Diane Palmer

Time: 2 hours 30 minutes

The Thin Line between “Minority” and “Immigrant”

            To look at the words “immigrant” and “minority” is to understand two extremely different concepts.  An immigrant is someone who travels over land or sea to a new land to live, while a minority is generally defined as a person who is a part of group that is the smaller in number.  The definitions do not even come close to the implications that also are a part of these two words.  The past, present and future add so many new meanings and complications to the definition of these terms.  For instance, while there are many aspects such as basic definition that divide these two groups, there are also aspects of life like bias, hatred, and racism that bond these two groups together.   By looking at immigrant and minority literature the ambiguous line drawn between them gets crossed.

            First, it is important to understand what immigrant literature is.  At first, it seems to be the basic story of those who simply came to America either by land or sea, but to read immigrant literature is to learn more about the struggles of choice or the lack there of and the story that gets them to the make the choice.  The main choice an immigrant must make is to assimilate to the dominant culture or to resist the assimilation.  There are many stages to a group’s assimilation.  In Gish Jen’s “In the American Society” we are shown the three stages.  There is the first generation father, who builds them a dynasty by running a pancake house.  He is the epitome of the “American Dream” coming true, but also “’doesn’t believe in joining the American society’ said my mother. ‘He wants to have his own society’”(159). He believes in the dream, but has not chosen to give up his own ways for a supposed better set of ways that represent an “American.”  Then there are the two girls in the story.  They represent the second generation who are slowly assimilating, but are torn between their identity and their new country.  Towards the end, when their father is insulted by one of the Dominant culture, they stand by their father rather than stay with the “crowd” and are even able to joke with him about losing the keys in the pool.  Finally, one of the minor characters Mrs. Lardner represents the final stage of assimilation.  She is so assimilated that she stretches to find a connection with the immigrants by bragging “It’s a secret of course, but you know, my natural was Jewish.”  This family was a success story and was still allowed a choice.  While the father chose to stick with his traditional ways and values, the girls chose to assimilate to the American Culture while still supporting family values.

            Choice is not always an option.  For example, in Carlos Bulosan’s “America is in the Heart,” the choice to assimilate is not an option but a choice for survival.  Bulosan’s story itself is set up in random moments that almost feel like the nonlinear feel of a nightmare.  The narrator encounters many examples of racism and “it was this narrowing of our life into an island, into a filthy segment of American society, that had driven Filipinos like Doro inward, hating everyone and despising all positive urgencies toward freedom” (70).  There is no choice to be free and successful.  The choice is to tolerate the dominant culture’s behavior and survive or fight back and perish.  America is changing Allos, and he sadly realizes there is little he can do to stop it.   He can only it back and watch as “The girl was suppose to tear off one ticket every three minutes, but I noticed that she tore off a ticket for every minute” (65).  In correlation with assimilation is the idea of the Dominant Culture.  They are the force that drives people like Allos’ friend to pursue the “American Dream.”  People like the tall, blonde haired woman with the tickets are the impossible perfection that immigrants are forced to become or forever be different.  So is there truly a choice? Or are the immigrants forever forced to become an ideal that is unobtainable, so that they are forever trying harder to accomplish more?

            While it appears that immigrants have some choices to make, minorities are not even given choice as an option.  Choice is removed from their vocabulary as they are truly forced to squeeze into the narrow ideal of the Dominate culture.  But the complication does not come from being forced here, but rather what to do now?  Here is where choice does play a part.  Should they sign the social contrast that was forced on them? Or do they rebel and make their own social contract?  In “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, the students are learning to make their own contract.  At first, the students resist the teachings of Miss Moore because they had heard the gossip about her from their parents.  They too get caught up in the idea that she assimilated and was, therefore no longer one of their own.  Miss Moore takes them to F.A.O Schwartz and has them look at the price of toys.  It is Sugar who figures out “’I don’t think all of us here put together eat in a year what that sailboat costs’…’this is not much of a democracy if you ask me. Equal chance to pursue happiness means an equal crack at the dough, don’t it?’” (151). The narrator realizes this is more than a lesson about equality.  While African-Americans were forced here, she realizes that they cannot be forced to succumb to their ideas.  She realizes that she can make her own choices and decided what her own ideals should be.  Equality is not something that exists, so she must decide her own ideals and overcome all obstacles, including the dominant culture, to achieve her own success.

