Kenneth Fisher

6/18/2006

Part 1: Web-Review (started 1:30pm / Finished: 2: 15pm)

Source #1: http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4333/models/
2006/midterm/mt06esssampjc.htm

Author: JC

Class Session: Spring 2006

            The first submission I’ve reviewed has very powerfully and clearly defined the stages of the immigrant narrative.  Student JC from spring 2006 identifies the stages of immigration as: leaving the home country (shedding the old world), arrival into the new world (cultural shock), assimilation into the dominant culture (usually aided by education) and the final step is rediscovery / re-assertion of the old world into the life of the immigrant. This model can be applied to every immigrant story studied thus far in the course, though not all stories we’ve read actively portrays each and every step of this process.  In contrast, most of the stories we’ve read center on a particular leg of this outline.

Source #2: http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4333/models/
2006/midterm/mt06esssampro.htm

Author: RO

Class Session: Spring 2006

            This submission begins by talking about society’s inability to tell immigrants from minorities.  Its true, as the author states, that the two categories mirror each other to a point that without proper education, their differences are invisible.  I’ve found in this submission, the true spirit of the course, to gain the ability to see beyond the commonalities of the terms and see for myself the unique situations that immigrants and minorities are forced to face.  This isn’t a small feat, considering I’ve grown up as an active participant of the dominant culture - after all, as a white male who is more dominant than I?   Also, I enjoy the author’s view point on Mexican American’s.  The author points out their ambivalent status, since part of their country now belongs to the United States, some Mexican Americans didn’t migrate here, but we suddenly inside the United States after a sudden change in federal borders.

Source #2: http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4333/models/
2002/midterm/mt02ess1fnf.htm

Author: CR

Class Session: Spring 2002

            Spring 2002’s midterm offers a different side of the course that I’ve missed out on thus far in the course.  The attention to the non-fiction and fictional threads weaving themselves together in the stories is something that I’ve felt I’ve been attentive to, but not on a conscious level.  I’ve known that some of the experiences we’ve been reading about are based on true and real life situations, and thus contain some auto-biographical or biographical attributes to them, but I’ve been thinking of this all as fiction none the less.  I know, and felt I have since the course began, that the tragic parts of the stories are written because they’ve happened to someone, somewhere.  These stories become more striking as we stop to consider the tragic histories of some of our immigrant citizens.  I couldn’t imagine living in a country that took my child upon arrival, as in Sui Sin Far’s In the Land of the Free, or being forced into a situation where I know my situation is being exploited by others, as in America is in the Heart by Bulosan.