Wayne Reed

            From across a wide ocean, the sparkling seas that lead to glittering towers of opportunity in America may inspire very different notions of American ideals in different peoples.  It may inspire a hope that causes a person to drop everything and flee their homeland, or it may inspire fear and those glittering towers of opportunity may be seen as shiny black chains.  Nevertheless, though all these people meet on the same land their experiences differ significantly so that America is much more than the just the land of opportunity and success, rather it is a molding ground for different groups that results in a broad multicultural landscape.

            The American Dream is often referred to as a myth, and it would certainly seem like a myth, considering all the hardship and frustration the people in the stories come up against.  However, I want to submit that the American Dream is not a myth, but rather, a misconceived ideal, and it is this aspect that distinguishes the Horatio Alger-like American Dream narrative from the immigrant narrative.  Certainly the American Dream is achieved in the immigrant narrative.  Even in “Going Home: Brooklyn Revisited,” a story where the American Dream is seen as perpetually elusive, there are the “geeps,” recent Italian immigrants, who do succeed: “’The geeps are here three years and they got money to buy a four-family house.’”  In “In the American Society” we also witness a family succeed financially, though they do not ultimately acculturate themselves.  On the other hand, the idea of assimilating is highly significant to the progress of immigrants and the achievement of their goals.  It is this aspect that makes“The English Lesson” an immigrant narrative.  We see small hints of her breaking away from the traditional culture she left when she says, “I help my husband in his business and I do more also for myself.”  Here she is showing signs of becoming more independent and less reliant on her husband, slowly distancing herself from the traditions of the old country where, no doubt, women are expected to be submissive to and dependent on their husbands.  (Her husband, Rudi, seems to acknowledge this gradual desire for independence a little when he offers to have someone come in to substitute for them if they are late returning from their lesson – p31)  However, though she sets goals, her aspirations are modest.  In this respect she is coming to terms with being an immigrant and adjusting to American life rather than pursuing some lofty vision.  William derides this lofty vision when he quips in English, “You now member in good station… of the promised future.”  He mocks Mrs. Hamma and her American propaganda, innocent though she is, because he too believes that, though they may improve their station in life, the “promised future” is not as grandiose as it is made out to be.  Their goals are more rooted in a modest and realistic hopefulness, a downgrade from the lofty visions espoused by all the Uncle Sams.  The same is true in “Going Home: Brooklyn Revisited.”  When the author tries to convince Johnny G. to try out for the movies he says, “’You think I could be somebody?” incredulous to the idea of being able to do more than running a pizza parlor.  She further illustrates this  gap between the American Dream rhetoric and the realistic situations of immigrants when she quotes her former principal: “’That is America’s promise to you.  The dreams you dream, the hopes you have for yourself and for others, will be realized…,’” followed by her own comment, “Tell it to Bensonhurst,” as if to say that these dreams are not so easily realized and may not be available to everyone in the same way, thus distinguishing the illustrious illusions of the American Dream from the realistic plight of the immigrant.

            This disillusionment of the American Dream is most often attributed to the fastidious ways of the dominant American culture and the struggle for the immigrant to acculturate themselves to this culture.  In “Soap and Water” the author faces a laborious struggle to achieve the self expression that she desires, working eight hours a day for six years and attending a college that turns out to be a colossal disappointment.  The irony of her rejection for a diploma because of her lack of cleanliness is that she must sacrifice her own cleanliness to work long hours dedicated to keeping people of the dominant culture clean, the people who are “the agents of clean society, delegated to judge who is fit and who is unfit to teach.”  Again, the American Dream seems illusory, and in this case it is directly at the hands of the dominant culture and, what seems like to Yezierska at the time, their impossible standards.  It almost reaches the point of seeming like a conspiratorial cycle when she has to settle for a job that doesn’t afford her the opportunity to even buy better clothes so she can have the appearance of cleanliness to get a better job, perpetuating her lowly station in life.  One would hardly expect, in a country where universal opportunity is so ubiquitously advocated, that opportunity would be so hindered by the same dominant culture that spouts out these beliefs.  For a free nation, the United States is perceived as a very restrictive society, which makes it hard, even for someone who tries, to assimilate.  A hypocritical dominant culture is also seen in “In the American Society” when the Chang family, successful in their economic assimilation, make a move to assimilate culturally.  They are faced with the dark side of a dominant culture that was at first alluring.  Mr. Chang, after giving in to his family and even buying a suit to make an impression on the “clean society” of the country club, completely rejects them, when faced with the insolence of Jeremy.  He does not want his family to acculturate into a culture that puts on the pretense of cleanliness and class but does not respect their dignity.

