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Midterm1 (2013 midterm1 assignment) Sample Student Midterm Answers 2013 #1: Long Essay |
LITR 4333
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Jo Ann Pereira
In Search of the American Dream
The cultural narrative of immigrants and/or minorities can be
seen as the need to express their version of how they came to America.
For the African American, who was forced to the United States, this
narrative would include how they were brought, or would include the details of
their journey, to the United States.
In The Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, The African, Mr.
Equiano’s account (Obj 1, minority narrative) of being kidnapped and forced to
travel away from his family and home and all that is comfortable to him, we
learn what it is to be a minority; forced against his will to be taken to a new
land, a new culture. This narrative
(Obj 2c, Stage 3) gives us an idea as to how an African American’s journey
actually began and the struggles, pain and suffering he experienced all along
the way to get to America and obtain the “American Dream”.
Upon arriving in the United States, Mr. Equiano is finally able to
attempt to assimilate into the American society by purchasing his freedom from
the white man. But once freedom is
purchased, even though Mr. Equiano is in America, he would learn, African
Americans were minorities; and have to fight to fit in and be treated as equal,
or just take life as it comes, as a minority.
As mentioned in MG2001’s long essay from Sample Student
Midterms Answers 2001, “Minorities, therefore suffer discrimination by the
dominant culture their whole lives.”
This phrase is found to be true and the minority narrative (Obj 2b) is
evidenced in the poem by Patricia Smith, “Blonde White Women”.
Ms. Smith writes of how she, an African American female, rides on board
public transportation, as a minority.
Her account details the emotions she feels, being a minority riding along
with “skinny pink fingers rest(ing) upon a briefcase” and the stares she
receives from the white Americans riding alongside her, as if they are wary of
this black woman. After wanting so
badly to be white, like Donna, Ms. Smith eventually realizes how beautiful she
is, as an African American woman, Patricia Ann.
The immigrant narrative differs from the minority narrative
because the immigrant is here by choice; in search of the “American Dream”, they
came to America to better themselves.
Whereas an immigrant may have been forced to the States, they might also
have to try to fit into society, thus having to fight against discrimination,
the experience of struggling to maintain their culture and identity or
assimilate to become just like us, the American.
As CP mentions in a 2003 midterm essay, “…not all immigrant
cultures assimilate into the dominant culture.”
An example of this resistance (Obj 3c) can be found in Anzia Yezierska’s
“Soap and Water”. The college
student in this short story recounts how Miss Whiteside withheld her hard earned
diploma because of her being “unkempt” and lacking the “niceties of the
well-groomed lady.” The college
student, although she immigrated to America for a better life and to educate
herself and was working hard at her laundry job to survive, failed to keep
herself presentable to Miss Whiteside, who valued being clean and neat.
The college student was resisting society by refusing to put forth any
effort into maintaining better hygiene and making herself presentable to others,
until she met Miss Van Ness later on in her life.
Miss Van Ness and “her beautiful spirit” accepted the college student for
her personality and was the “light” who gave the college student “a song of new
life”.
Another example of the Immigrant Narrative (Obj 2a) and the
“melting pot” is Nicholasa Mohr’s, “The English Lesson”.
Lali and William attempt to assimilate into American society by going to
classes to learn English. Lali and
William, Puerto Ricans by birth, came to the United States and were trying to
become just like an American by learning Basic English.
It is in this class where they learn of many other cultures who are all
trying to fit into American society, or not.
There are a few foreign students who have made up their minds that they
will not become American citizens because they feel as if they will lose their
identity and the U.S. is “political” and “control(s) most the industry”.
These seem to be the minorities who are trying to fit in, yet want to
maintain what culture and identity they have brought to the States.
(Obj 2b) We also meet Stephan Paczkowski a Jewish immigrant from Poland
who was forced to leave by the Polish government.
Mr. Paczkowski was a well educated professor at the University of Krakow,
as was his wife well educated. As a
“model minority”, Mr. Paczkowski and his wife have to start at the bottom of the
totem pole, so to speak, in the United States.
And so, he begins trying to assimilate with American society by learning
Basic English from Mrs. Hamma.
I speak from personal experience when it comes to the term of “melting pot”. Growing up in a mainly “white” neighborhood, my family was only one of two Hispanic families that lived there in our group of approximately 40+ homes. Because my family was Hispanic, my childhood friends’ parents on the street use to ask, “What’s your mom doing?” or “where’s your dad at?” When during the day, as was typical for any family, mom would be at home cleaning house or preparing lunch or even watching soap operas on television, as “white” mom’s did growing up in the ‘70’s. And as typical of dads, he was working (construction). It was as if we were a “curiosity” for the “white” people. And as I grew up and moved onto junior high, my best friend told me later on in high school, because her parents never taught her there was a difference in the races, she always thought of myself and my family as “white” because we did the same things her family did, ate the same foods, shopped in the same places, drove the same kind of cars, wore the same kind of clothes and went to the same school that she did; the only difference she said, “was, when your momma got mad, I couldn’t understand a word she was saying, because she was talking so fast in Spanish.” It was as if my family was assimilating itself into American society. It worked!
