Thursday, 11 October: Caribbean Immigrants: Minorities or Immigrants?

·        Poetry reader: Rita Zelaya

Poem: “From an Island You Cannot Name” UA 139

From An Island You Cannot Name

By Martin Espada

Espada, who also wrote "Coca-Cola and Coco Frio," was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1957. He is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently, The Republic of Poetry (2006) and Alabanza: New and Selected Poems (1982-2002). Espada is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he teaches creative writing and Latino poetry.

Interesting Note: His father, a dark skinned Puerto Rican experienced something similar to what the father in this poem experiences. While visiting the South in the 1960s, he boarded a bus and sat in a front seat, he was asked to move to the back and refused. The incident resulted in an arrest and a seven day jail sentence. 

http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/1594/prmID/337

Read Poem

Question: How does the Afro-Caribbean narrative vary from the immigrant narrative? How is it that they end up “in-between” immigrant and minority status?

Take it off! - He unequivocally refuses the label of “minority.” He views himself as an immigrant, trying to achieve his American Dream. The social contract that he subscribed to is different from that of the minorities.

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

In the dayroom of the VA hospital - He came to America voluntarily, in search of the American Dream. He’s hurt and angry that the country he fought for will not recognize this difference. Overlap: Immigrants may suffer discrimination and marginalization by the dominant culture on account of racial and cultural differences.

Stage 4 of Immigrant Narrative: His daughter has assimilated enough to understand why the dominant culture does not make a distinction. After all, her father’s physical appearance is without a doubt of African descent.

From an island you cannot name - Stage 4 of Immigrant Narrative: She has assimilated so completely that she has no ties to the Old World.

Objective 6: To contrast the “New Immigrant Model” with the “Old Immigrant Model”

You gasp tears – Overlap: She is experiencing discrimination and marginalization by the dominant culture and minorities on account of physical appearance. The dominant culture will not allow her full assimilation, because of her race. Perhaps she is grieving for the loss of her identity. She is now in an in-between stage, because she has no ties to the Old World nor will she be fully assimilated in the New World.

Trying to explain – implies she’s weary of explaining. She finally understood her father’s dilemma.

New World Immigrants like Afro-Caribbeans often create an identity somewhere between the immigrant and minority patterns. Their immigrant experience is compromised by genetic or color-based association with the African-American minority. Afro-Caribbeans are accustomed to being a majority culture and therefore cultivate more demanding public identities and attitudes. In other words, they will resist the minority label.

The reality is that the history of slavery, the biological fact of race can divert an individual’s own freely-chosen path as an immigrant. They feel pressure from whites and blacks and others to conform to the minority tradition. Their physical appearance mixes the Afro-Caribbean immigrant story with the minority story.

Why does her father reject the minority label?

Why did Martin Espada start the poem with “Thirty years ago?”

Why does she gasp tears?

What label would best apply to the people in this poem?