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2018 Midterm2
(assignment) |
LITR 4340
 American Immigrant Literature Model Assignments |
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Ruth Brown
A People in Between
When we moved from solely discussing minorities and immigrants to adding
in New World immigrants, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what a New World
immigrant’s narrative would be like. I saw how a New World immigrant would have
a combination of both minority and immigrant traits and would be somewhere in
the middle. As I read examples for this second web highlights essay, I learned
more than ever that New World immigrants create an identity all their own. They
are not just a combination of previous groups, but a distinct people with a lush
history and culture. Amber Boone’s “New World Immigrants: Blurring the Lines,”
Tracie Estrada’s “New World Immigrants Create a New Narrative,” and
Kimberly Loza’s “The Border Culture,” are three essays that skillfully explore
the uniqueness of New World immigrants.
Boone
explores the blurred lines New World immigrants face in being between a minority
and an immigrant group. She explains how historical experiences and the color
code support minority aspects, while voluntary travel and search for opportunity
support aspects of the immigrant story. She seems to produce more evidence to
support the minority side, rather than the immigrant side, explaining that
historical experiences lend more to a minority relationship with the U.S.
because they are more likely to resist assimilation based on forced contact and
previous or current exploitation of land. Boone then identifies how New World
immigrants are in fact a distinct identity of their own because of their “unique
and exotic pride for their country, attempts at maintaining their original
language, and strong family ties.” The conclusion of her essay accurately
describes how New World immigrants
“fit within both immigrant and minority identities, but they are also set apart
as being two distinct groups of their own, seemingly blurring the lines between
classical immigrant narratives.”
The idea of New World immigrants being nearer to a minority group, but also
possessing a distinct identity, is once again explored in Tracie Estrada’s essay
“New World Immigrants Create a New Narrative.” She explores how resistance
is seen more in New World immigrants and how historical elements and geographic
location again lead the New World immigrants to be more on the minority end of
the spectrum. Although, Estrada emphasizes the resistance seen in New World
immigrants, she does not ignore that assimilation can be present and gives an
example from “To Da-Duh, In Memoriam.” The new narrative referred to in the
title of this essay can be seen when New World immigrants bring their culture
and let it mix with the dominant culture. Estrada states, “due to the proximity
of their home country to the U.S., New World Immigrants bring a large amount of
their culture to this country.” The location of their native countries combined
with a historical narrative leads New World immigrants to create their own
unique identity and as Estrada writes in the first sentence of her essay, “New
World Immigrants cannot be categorized neatly into columns.”
Kimberly Loza’s research report “The Border Culture,” excellently examines even
more closely the idea of New World immigrants creating a distinct identity by
combining native heritage with the dominant culture. Loza primarily focuses on
New World immigrants from Mexico and seeks to answer the question of whether
Mexican Americans are immigrants or minorities. Like Boone and Estrada, she
examines how historical relations between the US and Mexico, as well as
geographic closeness, influence the identity of Mexican Americans. What
fascinated me the most was learning about the area on the border sometimes
called the “Third Nation,” where people identify more with each other and a
distinct identify, than with the cultures on either side of the border. It again
shows that New World immigrants really create their own identity away from that
of their native culture or the dominant culture of the land. Loza excellently
concludes her essay by discussing the difficulty of being both Mexican and
American and states “it is something that we do because we want to show love to
the two cultures that we love and embrace so dearly. We want the success of the
American Dream but, we also want to remain true to ourselves and embrace our own
heritage because it is also a very rich one.” That, in essence, is what being a
New World immigrant is all about.
All
three essays used history and geographic location to learn more about the
minority and immigrant aspects of New World immigrants. While examining the
question of whether New World immigrants are minorities or immigrants, the
evidence seemed to point more toward minorities because of previous exploitation
and contact. Although in the end, all three essays were able to display how New
World immigrants were an individual group, set apart from being either a
minority or immigrant. I learned to better value this vibrant group and the way
they blend language, traditions, and history into a new narrative.
