Essay Exam : Awareness of Boundaries

            As an infant, you begin life hearing tales of the past, your relatives’ exploits, your ancestors’ dreams and goals, and everything else your parents and others in the community believe is necessary for your development.  Immigrant and minority narratives are no different.  We spend our lives questing for knowledge, and literature gives us access to experiences many of us would never have or know about otherwise.  I took this class with the expectation of gathering material to use in my future classrooms, and I have gained a broad outlook on the lives of the people around me in the process.  Growing up in an ethnically and culturally divided environment has made me aware of discrimination and the strength of dominant culture beliefs, but immigrant and minority narratives have opened my eyes much more to the obstacles my cultural counterparts have placed in the way of those who would look in my homeland for a dream they have put more faith in than I have had in anything my entire life. 

            In accordance with objective one, the immigrant narrative is fundamental to understanding American culture, and, as such, the American Dream fuels the movement of American society.  There are so many stories of immigrants coming to America to build better lives that one would assume that dream is a distinct possibility rather than a distant myth attainable by the few that can naturally assimilate into the dominant culture.  Stories such as “In the Land of the Free,” by Sui Sin Far, and “In the American Society,” by Gish Jen, show the disenchantment more readily available upon reaching and settling upon our shores.  With dreams of rejoining her husband and living in wealth and happy prosperity, Lae Choo, in “In the Land of the Free,” is robbed of her infant son as soon as she steps off the boat to enter America because he does not have the appropriate papers to enter the United States.  After a harrowing quest to get the boy back involving bribing officials, theft of the family’s most precious jewels, and downright abuse from the dominant culture, the boy has no memory of his mother.  Upon stretching her arms out to take him in, the boy “tried to hide himself in the folds of the white woman’s skirt.”  In essence, he is a product of the dominant culture’s forceful denouncement of anything outside the norm taking hold in America despite the multiethnic comprisal of this country.  Regardless of the parents’ attempt to walk the New World path and ascend to the American Dream sector of society, they are effectively barred from their aspirations by the destruction of the mother and son relationship and their connection to Old World ways. 

            In a similar manner, the father in “In the American Society” goes through the same problems.  His adherence to Old World traditions and reluctance to fully assimilate to new world practices holds him back from gaining the American Dream.  He attempts to recreate the Old World by giving extra money to his employees and demanding extra services of them in return which works well for awhile.  Regardless, the dominant culture steps in to rip the employees from him for breaking immigration laws, the employees run upon being bailed out of jail, and the father is further embarrassed by a white man attempting to force his compliance with changing his shirt.  In contrast to the crushing disappointment in America evident in “Land of the Free,” the father fights against the betrayal and embarrassment shoved on him by the dominant culture and proves to his children by throwing his jacket in the pool that they can be in American society without sacrificing their beliefs. 

            It would seem, between objectives one and two, it is necessary to read literature such as this to understand how generations after the original immigrants to America tend to assimilate into the dominant culture rather than hold onto Old World beliefs and suffer the consequences of such.  In comparison, minority literature introduces similar consequences to people who cannot or do not assimilate into the dominant culture.  When Albertine and Uncle Lawrence, in “American Horse,” do not raise her son according to the dominant culture’s expectations, the police and a social worker (two of which are white) come to take the boy away, to “salvage him” from the imposed poverty the Native Americans live in.  In this instance, “salvage” stands in for assimilate, as the social worker takes the boy away from his people and into the white world.  In connection to the immigrant narrative, no matter how Albertine fights to hold on to her traditions and her son, she is cast into the dirt by the dominant culture.  How else can the boy, paralleling second generation immigrants, live his life but to assimilate to the dominant culture?  He witnesses its inexorable domination over his mother, whom he believed to be invincible, and seemingly has no other choice but to go along with the salvaging. 

            In contrast, multicultural narratives can provide hope for a better internal life.  Patricia Smith, in “Blonde White Women,” watches the women of the dominant culture, in which she can never fully assimilate due to skin color, show their disdain of her presence.  All of her life, according to the poem, she strove to be the paragon of American beauty rather than identifying herself as beautiful until she reaches adulthood.  In comparison with the father in “American Society,” Smith, as an adult, denies the dominant culture the pleasure of beating her down with their snarls and holds her head up as an equal.  Similarly, June Jordan, in “Report from the Bahamas,” provides hope as well when she ends her story speaking of the connections made between herself as a Jamaican, an Irish woman named Cathy, and a Black South African named Sokutu over the abuse Sokutu suffered at the hands of her husband.  Though Jordan suffers isolation from the dominant culture in a sense by needing financial aid for her son’s education and having black skin, she portrays a sense of belonging to the human race as more important than assimilation when she speaks of the white woman for whom she cannot feel envy. 

In accordance with objective three, Jordan does not fit in the dominant American society, but her minority status pushes her to work harder to make more for herself.  In a sense, she is pursuing and reaching the American Dream much easier, despite absolute evidence of inability to assimilate due to the color code, than most of the immigrant literature we have read.  In all of the other immigrant narratives I have used here, the quest for freedom and equality of the American Dream turned into the American Nightmare in the sense that none of the immigrants are able to peacefully carry out their lives on American soil.  “Silent Dancing” has to be the ultimate immigrant narrative portraying the discrimination and marginalization most first generation and many second generation immigrants suffer.  As the father attempts to assimilate his family into American life and pursue the American dream by collecting the material wealth available to socially acceptable immigrants (looks European), the dominant culture keeps him locked down in the barrio since his family and last name cannot pass as part of the controlling force in this land.  While he pursues his dream financially, the narrator’s cousin pursues her American Dream of assimilation on her back only to find that she must be shipped back to the Old World for her indiscretion and the disdain of her white lover after she becomes pregnant with his child and he will not leave his beautiful, natural blonde wife.

After so much hope bleeds out between the lines of immigrant narratives, it is disturbing to see the loss and trauma these people have to go through in their quest to reach the American Dream that would be better recognized as a myth.  Immigrant and minority narratives join together as all are marginalized by the dominant culture unless they can hide their true origin and are willing to let go of their heritage.  I am brought back to the idea of listening to tales and stories from infancy in order to develop an appropriate outlook on life, and I realize these narratives must be shared.  The immigrant narrative is a crucial addition to the realm of multicultural literature in the sense that the dominant culture must be curbed and made to realize the pain and desolation brought on those who would embrace this nation as their own and help our society to flourish.

[Cheryl]