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2018 Midterm1
(assignment) |
LITR 4340
American Immigrant Literature Model Assignments |
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Greg Bellomy
The
Mirror from the Outside
Reflecting upon the experiences of immigrants and minorities provides a useful
lens for examining the norms, rules, and assumptions that dominate American
culture. For people who have never lived beyond our national borders, immigrant
and minority literature provide an outsider’s view of a world that is often
taken for granted. Most Americans also have a genealogy that includes at least
one (usually two more) ancestor who chose to make the move and participate in
the American Dream.
While the American Dream is a concept that unifies the motivation to move
to the United States, individual interpretations of what this entails tend to
vary. In the excerpt from “Woman of Peace, Child of War,” Le Ly Hayslip only
wanted a peaceful life, away from the carnage and horrors of war. Lali, of
Nicholasa Mohr’s “the English Lesson,” sees the American Dream as an opportunity
to experience life in a less restrictive gender role. For the Ihedigbo family,
the American Dream primarily meant having a space to support and nurture the
family. For Thien, of J. Christine Moon Ko’s “What Color Would You Like, Ma’am?”
the American Dream was a summer of video games and basketball with his friends.
For Thien’s family, as well as the Chang family of “In the American Society,”
the American Dream was to send the youngest generation to school and to fund it
with the family business. This concept of social advancement through education
meshes well with the ethos and needs of the existing dominant culture, which
typifies some aspects of the idea of “model immigrants”.
While the model immigrant status seems to ensure a higher probability of
success in attaining the American Dream, the narrators of these experiences
share some degree of embarrassment associated with incomplete assimilation. In
“the Cooked Seed,” Anchee Min has the pains of learning about dormitory life
whilst learning to speak English. The Chang family had to deal with an
overbearing and drunken host, along with labor law issues at their pancake
house. The Ihedigbo family were embarrassed by their grandmother’s urinating in
the parking lot and had to buy deodorant for their “Nigerian smell.” The
Idedigbo experience is different from the others, though, because it shares some
direct correlation with the American minority experience.
While both immigrants and minorities share a cultural status as being
outsiders, they can be distinguished through the freedom of choice; the person
who immigrates makes a conscious and physical effort to interact with the
dominant society, while minorities are not afforded the same degree of choice.
To this point, the Native American and African American narratives that we have
read generally illustrate the lack of choice. In Leslie Marmon Silko’s “the Man
to Send Rain Clouds,” the priest exemplifies the indifference of the dominant
culture to the will and belief of the people; he wants to say the last rites for
the old man, even if they are not wanted. In “Gussuk,” Robert seems to be
depressed because of his lack of choices and mobility. In “the Lesson,” the
children accompany Miss Moore to FAO Schwartz to look at a lot of toys that they
have no hopes of being able to afford.
Another feature that distinguishes the minority experience from the
immigrant experience is the concept of resistance. In most of the texts that we
have read, the immigrant narratives show people trying to find ways to
assimilate into the dominant culture, while the minority narratives often show a
revulsion to this force. In “American Horse,” for example, Albertine fails to
keep the Child Protective Services officer from taking Buddy, but she was trying
to keep him away from the state. The refusal to let the priest administer the
last rites in “the Man to Send Rain Clouds” also represents a revulsion from the
dominant culture. Another aspect of resistance is in the subversion and
reassignment of meaning, as Silko’s characters do with the priest’s Holy Water,
which maintains respect for the Native Americans’ attitudes and worldview.
The process of reading immigrant literature also enhances and refreshes
our conceptions of dominant cultural norms. Le Ly Hayslip’s recollection of her
first trip to the grocery store illustrates the initial impressions of a
cultural outsider. She expresses genuine shock at the way women dress when they
go into public. Le Ly also describes the experience as being abundant with
indistinguishable choices (because everything is in a package) while it is
absolutely devoid of smell. Perhaps the strangest part of the experience for her
was the concept of shopping for an entire week’s worth of groceries, instead of
merely buying what is to be eaten over the ensuing hours. These sorts of
experiences encourage readers to imagine and even accept that the lifestyle we
accept as commonplace is shocking to many who see it for the first time.
As an aspiring high school teacher, I appreciate literature’s power of
expanding the reach of our perceptions and experiences. In the humanitarian
sense, the practice of reading the way that other people see the world has to be
one of the best ways of enlivening and evolving a person’s sociological
imagination. Besides encouraging people to imagine the thoughts and feelings of
a person who has an outsider’s perspective in our society, the process of
reading immigrant and minority narratives also inspires identification and
understanding between members of different backgrounds. In this age of social
and political polarity, it seems important that we find ways of reestablishing
commonality among American people, and literature can play a key role in that
process.
