America has long since been referred to as the land of freedom and opportunity. Our country was viewed by our founding fathers as a place of new beginnings and change where one might escape religious persecution and embrace opportunity. Such promises of change and hopes of opportunity have historically compelled individuals from all regions of the world and all ethnic backgrounds to leave the old world behind and journey to America to make a new start. Thus, America is today and always has been a nation founded on and comprised largely of immigrants. With so many men and women journeying to America throughout history from various lands comes numerous accounts and individual stories of adventure, struggle, possibility, prosperity, defeat and success. Collectively, these stories, or narratives, paint the history of a nation and can be categorized as immigrant narratives, or American immigrant narratives.

In a literary sense, these immigrant narratives convey often entertaining and emotional accounts of the individual immigrant’s journey, adversities and eventual success or fate, usually mirroring “the American Dream” of rags to riches and upward social mobility. Yet, in cultural terms, these accounts serve more importantly as a means to reflect on and understand our nation’s cultural history by educating ourselves as to the desires, motivations and perceptions of the many diverse groups of people who immigrated to and now inhabit our country. In examining the American immigrant narrative as the typical illustration of American culture, however, we must also recognize such non-traditional examples of America’s multicultural identity as are represented by the minority narrative, which unlike the immigrant story of “the American Dream,” may speak of oppression and exploitation rather than opportunity. In analyzing these various narratives we can come to better understand the cultural identity of America as they express not only the personal views and experiences of an individual American, but also intimate the tale of America as a whole with all its cultural diversity.

The typical immigrant narrative details the plight of the American immigrant as representative of the foundation of American society. This narrative closely parallels the age old idea of “the American Dream” where individuals can emerge from poverty and adversity by means of hard work and/or education and enjoy a prosperous, fulfilling existence. Immigrants such as these often quickly lose their ethnic identity by intermarrying and learning to speak English. Additionally, many “ideal immigrants” will pursue economic and educational opportunities. The immigrant narrative is identified by five basic stages which include first, leaving the old world, second, journeying to America, third, experiencing shock, resistance, exploitation and discrimination, fourth, assimilating to the dominant American culture and losing one’s ethnic identity and finally, rediscovering one’s ethnic identity.

Nicholasa Mohr’s “The English Lesson” is one immigrant narrative which accurately portrays those American immigrants who strive to achieve “the American Dream” by obtaining an education. The narrative tells of a diverse group of immigrants who attend night school to learn English. Among these immigrants’ aspirations are to “learn to speak and read English very good. To get a better job,” and “to improve [their] position […] in this country” (24). The main goal of each student enrolled in the English course is to learn to speak the common language (one of the patterns laid out in course objective 2) and because the students are all attending school, they somewhat fit the pattern of the “ideal immigrant” who takes advantage of educational opportunities. Additionally, many of the students admit that they desire to learn English in order to obtain better jobs and earn more money, so they also fit the “ideal immigrant” pattern of pursuing economic opportunities. This particular narrative is set during stage four of the stages of the immigrant narrative; the students are all assimilating to the dominant culture of America and rejecting (at least partially) their own ethnic identity by learning the language.

Another immigrant narrative that employs education as a means to economic advancement is Anzia Yezierska’s “Soap and Water.” In addition to fitting the pattern of the immigrant seeking educational opportunity as a means to economic advancement, this narrative also touches on “the American Dream” (objective 1) and the idea that if you work extremely hard, you will eventually succeed. The protagonist of this narrative attends college in the evenings after having slaved to earn her means of subsistence in a laundry each day only to be “condemned […] as unfit to be a teacher, because of [her] appearance” (106). Stages three and four of the immigrant narrative are present in “Soap and Water” as the protagonist first experiences discrimination in her encounters with Dean Whiteside and after college when “other agents of clean society, who had the power of giving or withholding the positions [she] sought” (108) denied her work as a teacher. Later, she sings a “song of new life: ‘America! I found America,’” (110) once she finally assimilates to the dominant American culture and is “reborn.”