            Other minorities choose not to fight but choose to live life their own way while adjusting to the Dominant culture.  In Leslie Marmon Silko’s “The Man to Send Rain Clouds,” we view a group of Indian minorities that choose to view the world their own way with the help of a Catholic priest.  After Ken and Leon find their grandfather dead, they continue with tradition by tying “a small gray feather in the old man’s long white hair” and then “painted with yellow under the old man’s broad nose, and finally, when he had painted green across the chin, he smiled” (205).  The old ways are and will not be forgotten as they then ask their grandfather for rain rather then succumbing to the Dominant Culture and praying to God for help.   But it is the funeral that truly shows their defiance.  They lie to the town’s priest and take their grandfather home to bury him in the true style of the Indians.  Even when they ask the priest to sprinkle him with holy water, it is not for Catholic and Dominant culture religious reasons.  In response to the priest, Leon explains “we just want him to have plenty of water” (208).  The priest realizes his attempts are fruitless, and he concedes to sprinkle the old man with holy water.  This whole story emanates the importance of culture to those who have had it stolen, and this is the major difference between immigrant and minority literature.  Immigrants came to succeed with hope in their hearts, while sometimes they succeed and other times their hopes are dashed.  Minorities are forced here with but a shimmer of hope for anything other than survival, but their hope continually expands as they deny the Dominant culture their social contract and refuse assimilation.

            There is a middle ground between the two stories of the immigrants and the minorities.  There are stories that show the struggle of both. For instance, the both minority literature and share a struggle against racism and prejudice, but both must try to assimilate to survive.  Oscar Hijuelos’ “Visitors, 1965,” shows two stories about one family.   The first story is about Diego and his family.  They are the typical immigrant story.  They come to America to better their situation only to come end up battling prejudice and the complications of assimilation.  Diego stays in the same dead end job and becomes and alcoholic, while one of his son’s Hector who “the very idea of Cubanness inspired fear in him as if he would grow ill from it” was completely assimilated, but wanted to reclaim his heritage (317).  Diego’s story does not end as the “American Dream.” Their struggle is then contrasted with their family’s struggle in Cuba.  Like the minority story, they are forced to leave Cuba due to dire circumstances.  When they arrive, Diego asks Pedro what he will do next, and he replies “’Work until I have something’” (321).  Their goal is not to achieve the “American dream” but to survive as a minority figure.  In the end,  Pedro and his family do achieve the “American Dream” and own their own home, television, etc. while Diego’s family does not.  Both stories cross the line between minority literature and immigrant literature.  They become a shared story rather than separate genres of literature.

            A second issue shared by minority and immigrant literature is the struggle with the color code and with political backgrounds.  Some are forced here like in “Visitors, 1965” due to political unrest at home.  Should this then be considered the story of a minority or an immigrant?  Once they reach here the color of their skin then represents certain stereotypes to the Dominant culture.  Should these be considered or not considered as a separation of minority and immigrant literature?  Stories such as “Children of the Sea” by Edwidge Danticat, take the fine between immigrant and minority literature, and smear into as much grey area as possible.  First there is the political background.  There is a boy who has boarded a boat to leave because if he stays the local militant leaders will kill him.  It carries the mood of a minority piece when he claims “I think it would break my heart watching some little boy or girl every single day on this sea, looking into their empty faces to remind me of the hopelessness of the future in our country” (99).  There again is the idea of hope. While many immigrant stories include hope from the beginning, minority literature often speaks of losing hope on the way to America, but use a stronger sense of hope later on to survive and overcome.   This immigrant/minority can see that his country’s future is in ruin, but he does not speak of the hope he will find in America.  Many would ask, then why did he choose to come?  He was not forced on the boat, but chose to get in.  Due to many countries political unrest, there is no choice.  The boy gives examples such as the story of Célianne where “The soldiers held a gun to Lionel’s head and ordered him to lie down and become intimate with his mother” and “they took turns raping Célianne” (109).  The girl heard about the boat and left.  There was no choice.  On the other hand, the girlfriend in the sory stays behind, and her family eventually escapes to Ville Rose where their survival and existence are better than before.  So perhaps choice can be argued and this could be read as an immigrant story that doesn’t have a successful ending.

            The second conflict of the “Color Code” is also addressed in “Children of the Sea.”  Can color and race decide what is minority literature or immigrant literature?  Many cultures find it insulting if even though they look similar are grouped as one race or culture.  If you ask someone if they are Mexican and they are Puerto Rican, they will be insulted and explain they are nothing alike.  Americans are the same way.  If you ask someone from Britain if they are American, a war would ensue, yet we tend to lump many different ethnicities together.  In the story, one man tells the story of his boat that is found by the Coast Guard and “they took the Cubans to Miami and sent him back to Haiti” (101).  While the underlying reasons are political, the fear is caused by skin color.  After being in the sun and getting burned repeatedly, the fear is that they will be discovered and accused of being Haitian rather than Cuban.  The issue of skin color is not singularly found in minority literature but is also found in the biased shown towards immigrants.  It can not be given as a trait of either genre of literature.

            While by definition the two terms of “immigrant” and “minority” are extremely different, the two genres both encompass many of the same conflicts and issues.  Each genre can be defined, but the issue of making some literature fir into one category or the other can be indefinitely argued either way.  Perhaps if racism and prejudices didn’t exist there would not need to be a difference, but unfortunately they do exist.  The ambiguity  of the two genres is what makes them such interesting stories to read and to learn from.