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Index
to Sample Student final exam answers 2016 |
LITR 4340
 American Immigrant Literature Model Assignments |
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Chandler Barton
A Brief Survey of the Common Traits and Shared Identity of Both the
Dominant Culture and Immigrant
The
various immigrant groups that make up the shared American identity are a diverse
mixture of different backgrounds and cultures. Naturally, while the ideology and
identity that is cultivated in the United States is in some way shared by them
all, there does arise a significant amount of differences that distinguish them
apart. Looking at the different origins and characteristics of immigrant groups
can be an exhaustive, almost endless task; instead, Tracie Estrada takes a
different, less intuitive approach in her paper “Determination Will Get Us
Through This,” by examining what these diverse groups all have in common in
their origin and immigration narratives: determination. Specifically, she
highlights how this nature of “immigrant determination” originated with the
first wave of founding immigrant groups to the New World, manifesting itself in
both religious contexts (in the case of the Puritans or Anglicans) and secular
ones (Scotch-Irish, for instance). Estrada also looks at how this determination
and perseverance show up in model immigrants as motivated to assimilate and
“carve a piece” of the American pie out for themselves.
The stubbornness of the earliest Americans—Puritans, Pilgrims, Anglicans,
and so forth—seem to have helped establish this hard-headed temperament as a
staple of American dominant culture, adopted and picked up by subsequent
immigrant groups wanting to come into the American fold. Adam Glasgow reinforces
this stereotype by looking at the zealous, stubborn defiant nature brought by
the Puritan and Pilgrim settlers to the New World in his essay “The Roots of
America's Dominant Culture and Those Who Choose to Join it,” highlighting how
the religious convictions and beliefs of the these groups were in such
heart-felt opposition to what they perceived to be a mass decay of religious
integrity back in Europe, that they were willing to discard all that they held
and had to flee to a treacherous new land.
Religious conviction was certainly enough to convince these groups to
make their move towards settling in America, and as such, piety could be
identified as one of the catalytic qualities of American “determination” and
perseverance. Glasgow also points out that the language and nature of the
Founding Fathers hint towards more themes of determination and even opportunity,
culminating in the shared idea of the “American Dream”, something that would
itself become ingrained in the consciousness of both the American dominant
culture as well as that of the immigrant.
Carrie Block gives a more contemporary view of “immigrant drive” and
determination in her research report on Anna Yezierska, documenting how the
author’s arduous journey from Poland to America, and the subsequent years spent
in toil and labor to simply survive in the States. Yezierska’s conviction and
drive though, somewhat akin to that same zealous conviction of the first
American settlers, helps her towards success, stability and assimilation into
the American dominant culture, and lead to her being one of the foremost
chroniclers of the immigrant struggle and experience.
Having a deeper insight to one of the common threads running through the
experiences of the various immigrant groups gives the reader an opportunity to
examine and understand how these groups come together to a shared identity;
though a dominant American culture certainly did emerge and exists at some odds
with immigrants, the presence of determination, perseverance, and conviction as
common traits amongst immigrant peoples—past, present, and future—tie them
together as truly “American.”
