Dana Kato

June 26, 2008

(Writing: 2-3; 4-5;

Editing: 11:15-11:50)

Midterm Essay:

Chasing the American Dream, Living the “American Nightmare”: Defining the Immigrant and Minority Narrative

The immigrant narrative and all that it represents is not a new story, nor is it unique.  Perhaps as old a story as “Adam and Eve,” the immigrant narrative has been around since man first got up and moved to a new forest, or plain, or valley. And although the names and faces and dates may change, certain elements of the immigrant narrative remain the same. “If we think about it,” says writer Sergio Ramirez, “there are no new stories to tell, no new plots to be invented “(2). In many ways the journey to America is a poor man’s parallel to the Holy Grail tale, with the “American Dream” replacing the elusive chalice.

As has been pointed out by many, America is a nation of immigrants. Unless you are a Native–American, your family had to journey here by boat, plane, bus or foot. My earliest American ancestor, a French Huguenot named Michael Auxier, arrived by boat in Philadelphia in 1742.  He came here most likely for both religious freedom and economic opportunity. He married a German woman and his sons married German women, and it probably took several generations and a few English spouses before English became the family language.  In the same way it took Joseph Papaleo’s family a few generations to assimilate into the mainstream culture. “First nobody liked us; they said we smelled…” (“American Dream: First Report,” UA 88). Like my ancestor, Joseph’s family journeyed here from Europe most likely looking for a better life economically. They came by boat and endured “…the agony of steerage” in order to get here. They must have had to deal with the grief of leaving behind friends, relatives, and the only culture they had ever known. On the other hand, they had dreams (“the culminating dream of Grandpa”) to feed them along the way.  In Sui Sin Far’s narrative “In the Land of the Free,” a young mother tells her baby of the beauty of the American Dream as they arrive in a San Francisco harbor. “See, Little One-the hills in the morning sun. There is thy home for years to come.  It is very beautiful and thou wilt be very happy there” (IA 3).  As Objective 2 supports, the immigrant narrative involves change in the form of a journey, from the Old World to the New (the U.S.), a change that for most immigrants must have been both exciting and frightening.

Once here, however, the focus of the narrative becomes adaptation and survival. In terms plot structure, this might be the complication, as reality sets in and the American Dream turns out to be more out of reach than first thought.  The narrative documents then the struggle of the immigrant to survive not only physically, but mentally, in this strange new world they often know little about.  In Papaleo’s poem, his family faced “the insults of the Yankees, the tenement rooms without windows like fish cans, the penny pinching and fear of the bosses…” (UA  88). It is American culture via the television which helps them bridge a path to becoming”well-dressed citizen[s].”  But at what expense, Papaleo seems to ask.   In “Soap and Water,” a young Russian- Jewish woman “slav[es] in a laundry room from five until eight in the morning,” goes to college during the day, and then goes back to work again.  Ironically, her hard work shows in her physical appearance and because her “… skin looked oily” and her hair and nails appeared “unkempt” and “neglected,” her diploma was to be withheld from her. She ends up obtaining the diploma, yet still cannot get a teaching job, the implication being that society wasn’t ready to accept an educated immigrant.  Despite the hopelessness she felt, “…in the sap and root of [her] soul, burned the deathless faith that America is, must be, somehow, somewhere” (IA 109).  Michael Auxier most likely believed this (although he arrived in a colony, not a nation.) Several decades later his sons and grandsons fought against the British for a piece of this New Land, and despite obstacles which included language barriers, poverty and disease, they stayed and flourished.  

