example, the “American Dream” of gaining higher education is undermine by those in positions of power, which may control the fate of those seeking a college degree as suggested by Yezierska’s protagonist.  Yezierska further explains that because of her social and economical hardships she longs for America when she says, “Inside the ruins of my life, the unlived visionary immigrant hungered and thirsted for America,” (109).  Here Yezierska is in Objective two’s stage four, willingness to assimilate to the dominant culture.  The protagonist’s sense of uncleanness and un-America ness became evident by the discriminatory treatment she suffered at the hands of the school’s dean.  Therefore, she had to learn to speak up for herself, and she had to learn how to become “American.”  The protagonist had to learn that the “social contract,” in order to survive and succeed─ the immigrant had to play by Americans’ rules, even though this “social contract” was not formal or clear, but, merely understood on the part of the immigrant, although not exclusively. 

The immigrant narrative often involves the “social contract” that was stated earlier that encompasses various stipulations that are noted in Objective two’s stage four.  For instance, In Maxine Hong Kingston’s “The Woman Warrior” the protagonist is at odds in trying to assimilate based on family traditions and American ideologies when she states, “And all the time I was trying to turn myself American –feminine, or, no dates,” (196).  In regards to stage four of our course’s Objective two, the protagonist has to struggle with of sense of self based on her cultural ideas and her acceptance of dominant culture’s ideas just to fit in.  The protagonist understands what “Americanism” is as she can relate it to how people dress when she says, “I easily recognize them─ business-suited in their modern American executive guise, each boss two feet taller than I am and impossible to meet eye to eye,” (197).  As we learned in class, it is easy to see the influence of American ideas in immigrants writing especially when American name brands are referred to in some of the immigrant works.  And, depending on where the characters’ are in the stages of the immigrant narrative, we can usually track the progression of change in these characters.  An example of this tracking would be in Kingston’s text when the narrator says, “I live now where are there are no Chinese and Japanese, but no emigrants from my own village looking at me as if I had failed them,” (200).  The protagonist is undergoing Stage five in Objective two because she is rediscovering her ethnic identity, but only partially, by remembering her village and thinking she has failed them.

Unlike the immigrant narrative that usually echoes the “American Dream” and the “social contract,” the minority narratives differs because it usually echoes the “American Nightmare” that African Americans and Native Americans often encounters in America.  Firstly, for Native Americans the immigrant experience turned out to be the “American Nightmare” because the immigrants took over the Indian’s native land; the immigrant experience is also the African American nightmare because it forced people of African descent to leave their home country by coming to America to work as slaves.  Our course’s Objective three describes the differences in immigrant and minority narratives.  For example, in Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Lesson” the narrator says, “...I’m really hating this nappy-head bitch and her goddamn college degree,” (IA 146).  The narrator sees the black teacher as a minority who has assimilated to the dominant culture by get a college degree, in other words, the teacher has accepted the “social contract.”  This dream of higher education is not really an opportunity for the young protagonist and her friends because of their low economical situation.  This can be seen in the analogy of the thirty-five dollar toy and one thousand-dollar sailboat.  For African Americans to spend thirty-five dollars on a toy, or even a thousand dollars on a model sailboat, is virtually unheard of when the narrator says her mother would probably say, “Thirty-five dollars could buy new bunk beds for Junior and Gretchen’s boy,” (IA 150).  Most black people would spend that kind of money for household goods and food.  The narrator then says, “Imagine for a minute what kind of society it is in which some people can spend on a toy what it would cost to feed a family of six or seven,” (IA 151).  African Americans very seldom can afford the luxury of that kind of spending, as a result, that is an “American Dream” that most African Americans never have, and surely almost never fulfill. 

