Thursday, 15 June 2006: Caribbean Immigrants: Minorities or Immigrants?

Text-objective discussion leader: Katherine Rearick

“Children of the Sea” by Edwidge Danticat

OBJECTIVE 2. Basic stages of the immigrant narrative, especially Stage 1, the journey (“leaving the Old World”). In the case of this example, however, the narrative is not allowed to move beyond this stage…kind of a skewed version of the journey narrative.

OBJECTIVE 3. American Dream versus American Nightmare

I don’t know how long we’ll be at sea. There are thirty-six other deserting souls on this little boat with me…

Maybe it’s like you’ve always said. I imagine too much. I am afraid I am going to start having nightmares once we get deep at sea. I really hate having the sun in my face all day long. If you see me again, I’ll be so dark (98).

Most of the other people on the boat are much older than I am. I have heard that a lot of these boats have young children on board. I am glad this one does not. I think it would break my heart watching some little boy or girl every day on this sea, looking into their empty faces to remind me of the hopelessness of the future in our country. It’s hard enough with the adults. It’s hard enough for me (99).

[The Protestants on this boat] say the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. I have never been given very much. What was there to take away (100)?

I go to them now as though it was always meant to be, as though the very day my mother birthed me, she had chosen me to live life eternal, among the children of the deep blue sea, those who have escaped the chains of slavery to form a world beneath the heavens and the blood-drenched earth where you live (111).

This story differs from any other immigrant or minority narrative we have read in that the “immigrant” in the story does not complete his journey to the U.S. He is a political refugee who endured horror in his homeland only to die in his effort to escape. Considering that death has been a very real possibility for many Haitians (and Cubans) who have come here seeking political asylum, how might that have affected their view of the immigrant experience? Do you think this has affected the way they and other refugees have positioned themselves within American society? Does their experience affect the way dominant society perceives them—more as immigrants, or minorities?  

QUESTION: What is the vision of America held by the characters in this story? Is America even significant in this story? If it is, how? If not, how can this story still be an immigrant or minority narrative according to the terms we have discussed in this class?

“To Da-Duh, In Memorium” by Paule Marshall

OBJECTIVE 2. To chart the dynamics, variations, and stages of the immigrant narrative.

• Narrator or viewpoint: Who writes the immigrant narrative?
• Setting: Where does the immigrant narrative take place?

…standing there waiting for her with my mother and sister I was still somewhat blinded from the sheen of tropical sunlight on the water of the bay which we had just crossed in the landing boat, leaving behind us the ship that had brought us from New York lying in the offing. Besides, being only nine years of age at the time and knowing nothing of islands I was busy attending to the alien sights and sounds of Barbados, the unfamiliar smells (368).

We made our way slowly through Bridgetown’s clogged streets, part of a funereal procession of cars and open-sided buses, bicycles and donkey carts. The dim little limestone shops and offices along the way marched with us, at the same mournful pace, toward the same grave ceremony—(370)

I longed then for the familiar: the street in Brooklyn where I lived, for my father who had refused to accompany us (“Blowing out good money on foolishness,” he had said of the trip), for a game of tag under the chestnut tree outside our aging brownstone house (371).

…as [my grandmother] stared at me, seeing not me but the building that was taller than the highest hill she knew, the small stubborn light in her eyes…began to fail. Finally, with a vague gesture that even in the midst of her defeat tried to dismiss me and my world, she turned and started back through the gully, walking slowly…while I followed triumphant yet strangely saddened behind (375).

QUESTION: This piece (as well as June Jordan’s “Report from the Bahamas) takes place in the narrator’s homeland as opposed to America. These stories are also narrated by the assimilated children of immigrants, instead of the immigrants themselves. The effect is that the reader becomes a third party, a witness to the narrator examining her own personal history and cultural background. What is the significance of the immigrant or minority story when it is told in this way? In other words, why do you think these authors chose to tell their stories in this way?

“Report from the Bahamas” by June Jordan

OBJECTIVE 3. To compare and contrast the immigrant narrative with the minority narrative—or, American Dream versus American Nightmare:

• The “Color Code”
• “social contract”

From the pamphlet on Bahamian history she finds in her hotel room:

 New World History begins on the same day modern Bahamian history begins—October 12, 1492. That’s when Columbus first stepped ashore…British influence came first…After the Revolutions, American Loyalists…settled in the Bahamas. Confederate blockade-runners used the island…and after the War, a number of Southerners moved to the Bahamas…(306).

Her reaction to this pamphlet:

There it is again…nobody saying one word about the Bahamian people, the Black peoples, to whom the only thing new in their island world was this weird succession of crude intruders and its colonial consequences…This is my consciousness of race…Neither this hotel nor the British nor the long ago Italians or the white Delta airline pilots belong here, of course…And so it continues, this weird succession of crude intruders that, now, includes me and my brothers and sisters from the North (306).

About her discussion with a white female graduate student who calls Jordan “lucky” because of her minority experiences:

If she believed me lucky to have regular hurdles of discrimination then why shouldn’t I insist that she’s lucky to be a middle-class white WASP female who lives in such well-sanctioned and normative comfort that she even has the luxury to deny the power of privileges that paralyze her life?

And about her inner turmoil regarding a lack of connection with “Olive,” the hotel maid:

I may be one of the monsters she needs to eliminate from her universe and, in a sense, she may be one of the monsters in mine (312).

QUESTIONS: In this essay, June Jordan makes a lot of strong observations on race, class, and gender. How do you think her experiences in America as both a minority (a black woman) and a child of Jamaican immigrants contributed to her experience as a tourist in the Bahamas?

What statements does she make that align her with the immigrant model we have studied? What views does she express that seem more aligned with minority culture? Are there places where the line between the two is blurred?

“The Making of a Writer” by Paule Marshall

OBJECTIVE 3. To compare and contrast the immigrant narrative with the minority narrative—or, the American Dream versus the American Nightmare

• “Social Contract”—minorities may speak of exploitation rather than opportunity
• Minorities often maintain distinct communities.
• “New World immigrants,” in particular, may have an identity somewhere between the immigrant and minority patterns.
• New World immigrants may remain loyal to home countries.
• For Afro-Caribbeans, the immigrant experience may be compromised by genetic or color-based association with the African American minority.

            Then there was home. They reminisced often and at length about home. The old country. Barbados—or Bimshire, as they affectionately called it. The little Caribbean island in the sun they loved but had to leave. “Poor—poor but sweet” was the way they remembered it.

            And naturally they discussed their adopted home. America came in for both good and bad marks. They lashed out at the racism they encountered…

            Yet although they caught H in “this man country,” as they called America, it was nonetheless a place where “you could at least see your way to make dollar.” That much they acknowledged. They might even one day accumulate enough dollars, with both them and their husbands working, to buy the brownstone houses which, like my family, they were only leasing at that period. This was their consuming ambition: to “buy house” and to see the children through (85).

[Speaking their home language] restored them to a sense of themselves and reaffirmed their self-worth. Through language they were able to overcome the humiliations of the work day…

            ..since language was the only vehicle readily available to them they made it an art form that—in keeping with the African tradition in which art and life are one—was an integral part of their lives.

            And their talk was a refuge. They never really ceased being baffled and overwhelmed by America—its vastness, complexity and power. Its strange customs and laws. At a level beyond words they remained fearful and in awe (85).

QUESTION: In my opinion, this group, more than any other we read about for today, is having more of a minority experience than an immigrant experience. Do you agree? Does their connection to each other through their “home language” mark them as immigrants or minorities?

One other question…Do you think the people in this story see themselves as immigrants first, then minorities; or do you think it’s the other way around?