The literature of the immigrant narrative is clearly shaped then by the journey from the Old World to the New, and the shock and disillusionment that often follows. The proud young Chinese mother in “In the Land of the Free” points out the beauty of this New World to her young son, yet is later powerless against the bureaucracy of her new country when it takes away her child. In the end, she gets her child back and most probably lives a better life economically than the life she might have lived in China.  But the time with her child that she loses can never be recovered. In Carlos Bulosan’s American in My Heart he suffered the disillusionment of seeing a relative become morally corrupt, a change he associates with assimilation into American culture.  He prays, “Please, God, don’t change me in America” (VA 73).  The end of Bulosan’s life story seems bittersweet.  Although he ends up acquiring an education and becoming a published writer, he later dies in “poverty and obscurity” (VA  60).  So is the immigrant narrative intertwined with the American Dream narrative?  In terms of most literature written by immigrants, I tend to believe that it is. Although the concept of the American Dream may have different meanings to different people-for some it means political or religious freedom (i.e. the young man in “Children of the Sea”), for others it represents economic potential (such as for most of the immigrants in “the English Lesson”), and for others, it may be just an exciting adventure.  Yet in most immigrant narratives, a goal wrapped up in a glowing glimmer of hope drives them forward in spite of the almost immeasurable odds against them.  Even in the autobiographical Angela’s Ashes, in which desperate poverty causes a young boy and his immigrant family to move back to Ireland, the attraction of the American Dream remains, and the boy returns to America as a young man to try again. The dominant culture hands a social contact to the immigrant, a contract not always honored. But the possibilities of that contract (the American Dream?) may be what drives the immigrant. On the other hand, certain minority groups such as Native-Americans and African-Americans were never even offered the contract, and more importantly, never asked to sign one. The close connection between the immigrant narrative and the American Dream is one of the ways in which the immigrant narrative distinguishes itself from the minority narrative (Obj. 3).

However, one trait which might be found in both the immigrant narrative and the minority narrative is that of resistance to assimilation (Obj. 2). With the immigrant narrative there seems to be a game of tug-of-war going on in terms of dealing with the dominant culture. On the one hand, the immigrant wants to be seen as an American, but on the other, he resents the loss of his own culture. This is especially true for the first and second generations. Richard Rodriquez struggled with this as an American son of Latino parents.  He was “wracked with guilt” because he was embarrassed to speak Spanish in front of his relatives, who referred to him as “pocho,”  a name given to a Mexican-American who had forgotten how to speak his native language  (Rodriquez  29).  However, as assimilation into mainstream culture takes place over time, it may become less of an issue.  But for the minority culture, this resistance may have scarred roots and stronger emotional associations attached. For African-Americans and Native-Americans in particular, two groups who did not immigrate to the United States in search of the American Dream, the resistance is not just to a different culture, but to an oppressor who they eye with suspicion.  The Native-American, who has seen an almost genocidal loss of people and culture, may view assimilation as cultural suicide.  These minority groups often feel their culture has been shut out by the dominant culture and its historical practices of discrimination which continue to fuel suspicion of the dominant culture and its instruments.  Leo Harmony, a Native-American police officer in Louise Ehrich’s narrative, “American Horse” is looked at with contempt by the Native-American woman he is trying to reason with. She sees him as a sell-out, “…a big tan punching bag dummy with his boots full of sand…empty inside, all stale air …” (IA  217). The minority narratives examined in this class felt less hopeful than that of the immigrant narrative; if hope existed, it appeared to be in the strength of the people, and in spite of the strength of the dominant culture, such as in Silko’s short story “The Man to Send Rain Clouds” in which the Native-American family quietly and subtly bury their father (IA 205).

In more recent years, the immigration patterns have included increased numbers of New World immigrants, immigrants from Central and South America, Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Caribbean.  The immigrant narratives of these immigrants may differentiate from that of European and Asian immigrants in that their vision of the American Dream is a little more jaded. Not only are the geographical locations of these countries closer to the U.S., but many of their home countries have had a history of negative political connections with the United States which may effect their attitude about the U.S. To many of these immigrants, the U.S. is more of a benevolent tyrant, not to be trusted.  In addition, many of these immigrants may find themselves viewed by the dominant culture (and even by minorities) as more of a minority  group than an immigrant group, thereby creating an immigrant narrative more closely connected to the minority narrative which tends  to view the “American Dream” as the “American Nightmare.”  Paule Marshall, an immigrant from Barbados growing up in New York, called her mother and her friends, “…the female counterpart of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man…who suffered from the triple invisibility of being black, female, and foreigners” (VA 86). “Some New World immigrants even risk ‘downward assimilation’ instead of climbing the dominant culture’s economic ladder” because of color code and/or cultural resistance to assimilation (White 7).