Native Americans, like African Americans are minorities and not immigrants.  Therefore, American Indians are not bound by the “social contract.”  In effect they too most often experience the “American Nightmare.”  In Leslie Marmon Silko’s “The Man to Send Rain Clouds,” explores the ideas of Native Americans and their religious cultural practices in contrast to American religious cultural practices.  This minority group is like African Americans because they do follow the conventions of immigrant groups.  The natives pray to their dead, in Silko’s story─ the grandfather who has been deified after passing, to send the natives blessings.  For example, the narrator says, “Send us rain clouds, Grandfather,” (IA 205).  Native Americans do not always worship the traditional Christian God, or Christ, but instead, practice their ancestral religious heritage of seeking blessings from deceased family members.  The Native American often resists assimilation to some degree, but may adapt some aspect of assimilation.  For instance, the protagonist explains the clothes that the grandfather wears when he says, “...and a new brown flannel shirt and pair of stiff new Levis were arranged neatly beside the pillows,’ (IA 206).  Here the Native American shares the American idea of clothes by wearing “Levis” and “flannel shirts,” which are distinctively American.  In addition, American Indians do not always, if, at all, recognize Christian burials, but they may acknowledge that they need something, like holy water from Christians to sprinkle around the grandfather when the narrator says, “...now the old man could send them big thunderclouds for sure,” (IA 209).  Although the Native Americans did not completely assimilate to the dominant culture, they did use a part of that dominant culture to sustain their own culture in burying the dead.

There is yet another group that falls between the immigrant and a minority identity, that group is the “new world” immigrants.  This group is also outline in our course’s Objective three.  In Gary Soto’s “Like Mexicans,” the protagonist’s grandmother says, “...I should marry a Mexican girl,” (301).  The grandmother advises the boy to marry within his race, and the feels that he will only marry a Mexican girl when he proclaims to his friend, “...I will never marry an Okie,” (IA 302).  An “Okie” is anyone who is non Mexican, African American, or Asian.  This narrative represents the minority narrative because the boy’s “mother wanted [him] to marry someone of [his] own ‘social class,’” a poor girl (IA303).Then, he narrative shits to an immigrant narrative because the boy’s girlfriend drives a “Plymouth,” which is an American automobile that shows that the girl and her family might be assimilating to American culture and ideas.  The story further reinforces the immigrant narrative when the boy realizes that his girlfriend and her Asian family is “just like Mexicans,” (IA 304).  The protagonist feels that he and his girlfriend, and her family are all something “other” than American, in this sense, they are immigrants trying to adapt to American society. 

Another “new world” immigrant story that is ambiguous in its representation as an immigrant or minority narrative is Edwidge Danticat’s “Children of the Sea.”  This narrative is an immigrant narrative because of its implications that resembles the immigrant narrative.  For example, the narrators and others are leaving their home land by way of boat over a body of water heading for America to escape the war at home.  The narrator feels that he and his companions are not bound by the “hopelessness” and borders in Haiti when he says, “There are no borderlines on the sea,” (IA 99).  Thus he and his companions are compelled to find “freedom” that they know they will not find by staying home, even if it means taking certain risks.  The “new world” immigrants may experience a sense of loyalty to their home country and may maintain historical resentment towards the new nation and their culture as outline in the course’s Objective three, “New World” immigrants.  An example would be when the narrator explains a song he and his fellow countrymen sang when he says, “...Beloved Haiti, there is no place like you.  I had to leave you before I could understand you,” (IA 101).  This expression of sorrow for leaving the home country for the “new world,” in its historical context is just one of the problems “new world” immigrants battle.  Just because these immigrants leave their homeland to reach America, does not mean that they always get there.  For instance, in trying to escape oppression in his homeland, the narrator infers that he and his cohorts die at sea in hope that a Coastguard ship will rescue them when he states, “...and I know that my memory of you will live even there as I too become a child of the sea,” (IA 111).  The text infers that a “child of the sea” is one who has died at sea.  Therefore, this text does not conform to the immigrant narrative and the “American Dream,” but, more of a minority narrative because of the “American Nightmare” it implies.  In fact, one could classify this text as a true ambiguous immigrant/minority narrative.