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2016 Midterm2
(assignment) Sample Student Midterm2 Answers Part 1: Essays on New World Immigrants |
LITR 4340
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Austin Green
New World Culture Clash
At the start of this course, the
concept of “New World” immigrants were just as foreign to me as the differences
between immigrant and minority experiences. I understood that an immigrant was
someone who came to the United States with the intention to assimilate into its
culture and traditions. It was someone who saw what our country had to offer and
wanted to be a part of it. The minority experience, however, while still not
being part of the dominant culture, was one that did not necessarily intend on
trading in their culture for a new one. Immigrants came to this country
voluntarily. Minorities were either forced here through slavery, or were
bystanders as America was built up and created around, and then through, their
own culture, like Native Americans.
The “New World” immigrants initially differ from other immigrants because they
come from the Americas, or the western hemisphere. The “Old World” immigrants,
however, come from Europe, Asia, or Africa. The three main types of “New World”
immigrants come to the United States from Mexico, Latin America, and the
Caribbean islands. To understand the “New World” immigrant, you have to first
understand these experiences that “Old World” immigrants, as well as minorities,
went through. The reasoning for this is
because the “New World” immigrant experience is a combination of the
two—sometimes for the best, but also often for the worse.
The
dominant culture will often lump in immigrants (both “Old World” and “New”) and
minorities together, even if their homelands are oceans apart. In “How to Date a
Browngirl…” by Junior Diaz, our narrator uses this ability to blend in as
different races to his advantage, “She’ll say, I like Spanish guys, and even
though you’ve never been to Spain, say, I like you. You’ll sound smooth.” He is
being thought of as a completely different race, but he does not let it bother
him. Here, he uses the ignorance to his advantage, taking the compliment to come
off sounding cool. In this same story we also see how he shares experiences with
minorities. When calling a girl on the phone, he hangs up when her father
answers. This alone is not enough to be a shared minority experience, but when
he tells the reader why he hung up, we can then see it, “He sounds like a
principal or police chief.” The father sounded like an authority figure, and his
experience with them has been traditionally bad, so he hangs up.
In
Gary Soto’s poem “Mexicans Begin Jogging,” when border patrol appears the
speaker’s boss tells him “"Over the fence, Soto," he shouted, / And I shouted
that I was an American. / "No time for lies," he said…” The narrator’s own boss
thinks he is working there illegally, and even when told he is an American, his
boss thinks he is simply lying. Another example of the blurred lines in
immigrant experiences within the dominant culture—this time an American citizen
being categorized as an immigrant based on his Mexican ethnicity.
We
also see Mexican American “New World” immigrants assimilating into the dominant
culture in Sandra Cisneros’ “Barbie-Q.” Here two young Mexican girls are playing
with the embodiment of the dominant culture’s image of a woman: Barbie dolls.
They end up buying new dolls cheap after a fire sale. The new dolls become
representation though, of the girls not actually being members of the dominant
culture. The smell of fire left on the dolls shows that they are not new. These
are no longer part of the dominant culture’s Barbie dolls. The girls “wash and
wash and wash them,” but the smell will not come off. Just like these girls will
never look like the Barbie dolls they play with. It’s sadly a reflection of the
negative experiences immigrants and minorities can suffer by the dominant
culture, even when trying to assimilate.
One of the major differences between the “New World” immigrants and the
immigrants from the old world is the distance that needs to be travelled in
order to make it to America. Because of the shorter distance, these immigrants
often have had experiences with United States prior to coming to the country. In
“The Distance Between Us,” by Reyna Grande, we learn about a family from Mexico
whose father has illegally immigrated into the United States. He returns back in
order to sneak his kids across the border into America, leaving their birth
mother back in Mexico. We learn one of the sisters was born in the United
States, and that it was a cause of jealousy from her sisters, “…I felt the
familiar jealousy I’d felt when I had first heard of my American sister. Being
born in the U.S. was a privilege I wished I had had.” She was jealous that her
sister so easily could travel between Mexico and America, while she had to sneak
across the border unseen. Both sisters, but each had a very different
relationship with America. One was wanted, the other not.
In “Coca-Cola
and Coco Frio” by Martin Espada we again see the effects America has had on some
of its neighbors, this time in the Caribbean. We are told of a boy of Puerto
Rican descent who travels to Puerto Rico, only to be confronted with Coca-Cola
to drink, and people signing its English language jingles. He finally tries
something local, something non-American, a coco frio, or chilled coconut, and
only then did he feel a connection to this place. The poem concludes with the
boy wondering why people on this island would sing “…jingles from World War II /
in a language they did not speak, / while so many coconuts in the trees / sagged
heavy with milk, swollen / and unsuckled.” He couldn’t understand why this place
would be influenced by outside countries when they had everything they needed
here.
Like in “Old World” immigrant narratives and minority narratives, we see “New
World” immigrants also struggle with journeys into the country; whether it be by
sneaking across the border in the previously mentioned “The Distance Between
Us,” or trying to come across by ocean as in Edwidge Danticat’s “Children of the
Sea.” The family trying to cross the border in “The Distance Between Us” has to
avoid gunfire, while our narrator in “Children of the Sea has to survive a
leaking ship with little to no supplies. The Haitian people on the boat in this
second story even mention how being so sunburnt that “Now we will never be
mistaken for Cubans.” They knew if they were thought to be Cubans they might be
allowed to stay if they made it to the United States, while Haitians would be
sent back immediately.
Overall, the “New World” immigrant experience is close to both the “Old World”
immigrant experience as well as the minority experience. The reason for this is
that these immigrants experience what both of the others go through. You cannot
simply slide them in with either group. Putting them with either group, both
sides could be right, but both could also be wrong. They lie somewhere in the
middle, experiencing the negatives and the positives of both.
