Danielle Maldonado

Old World Values vs. New World Progressiveness in Immigrant Literature

Because Immigrant Literature, by definition, is Multicultural, each person entering the country will bring with them individual old world values. Whether the immigrant fits these old world values into the progressiveness that the new world offers is entirely up to the individual. We do, however, tend to notice patterns within particular cultural groups that are notable. For some, stories of “the American Dream” are most evident. But for other cultural groups, this dream turns quickly into a nightmare or seemingly endless struggle to negotiate how much assimilation to the dominant culture is necessary, careful not to forsake their home country.

The course syllabus outlines several goals for deciphering Immigrant Literature but most importantly, offers some basic stages of the Immigrant Narrative. It is through these stages that we can view the course texts and construct a better understanding of the immigrant’s struggle.

The first stage of the Immigrant Narrative takes place when the immigrant leaves the old world and their traditional society. This takes place for a variety of reasons, according to course texts. There are several examples of expatriation within out textual choices. In Nicholasa Mohr’s The English Lesson, we are introduced to several characters that admit to coming the United States for opportunity and to build a better life for their families. Joseph Fong, for example, says he’s come to the United States “to be eligible to become an American citizen” (IA24).

Diego Torres’ role in the same story, by contrast, is one of involuntary exile from the Dominican Republic. Forced to leave his homeland because of a lack of work, Diego makes it known that he has no desire to become an American citizen.

“I no give up my country, Santo Domingo, for nothing. … I come here, pero, I cannot help. I got no work at home. There, is political. The United States control most the industry which is sugar and turismo. I tell you, is political to get a job, man! I no be American citizen, no way. I’m Dominican and proud” (IA 25).

Another character, Stephan Paczkowski, fled Poland because of the Jewish exile. While he, himself isn’t Jewish, his wife is “of Jewish parents,” and his goals are to return to a professorship, despite his blue collar position working in the maintenance department here and “become a citizen of the United States”
(IA 27).

The second stage of the immigrant narrative takes place on the journey to the new world.  This is unmistakable in Edwidge Danticat’s Children of the Sea. The narrator makes the decision to board a boat from Haiti to the United States. On his journey, he writes letters home detailing the trip.

“Once you have been at sea for a couple of days, it smells like every fish you have ever eaten, every crab you have ever caught, every jellyfish that has ever bitten your leg. I am so tired of the smell. I am so tired of the way the people on this boat are starting to stink.”

Though the narrator on the boat from Haiti meets difficulty on the ship, he is sure life in a new country will be better than the homeland from which he was fleeing. There are also several examples of a less physical journey to the new world, in terms of journeying to the modern culture. In an excerpt from Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers, Max Goldstein tells Sara, living in a tenement room, of his journey to the United States one his ship docked.

“I still see that first day when I got off the ship with my little bundle on my back. … I came upon a gang of men clearing the street with great shovels. At once, I saw these men must be paid for their work. So I pushed myself in among them and begged for a shovel. A big, fat foreman looked down on the poor little greenhorn, wondering should he take pity on me. But before waiting for an answer, I snatched up a shovel from the stack and dug into the snow. At the end of the day, when I was paid a dollar, I felt the riches of all American in my hand.”

While only minutes before he was on an actual journey, Max’s immediate desire to work hard and earn in the new world is a testament to an almost metaphoric journey to the new world.

The third state of the Immigrant narrative is shock, resistance, exploitation and discrimination in the new world. Anzia Yezierska’s Soap and Water is an example of bigotry experienced by the narrator because of her immigrant status and resulting social class. When Dean Whiteside attempts to withhold the narrator’s teaching diploma because of her personal appearance, she explodes with anger.

“While they condemned me for being unfit to be a teacher, because of my appearance, I was slaving away to keep them clean. I was slaving away in a laundry from five to eight in the morning, before going to college, and from six to eleven at night, after coming from college. … At the time when they rose and took their morning bath, and put on their fresh-laundered linen that somebody had made ready for them, when they were being served their breakfast, I had already toiled for three hours in the laundry” (IA 1^st edition 106).

Another example of this resistance and exploitation can be found in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. The narrator discusses the urban renewal board tearing down her parent’s business to put up a parking lot, she says the “learned exactly who the enemy are.” “I easily recognize them— business suited in their modern American executive guise, each boss two feet taller than I am and impossible to meet eye to eye” (IA 1^st edition 197).

 “To avenge my family, I’d have to storm across China to take back our farm from the Communists; I’d have to rage across the United States to take back the laundry in New York and the one in California. Nobody in history has ever conquered and united both North America and Asia” (IA 1^st edition 198).

