Jason Collins

American Dream: First Report

Joseph Papaleo

Objective II

The poem by Papaleo incorporates much from the second objective on the immigrant narrative. 

The first stanza of the poem relates to the rejection and stereotypes that people had towards Italian immigrants that settled in New York.  

In the second stanza of the poem the five stages of the immigrant narrative are included.

Stages I and II

Who would have guessed that the end

of these voyages, the agony of steerage,  (leaving the old world, coming to the new)

Stage III

insults from the Yankees, the tenement rooms

without windows, like fish cans,

the penny pinching and fear of the bosses (shock, exploitation, discrimination)

Stage IV and V

would end this way, as well dressed citizens

devoted to the disinfection of our carpets,      (assimilation)

as the culminating dream of Grandpa?

(who liked to spit on floors while he talked)   (reassertion of identity?)

The viewpoint of this poem is that of the second generation born in America as the author alludes to grandpas culminating dream.

Questions:

In the first stanza the author writes:

Momma and sisters kept the commercials going,

to prove we were married in the palaces of soap.

Is this reference to people overcoming stereotypes of Italian immigrants through viewing them on television, or was television used as a way to decipher how to act, how to speak, how to dress, etc.?  Is this similar to the use of cleanliness as in the story Soap and Water?

In the last line of the poem the author told of how grandpa likes to spit on the floor while he talked.  Do you think that this was a show of anger towards the country where he dreamed of a better life for his family only to face hardship and discrimination or was this a sign of anger towards his family for assimilating into American culture and forgetting their heritage?