The concept of color code, an element existing within the dominant American culture (but certainly prevalent in other cultures, as well), often presents itself in multicultural literature. Historically the color code essentially supported the belief that lighter skin (and hair) was preferable to dark. The presence of a  color code, which usually (although not always) views dark as a negative and light as a positive, appears frequently in narratives written by immigrant or minority writers, but not always in ways I would have expected.  For example, the pressure of the color code often comes from within the immigrant family, as much as from the outside dominant culture. Marshall’s grandmother in “Da-Duh, in Memoriam”  “…liked her grandchildren to be white” (IA 369).

Dominant culture, while still mainly defined by white Protestant traditional viewpoints, is in a state of constant flux, a spinning vortex of color that often grabs onto and pulls in bits and pieces of other cultures, creating and recreating itself, so it never truly stays exactly the same for very long. With the changes in immigration patterns over the last few decades, particularly in terms of the increasing Latino populations and the influx of highly educated immigrants from the Middle East and Asia, most of whom practice non-Christian religions, the vortex of dominant culture will continue to influence and be influenced by immigrants.

As an educator, sharing the immigrant narrative is a way to encourage tolerance and empathy for immigrants through a keener understanding of the immigrant perspective (often very different from that of the dominant culture’s perspective) and by encouraging students to see parallel connections to their own experiences (Obj.1).  A few years ago, one of my students wrote an essay about his family’s journey to America. He did not want to write it, I am sure.  But, it was a required journal assignment and he was barely passing my class.  When I read his essay, I was both touched and surprised. Paul was a second-generation Vietnamese- American, the only member of his immediate family born in the U.S.  He essentially was putting on paper a family story that had been told to him many many times. His narrative described how his mother and father and two toddler sisters snuck out one dark night and boarded an old battered fishing boat with several other families in order to get out of Vietnam before his father, a former South Vietnamese office, was arrested by the North Vietnamese.  His story in many ways reminds me of Danticat’s “Children of the Sea” in that they spent days on the open boat, running out of food and water, praying to be rescued (and passed up by large oil tankers). Eventually they made it to Thailand, and thanks to some relatives already in the U.S., were allowed to fly to the U.S. The story ends with them walking out of the airport at Houston-Intercontinental.  I harassed Paul daily to add more to his essay and turn it into the Scholastic Writing competition. He did, and ended up winning a Gold Key Award at the national level. He and his family were flown to Washington, D.C. where he received his writing award at the Kennedy Center. One of his sisters later called to thank me, telling me her parents, who spoke little English, had taken their first vacation ever in order to see Paul receive his award and that she felt this had really brought Paul and his parents closer together. The immigrant narrative, whether involving a Frenchman from 1700’s or a Vietnamese family from the 1970’s is not a new story.  But it is a story in the lives of many Americans, past and present, and because of that, it is an experience that almost every American can empathize with. 

In the last few years, I see an increasing number of my students living the minority and/or immigrant narrative. With an educational system still heavily influenced by the dominant culture (and in terms of high school literature, that would mean white and male), the needs of these students to hear voices such as their own becomes very important. As Paule Marshall explains in “The Making of a Writer: From the Poets in  the Kitchen,”  “what I needed, what all the kids-West Indian and native black American kids alike- with whom I grew up needed, was … someplace where we could go …and read works by those like ourselves and learn about our history “((VA  89).  While it is neither practical nor possible to include the immigrant or minority narrative of every nationality or culture in a  language arts curriculum, it is certainly possible to tailor a curriculum to meet the cultural needs of the students actually in your classroom, especially when so many of the immigrant and /or minority narratives available parallel the experiences of more than one culture   But it also helps if the teacher makes an attempt early on to find out about the cultural background of his or her student (a task often easily accomplished  through autobiographical writing activities), not only to better understand the student, but more significantly to help the student discover those voices in literature which may give him or her  the courage to also have a voice.  

Works Cited

Brown, Wesley and Amy Ling, eds. Imagining America. New York: Persea Books, 2002

Ramirez, Sergio. “True Lies: On the Subject of Literary Creation.” Lecture presented at the IDB Cultural Center. Retrieved

               April 1, 2008 from http://www.iadb.org/cultural/documents/encuentros/31.PDF

Rodriquez, Richard. Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriquez  New York: Bantam Books, 2004.

White, Craig. “Graduate Immigrant Literature Syllabus.” LITR 5731. ISummer 2008.