Later, refusing to type invitations at her job for the land developer’s association, to a banquet at a restaurant being picketed by civil rights groups, she is fired from her job. She says: “If I took the sword, which my hate must surely have forged out of the air and gutted him, I would put color and wrinkles into my shirt” (IA 1^st edition 198). The contempt she feels for the racists and the “tyrants who for whatever reason can deny [her] family food and work” in the United States is rivaled by the disdain she feels for Communist China.

Chrystos’ I Have Not Signed a Treaty with the United States Government is another example of resistance toward assimilation, the dominant culture and in turn, progressive society. In claiming the “United States can’t dance  can’t cook  has no children  no elders  no relatives,” Chrystos is demonstrating at what point the American Dream turns into the American nightmare. Particularly for the Native Americans, some completely resist the progressiveness in stage three.

“Everything the United States does to everybody is bad. No this US is not a good idea. We declare you terminated … Go so far away we won’t remember you ever came here. Take these words back with you” (Handout).

The fourth stage of the Immigrant Narrative is Assimilation to the dominant American culture. This is demonstrated in Judith Ortiz Cofer’s Silent Dancing. The cousin in the story is described as being completely assimilated to American culture, not having “the stain” of a new immigrant.

“My cousin was wearing a tight, sequined cocktail dress. Her brown hair had been lightened with peroxide around the bangs, and she is holding a cigarette expertly between her fingers bringing it up to her mouth in a sensuous arc of her arm as she talks animatedly” (IA 1^st edition 181).

While the narrator’s family looks down on this cousin for assimilation, more and more examples of the same type of assimilation by the hypocritical family are given. The narrator’s shopping habits are only one example.

On Saturday my family would walk downtown to shop at the big department stores on Broadway. Mother bought all our clothes at Penney’s and Sears … At some point we’d go into Woolworth’s and sit at the soda fountain to eat” (IA 1^st edition 183).

Additionally, her family celebrated Christmas in addition to dia de Reyes, despite being the “only ones in El Building” who got presents on both days.

Another example of assimilation can be found in Junot Diaz’s How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl or Halfie. In hiding both his financial status, through stashing the government cheese in the cabinet above the oven and taking down the “embarrassing photos of your family in the campo, especially the ones with the half-naked kids dragging a goat on a rope leash,” (IA 276) the narrator gives step-by-step on how to assimilate in order to date. “The white ones are the ones you want the most,” Diaz says, demonstrating assimilation of desire toward the dominant culture.

An additional example of assimilation can be found in Leslie Marmon Silko’s The Man to Send Rain Clouds. While this form of assimilation doesn’t involve the loss of ethnic identity, it is important to mention the negotiated form of assimilation shown. Leon says Last Rites for Grandpa weren’t necessary but desires the holy water “so he won’t be thirsty” (IA 207) and so “the old man could send them big thunderclouds” (IA 209). While they don’t desire holy water for the same purposes the Catholics do, they multipurpose the dominant culture’s item for their own purposes, coexisting in a form of assimilation.

The fifth and final stage of the Immigrant Narrative is repatriation or rediscovery of ethnic identity. Referring to Silent Dancing, once again, we return to the story of the assimilated cousin. The confident and outspoken woman is found to have aborted a baby fathered by her white teacher. Referring to her as “La Gringa,” she is sent home to Puerto Rico to live to fix her wrongs. There she finds a man who can “put a saddle on a woman like her” (IA 186). While she may have been sent back to Puerto Rico against her will because of her actions. This rediscovery of her ethnic identity acts as a penance and frees her from her sins in the new world.

While the stages of the Immigrant Narrative explain the various places in time an immigrant may be in the process, it does not account for several questions I have asked myself as I bring this essay to a close. First of all, is being considered one thing or another by the dominant culture a good or bad thing? It seems the dominant culture acts as the judge of whether enough assimilation is taking place within a particular cultural group and a jury of sorts echoes this judgment. Seated on this jury are other immigrants. How is the dominant culture to decide who is labeled a “minority?” I suspect I will come to a more concrete answer as the semester wears on. Or perhaps not. Surely, immigration cannot be understood over a semester. And perhaps there are exceptions to the rule.

Bharati Mukherjee said it best in the "Immigrant Writers' Impact on American Literature" panel discussion” video highlight when she made note that the more the American family changes color, the more we’ll have to improvise defending what it means to be an American. This belief that the melding of the old world values into our new world progressiveness is a necessary component of our culture is the most valid and accepting form of realizing that those who make up the dominant culture in 50 years may very well be the immigrants who find difficulty assimilating today.

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