Tanya Stanley

June 22, 2008

Nostalgia within Immigrants:  Assimilation or Resistance?

I am interested in connecting immigrants’ experiences with nostalgia as they decide to assimilate to the dominant culture or as they resist the dominant culture.  I read an article by Anita Mannur “Culinary Nostalgia:  Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora,” which opens by focusing on culinary nostalgia of Indian Americans.  Mannur’s work deserves more attention and will be one of the sources I evaluate in my second research posting.  Mannur’s article inspired me to find more background information about nostalgia and immigrants.  After reading Oscar Hijuelos’s short story “Visitors, 1965” for an upcoming class discussion, a desire to research nostalgia within other literary works regarding immigrants of America became the frontline for my first research posting. I am interested in discovering if nostalgia is a phenomenon immigrants use to connect with their pasts as they assimilate to the dominant culture, or if nostalgia is an experience immigrants recall in order to resist assimilation?

I began my research on immigrants and nostalgia using the Google Scholar search engine and the university’s online databases.  I could not find many articles in Academic Search Complete that peaked my interest, so I tried researching using Google Scholar.  I found a review of Andreea Deciu Ritivoi’s book, Yesterday’s Self:  Nostalgia and the Construction of Personal Identity.  Wordtrade.com, a philosophy website dedicated to reviewing academic, professional, and technical works within humanities and sciences, provided historical information about nostalgia.  Since I am researching immigrants and immigrant literature, I thought a summation of historical information about nostalgia would keep the history texts alive and emphasize the connection between history and literature.  Wordtrade.com states “nostalgia has a history fraught with ambiguity and poetical connotation” and during the late seventeenth century, nostalgia was believed to represent symptoms of a deadly disease (http://www.wordtrade.com/philosophy/identityR.htm).  The review first describes the association of nostalgia with poetry by discussing nostalgia’s ambiguity and poetical connotation, which connects nostalgia with literature.  After describing the present-day view of nostalgia, the website describes nostalgia as a serious problem for immigrants.  Prior to my research, I never suspected nostalgia to represent a serious problem for immigrants.  I thought nostalgia was simply a way of remembering the past and a means for immigrants to recall their homelands.

Natalie Friedman article “Nostalgia, Nationhood, and the New Immigrant Narrative: Gary Shteyngart’s The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and the Post-Soviet Experience” posted within the online Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies reveals a new immigration story.  Friedman reviews the semi-autobiographies The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, There Are Jews in My House, and Natasha: And Other Stories, which suggest “America is characterized as a land of anti-nostalgia or anti-memory.” The promises of America attempt to “repress the immigrant’s memories of home.”  Unlike the classic immigrant literature, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, There Are Jews in My House, and Natasha: And Other Stories “present characters who resist assimilation through nostalgia, but who also fall victim to their own fantasies of their former homelands when they return or otherwise encounter their old culture.” According to Friedman’s review, the classical immigrants’ use of nostalgia was an impediment to acculturation (http://www.uiowa.edu/~ijcs/nostalgia/friedman.htm).  Friedman’s review furthers the wordtrade.com suggestion that nostalgia negatively affects immigrants.

I also discovered a recent posting to the online publication The Newark Metro by a Rutgers-Newark student Anne P. Rivera.  Rivera describes Pete Hamill’s memoir Downtown: My Manhattan as a trip to New York that engages the reader in a journey through the diverse neighborhoods of New York.  Rivera’s article, “Exploring New York’s Past and Present,” describes Hamill’s own immigrant experiences as the son of Irish immigrants.  According to Rivera, “while the immigrants sought for the American Dream in New York City, they experienced a lonely longing for their native country.  The city’s captivating power grasps the immigrants and compels them to adopt it as their new homeland” (http://www.newarkmetro.rutgers.edu/essays/display.php?id=273).  Unlike the reviews provided by Wordtrade.com and Friedman, Rivera’s review was more uplifting (the power of New York that Hamill describes in his memoir?).  Hijuelos’ “Visitor’s, 1965” describes Alejo’s use of nostalgia as a means of bringing fellow Cuban immigrants together when politics entered into the conversations.  Hijuelos says “political talk about Cuba always led to nostalgic talk, and soon Alejo’s friends would soften up and bend like orchid vines, glorifying in the lost joys of childhood” (312).

Do immigrants use nostalgia to connect with their homelands and their pasts while assimilating to the dominant culture?  I believe immigrants need nostalgia as one of the means of remembering their heritage; however, like the new immigrants Friedman describes, nostalgia can cause a serious problem for immigrants.  Immigrants can use nostalgia as a means of resisting the dominant culture in which they share a commonality with the minorities instead of the model immigrants.  Instead of an either/or answer to my proposed question, I now have a both/and answer, which suggests the different facets of nostalgia and immigration.  I have made arrangements to meet with members of the University of Houston-Clear Lake Indian Student Association to host personal interview sessions regarding nostalgia and specifically culinary nostalgia.  Nostalgia, like immigration, has several components and since cuisine typically brings people together, I want to further my research on the communion of cultures. 

Bibliography

Friedman, Natalie.  “Nostalgia, Nationhood, and the New Immigrant Narrative: Gary

Shteyngart’s The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and the Post-Soviet Experience.”  Iowa

Journal of Cultural Studies.  Fall 2004.  20 June 2008.  <http://www.uiowa.edu/~ijcs/-

nostalgia/friedman.htm>.

Hijuelos, Oscar.  “Visitors, 1965.”  Imagining America:  Stories from the Promised Land.  Ed.

Wesley Brown and Amy Ling.  New York:  Persea Books, 2002.  310-325.

Mannur, Anita.  “Culinary Nostalgia:  Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora.”  MELUS  32.4 

(2007):  11-31.  Academic Search Complete.  University of Houston—Clear Lake Lib., Houston, TX.  14 June 2008. 

<http://web.ebscohost.com>.

Rivera, Anne P.  “Exploring New York’s Past and Present.”  The Newark Metro.  April 2008.  2

June 2008.  <http://www.newarkmetro.rutgers.edu/essays/display.php?id=273>.

Wordtrade.com.  2007.  20 June 2008.  <http://www.wordtrade.com/philosophy/identity-

R.htm>.