Tuesday, 24 June 2008:  Caribbean Immigrants:  Minorities or Immigrants?

Text-objective discussion leader:  Tanya Stanley

Focus question for today’s reading assignments:  How does New World immigrant literature (Hispanic or Caribbean) resemble or differ from the immigrant narrative and/or the minority narrative?

Paule Marshall’s “To Da-Duh, In Memoriam”

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

·         “Old Immigrant Model”: Because of the danger and cost of journey by boat, past immigrants found it more difficult to return and were expected to cut ties to the Old World in order to assimilate to American culture

·         “New Immigrant Model”: Improved communications and air transportation may enable recent immigrants to feel less pressure to forget the homeland and to assimilate to American culture as rapidly as earlier immigrants.

Page 368, first paragraph

“I did not see her at first I remember.  For not only was it dark inside the crowded disembarkation shed in spite of the daylight flooding in from outside, but standing there waiting for her with my mother and sister I was still somewhat blinded from the sheen of tropical sunlight on the water of the bay which we had just crossed in the landing boat, leaving behind us the ship that had brought us from New York lying in the offing.  Besides, being only nine years of age at the time and knowing nothing of islands I was busy attending to the alien sights and sounds of Barbados, the unfamiliar smells.”

Paule Marshall’s “The Making of a Writer:  From the Poets in the Kitchen”

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.

Evidence of minority identity:  Page 85, fifth paragraph

            “They were women in whom the need for self-expression was strong, and since language was the only vehicle readily available to them they made of it an art form that—in keeping with the African tradition in which art and life are one—was an integral part of their lives.”

Evidence of immigrant identity:  Page 87, last full paragraph

                        “By the time I was eight or nine, I graduated from the corner of the kitchen            to the neighborhood library, and thus from the spoken to the written word.

Edwidge Danticat’s “Children of the Sea”

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

“The Color Code”

·         Literature represents the sensitive subject of skin color only infrequently or symbolically, but with important associations for identity and consequences  for destiny.
 

·         Western civilization associates “light and dark” with traditional values of good & evil, rational / irrational; these values are transferred to people of light or dark complexions, with implications for power, validity, sexuality, etc.

Page 101, first full paragraph

            “The faces around me are showing their first charcoal layer of sunburn.  ‘Now we will never be mistaken for Cubans,’ one man said.  Even though some of the Cubans are black too.  The man said he was once on a boat with a group of Cubans.  His boat had stopped to pick up the Cubans on an island off the Bahamas.  When the Coast Guard came for them, they took the Cubans to Miami and sent him back to Haiti.  Now he was back on the boat with some papers and documents to show that the police in Haiti were after him.  He had a broken leg too, in case there was any doubt.”

Question:  Through today’s texts we can see how the old immigrant model differs from the new immigrant model, how Afro-Caribbeans create an identity somewhere between the immigrant and minority patterns, and how skin color can represent consequences for destiny.  Regarding their identity as both immigrants and minorities, in what ways do Afro-Caribbean immigrants compare to Hispanic immigrants?