            A more complicated and much more painful experience with the dominant culture is that of the minority groups, particularly the African-Americans and the American Indians.  This is an unwilling group in that they have not chosen to take part in the building of America but were forced to do so at the expens of the American Indian land and way of life and the freedom of African-Americans.  So, where the immigrant has a willingness to partake in the social contract, the minority reject this contract and present their view of a separate social contract in which the dominant culture must treat them with equality while they maintain their own culture.  This preservation of their own culture is point of great sensitivity as seen in the excerpt from No Name in the Street, in which Baldwin shows despair when realizing that his friend envies the ease of his successful and wealthy life but does not understand the struggle that Baldwin and King were fighting for.  Clearly he sees his friend as one of the people he must love “while trying to protect oneself against the disasters they’ve become.”  His friend’s dissent against Baldwin’s view on the war in Vietnam is seen as disloyal because he is supporting the dominant culture’s unjust role in a conflict that is further damaging to the cause of the African-American.  On the American-Indian side a somewhat similar indifference to the dominant culture as in “The Man to Send Rain Clouds.”  When burying their grandfather they make sure to honor the traditions of burial as their culture sees fit – the feather in his hair, the paint on his face, and some water to quench his thirst in the afterlife which will hopefully send them rain.  However, Leon, at the bidding of his wife, goes to the priest, a father of the imposing dominant culture there, to appropriate some holy water.  He has no intentions of it signifying anything Catholic, but rather is using it for their own ritual purposes.  His actions may not be defiant of the dominant culture, but they are hardly condescending.

            Though on the surface it may seem like the refusal to assimilate is one of total resentment, it is not so.  The struggle for the minority is not one of mere resentment, lest all African-Americans and American Indians would appear to be wallowing in self-pity.  Rather, there is a sense of pride and duty to maintain a threatened culture and way of life that might otherwise be lost at the hands of the dominant culture.  Unlike the immigrant, the minority have no place to go back to.  Though they do not take part in the social contract of the American Dream in the same way as immigrants, their dream is based on or rooted in the American Dream, as Martin Luther King says.  They first desire equality as a prerequisite to gaining the opportunity for financial success.  In this way they would not have to give up their identity as minorities and they could still succeed in America without the condition of assimilating. 

            Another group that might feel as if they have no home to go back to, or rather have an ambivalent sense of national identity, is the New World Immigrant.  The immigrants and model minorities may be at peace with a new acculturated identity as an American.  The minority may find comfort in retaining a defined, if insular, culture.  From coming to America for opportunity to striving to maintain a culture despite the dominant culture, the New World Immigrant tends to share aspects from each of these two groups culminating in a mixed identity.  Tito’s father Senor Martinez in “El Patron” shows a type of ambivalence when his son defies him by not going to war in the Middle East.  Tito, a child of immigrants, is a very acculturated young man – he attends an American university, he protests along with many other young Americans of his day, and he loves his fast food.  He has a very American, if liberal, point of view when considering how to stand up and be a man.  His father’s idea of being a man consists of fighting for one’s country and maintaining a narrow sense of patriotism that is, no doubt, a traditional view held over from the old country.  Senor Martinez has to come to terms with the fact that his son is becoming more acculturated and identifying himself with an American, albeit liberal, sense of patriotism, that of standing up to the government when conscience demands it, rather than an absolutist sense of patriotism that is held over from traditional views, or the “el patron” hierarchy.  While he holds to his traditional beliefs he still takes proudly takes advantage of the American Dream.  June Jordan also experiences a confusion of identity as a child of Jamaican immigrants in “Report From the Bahamas.  On her vacation she is unable to identify herself with the Jamaicans who are waiting on her because she is removed from their culture.  Yet in America, the place where she grew up, she also finds it very difficult to completely identify with people.  As the essay progresses, she finds that race, then gender, then ethnicity all fall short of ways or reasons to identify deeply with someone.  Though she is making the universal claim that needs draw people together in deep ways that transcend race, gender and ethnicity, her identity as a female Bahamian immigrant indubitably plays a large part in this confusion.  She is well assimilated as she has a job and is able to travel, and even though she has a “cause,” as the white housewife put it, she doesn’t seem to be experiencing a great amount of discrimination, yet there is a sense of displacement.  Despite the confusion it leads her to a poignant truth that transcends the color code – that there is something deeper that people identify in each other.

            It is not new to me that America is a multicultural nation, but by studying these narratives I have found that there are many more facets in this multicultural society.  I have always thought that the American Dream was corrupt but it is important to see the ways in which it is corrupt to different groups, and what people have to give up to hold up their end of the bargain in the social contract.  What makes these distinctions significant is the fact that it illuminates the origin of the attitudes of different people and makes their plight more understandable.  It is easy to say to the African-American that the American Dream is just as much his as it is anyone else’s when you don’t understand that what is keeping them from attaining this may go deeper than just a choice to remain complacent.  Though the immigrant experience may be changing with the onset of global communication and easy access to travel, all of the hopes and dreams and walls and frustrations are still there and it is inspiring as well as heartbreaking to read the diverse narratives of these people.