Unlike immigrants, who choose to journey to the United States in search of opportunity, minorities represent a group of people who were involuntary participants in initially coming to America. The two major minority groups who remain the least assimilated in modern American society are Native Americans and African Americans. As we know, Native Americans inhabited the lands that are now this nation long before America was ever established and therefore, American Indians had no voice in whether or not they desired to be a part of American culture. Similarly, African Americans originally sailed to America bound by the chains of slavery with no prospect whatsoever of the opportunity that we so generally associate with “the land of the free.” Because Native and African Americans were not truly American immigrants, they maintain a different outlook regarding American culture, may view America as discriminatory, and usually retain their ethnic identity as a separate group rather than assimilating.

Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Lesson” teaches the reality that, where minorities are concerned, all Americans were not created equal. The protagonist of this minority narrative asks, “Who are these people that spend that much for performing clowns and $1,000 for toy sailboats? What kinda work do they do and how they live and how come we ain’t in on it?” (151). She cannot believe that anyone could spend so much on a toy; but if some Americans are able to buy such expensive toys, she wants to know what type of job they have that allows them to do so, and more importantly, why she is not in on it. We get the impression that the protagonist and her friends have been terribly excluded from something. They are left out of the dominant American culture in this narrative as they face lack of opportunity (in “the land of opportunity”) and poverty. Just like immigration, “the American Dream” does not apply to the minority – the minority arrived in America under different circumstances and they live by different means. Also evidenced by the narrative is the pattern that minorities adhere to of maintaining their ethnic identity. Because they are excluded from opportunity, etc., the minority group tends to resist conformity; the children in this story all live in an African American neighborhood, have black friends and generally do not interact outside of their ethnic group. The African American individual’s unwillingness to assimilate is also evidenced by Patricia Smith’s “Blonde White Woman” when the speaker asserts that she “could not have been blacker / than [she] was at that moment” (78). In acknowledging her blackness, the speaker rejects the desire that she has harbored to emulate the white woman of the dominant culture and accepts her identity.

While minority narratives need not always exist in immigrant narratives, often times these two stories overlap and elements of the minority narrative can be found within the immigrant narrative. One such “overlapping” narrative can be found with Edwidge Danticat’s “Children of the Sea.” Danticat’s story fits the pattern of the immigrant narrative in that the narrator does attempt to immigrate to America. Yet, it also resembles the minority experience that African Americans face in America because of “the color code,” which holds that Western civilization transfers traditional values associated with light and dark to people of light and dark color, roughly equating white with good and dark with evil. The narrator writes: “The faces around me are showing their first charcoal layer of sunburn. ‘Now we will never be mistaken for Cubans’ one man said. Even though some of the Cubans are black too. The man said he was once on a boat with a group of Cubans. His boat had stopped to pick up the Cubans on an island off the Bahamas. When the Coast Guard came for them, they took the Cubans to Miami and sent him back to Haiti” (101). This passage implies that Haitian immigrants are discriminated against due to the often dark color of their skin and demonstrates how the Afro-Caribbean immigrant experience may be compromised by an association with the African American minority (objective 3).

Another narrative containing both immigrant and minority elements can be found with Junot Diaz’s “How to Date a Browngirl…” The protagonist of this narrative clearly identifies with the minority as he “clear[s] the government cheese from the refrigerator” (277). Government funded assistance is often associated with the minority experience due to the minority’s lack of opportunity in America and is something shameful that must be hidden. But later, the narrator identifies with the immigrant experience as he states, “The white ones are the ones you want the most…” (277). Unlike members of the minority culture who tend not to intermarry and give up their ethnic identity, the narrator aspires to marry (or at least encounter) a white woman more than a woman of any other race. The white woman is representative of America’s dominant culture and the narrator’s desire for her symbolizes his desire to assimilate to the dominant culture. 

It seems natural to classify America as a multicultural nation simply due to the fact that the United States has always been a nation comprised of immigrants from varying cultural backgrounds. In analyzing the immigrant narrative, however, by tracking the progression of immigrants through defined stages and evaluating them according to the criteria set forth in this class, we can begin to make informed observations regarding the assimilation habits of various ethnic groups. Additionally, by studying the history and dynamics of minority cultures in America we come to understand what sets minorities apart from American immigrants and the dominant culture and can appreciate the reasons for their continued diversity and adherence to their heritage.

[Rhonda]