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2018 Midterm1
(assignment) |
LITR 4340
American Immigrant Literature Model Assignments |
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Annie Tran
What Else Did I Learn?
It was very difficult to find Midterm essays that did offer new material
other than what was discussed in class.
I finally found “Resistance Versus Persistence: How Does Immigrant
Literature Differ?” by Dorothy Noyes that compared the concept of persistence
versus resistance in the Immigrant versus Minority narrative.
She addressed the American Indian minority narrative within the minority
narrative by contrasting it with the Model Minority label within the immigrant
narrative. The other two model
assignments were research reports that were very interesting to me.
My approach to Jessica Tran’s “Rebuilding a New Life” and Austin Green’s
“Superman himself is literally an immigrant” is to identify course objectives
within the research and discover if failure to assimilate—by notably the model
minority group—is a sign of resistance.
I chose Jessica Tran’s research report titled, “Rebuilding a New Life”
because I wanted to read more about other students’ outlook on the immigrant
narrative. I was intrigued by
Jessica’s take on the model minority narrative within the immigrant group
because she was only able to learn about what her father endured as an immigrant
through her research. In her
research, she used outside sources that might be helpful to me in my own
research topic. I might explore her
references within my own research process.
I would have liked for Jessica to elaborate on what type of people make
up the “regular immigrants” that she mentioned.
Jessica notes that “Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian refugees who
did not have established ethnic communities in the United States, the U.S.
government of resettlement agencies almost entirely decided where the refugees
would settle.” The refugees
willingly left the Old World, but they did not have a choice in where they
settled. I wonder how this
information would affect—if at all—the labeling of Vietnamese refugees in the
Immigrant Narrative.
I
found parallels of some aspects in her research with the Stages of the Immigrant
Narrative of Objective 2c. Jessica
references Do’s classification of the Vietnamese immigrants as “political
refugees who were forced to leave during political turmoil; however, it was
still considered voluntary because they wanted to escape an “unfavorable fate.”
This aspect describes Stage 1 and 2 of the Immigrant Narrative, in which
the immigrants voluntarily leave the Old World (Vietnam) and journey to the New
World (America). Jessica quotes
Zhou who says, “Most of the refugees lacked education, job skills, and
measurable economic resources” which can lead to shock, exploitation, and
discrimination as mentioned in Stage 3.
In Jessica’s research report, assimilation in Stage 4 is achieved through
the children of the refugees who “consciously develop and modify their own
coping strategies in order to become acculturated and incorporated in American
society.” There was no mention of
Stage 5, but I would be curious to know if she or her father had experienced
“rediscovery or reassertion of ethnic identity” as I have in my own
experiences—experiences that are similar to the “Superman” in Austin Green’s
research report.
I chose the Austin Green’s research report titled, “Superman himself is
literally an immigrant” because his approach to his research report was to
“recognize any of the stages of immigration, or experiences we have discussed in
class,” and I happened to identify and take the same approach with Jessica
Tran’s research report. The title
of Austin’s report caught my attention first. I
expected to discover the “Superman” character’s heritage, but I was pleased with
Austin’s parallels between the superhero archetype and the immigrant narrative.
Austin quotes Yang, “As an immigrant’s kid, I spoke Chinese at home and
English at school. I had two different names. I felt like I was living under two
different cultural expectations. Super heroes are the same way. They have two
different names. They have to operate under two different sets of rules.”
This distinction exemplifies the “second-generation” character that is
“divided” between traditional identities of homeland or ethnic group and modern
identity of assimilated American.
In Le Ly Hayslip’s Child of War, Woman of
Peace, we got a glimpse into the spiritual mythology that is so prevalent in
Asian cultures. For Hayslip, the
spiritual revelation that she encountered at the end of the excerpt helped her
to accept assimilation. In the
Monkey King story, Austin reveals that the Monkey King’s rejection from heaven
for “not wearing any shoes” is equated to an immigrant’s inability to maintain
their ethnic identity and also be assimilated into the dominant culture.
I did
not realize analysis of a graphic novel would have connections to the immigrant
literature and the idea of assimilation (or lack of), which brings me to Dorothy
Noyes essay about assimilation and resistance. In Dorothy’s essay, “Resistance
Versus Persistence: How Does Immigrant Literature Differ,” she highlights the
differences between the immigrant and minority narrative by noting that “one
[is] striving to assimilate in the land they have chosen, and one [is] striving
to survive in a land chosen for them by a forceful hand or mere circumstance.”
It is interesting that Dorothy chose to use the word, persistence, as
equivalence to assimilation. At the
beginning of the course, I had trouble grasping the full connotation of the
word, assimilation. In looking at
my parents’ experiences, their persistence through the hardships brought them to
a lifestyle that is assimilated to a point, but they did not desire to or have
their children lose their ethnic identity.
Dorothy compared the baby’s ordeal in “In the Land of the Free” to the
immigrant’s assimilation, which brought a fresh angle to that short story that
we did not discuss in class. She
quotes, “White women were caring for him, and though for one full moon he had
pined for his mother and refused to be comforted he was now apparently happy and
contented.” Like the baby, “[the
immigrant] came to America, pined for his roots, but ultimately assimilated to
his surroundings and became a contented contributor to his environment.”
Dorothy’s take on the short story helped me to gain a better perspective
and understanding of the term, assimilation, within the immigrant narrative.
Because I was not in class discussion over the American Indian minority
narrative, I found Dorothy’s contrast between parents of an immigrant narrative
and minority narrative in reaction to the “kidnapping” of their child to be very
helpful to my understanding of resistance.
She comments that “the Native American family in Louise Erdrich’s
“American Horse” also perpetuates the minority literature’s resistance to
assimilation” because they had “expectations applied to them that they never
asked for.” I like that Dorothy
identifies the American bureaucracy as “kidnappers.”
