Thursday, 27 September: Mexican Americans: Immigrant / American Dream story, or Minority?

·        Text-objective discussion leader: Lindsey Kerckhoff

Text-Discussion: from Hunger of Memory

Objective 3: To compare and contrast the immigrant narrative with the minority narrative – or American dream versus American nightmare:

• “New World Immigrants,” including Mexican Americans, other Latinos, and Afro-Caribbeans, may create an identity somewhere between the immigrant and minority patterns.
• In contrast to ideal immigrants’ commitment to American national identity and opportunity, New-World immigrants may stay loyal to their nearby home countries and remember historical resentments toward the American culture and nation.
• Mexican American immigrant experiences and identities relative to the USA are unique in ways that may make them more ambivalent regarding assimilation to the dominant American culture. Mexican immigration is unique in scale. Assimilation proceeds, but maybe at a slower pace.

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

• The biculturalism and bilingualism of “New Immigrants” may contribute to or reflect an emerging global identity in which human beings are less defined or restricted by nationality.

The Text

“My mother laughed somewhere behind me.  (She said that her children didn’t want to practice “our Spanish” after they started going to school.)”  (230)

The Visitor from San Francisco: “I’d giggle, hoping to deflate the tension between us, pretending that I hadn’t seen the glittering scorn in his glance.” (230)

“They seem to think that Spanish was the only language we could use, that Spanish alone permitted our close association. […] For my part, I felt that I had somehow committed a sin of betrayal by learning English.  But Betrayal against whom?  Not the visitors to the house exactly.  No, I felt I had betrayed my immediate family.”  (231)

“An Hispanic-American writer tells me, “I will never give up my family language; I would as soon give up my soul.”  Thus he holds to his chests a skein of words, as though it were the source of his family ties.  He credits to language what he should credit to family members.  A convenient mistake.  For as long as he holds on to words, he can ignore how much else has changed in his life.” (234)

Questions

1. Richard Rodriguez thought he was betraying his family by learning English.  Do you think it is harder for the generations that are born in America to find their identity?

2.  Why do you think language is so important to Immigrants?  Is it to separate them from everyone else or is it because it gives them something to hold on to their culture?