Thursday, 4 October: Other Hispanic Americans: Immigrant / American Dream story, or Minority? Junot Diaz, "How to Date a Browngirl . . . “ (IA 276-279); Oscar Hijuelos, “Visitors, 1965” (IA 310-325) Judith Ortiz Cofer, "Silent Dancing" [handout]

·        Dominant culture moment: Alana Elkins

Objective 4: To Identify the “ Dominant Culture ”

"Silent Dancing"

by Judith Ortiz Cofer

Interpreted by Alana Elkins

As I discuss this reading selection take note of the transitions the character make in their journey of assimilation, and for some of the characters it's acculturation.

 “ It became my father’s obsession to get out of the barrio, and thus we were never permitted to form bonds with the place or the people who lived there. Yet El building was a comfort to my mother, who never got over yearning for la isla. She felt surrounded by her language: the walls were thin, and voices speaking Spanish and arguing in Spanish could be heard all day. Salsas blasted out of radios.

From the very beginning, the father was willing to assimilate 100%. The primary reason they were even living in an “immigrant complex” is because other places were resistant to the new “ human flood”.

“My mother insisted that she only cook with products whose labels she could read.”

Her yearning to be in a culture of which she was more familiar with tormented the mother. I feel the children started out with her same attitude, because that’s who they were with all the time.

“ Yet Father did his best to make out “assimilation” painless. I can still see him carrying a real Christmas tree up several flights of stairs to our apartment…. He carried it formally as if it were a flag in a parade.”

When I read this, the quote really made an impact for some reason, I felt this became the “TRANSITION POINT” for the family. I feel the father had very good intentions, he wanted his children to embrace the US’s dominant culture so that they will less likely be held back due to race.

“ The only thing his money could buy us was a place to live away from the barrio – his greatest wish, Mother’s greatest fear.”

Did the father not make enough? Or were banks resistant to finance some one of his race? Or something else?  HMMMM??

“ Mother bought all our cloths at Penney’s and Sears and she liked to buy her dresses at women’s specialty shops like Lerner’s and Diana’s. At some point we’d go into Woolworth’s and sit at the soda fountain to eat.” …. On New Year’s Eve we were dressed up like the models in the Sear’s catalogue. ….

Just like a woman, her place to assimilate was with FASHION!  This was a way she could conform and not feel like she is abandoning her heritage.

After a character tells her she is corrupted…her response…

“ I ‘m an American woman, and I will do as I please. I can type faster than any in my senior class at central high, and I’m going to be a secretary to a lawyer when I graduate. I can pass for an American girl anywhere – I’ve tried it. At least for Italian, anyway – I never speak Spanish in public… My life is going to be different. I have an American boyfriend… If I marry him, even my name will be American. I hate rice and beans – that’s what make women fat.”

Questions:

Take notice, she says she IS American in one sentence then says I CAN PASS for an American. Why do you suppose she says that?

Her goals in life are so “typical”, and correlate with the childhood shows she watched.

What are your views of the very last portion of the story, and its relevance to the dominant culture?? The home done abortion, and how she was sent “away”.