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2019 Midterm1
(assignment) |
LITR 4340
American Immigrant Literature Model Assignments |
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Erin Bates
The
Analysis of a New Home
The three pieces I chose for my web
highlights essay are directly related to assimilation and resistance within the
dominant culture for immigrants and minorities, and the views are similar to my
own observations. The midterm essays drew me due to the inherent unfairness of
immigrant and minority treatment, and the research proposal looked specifically
at the experiences of Vietnamese immigrants and the challenges they faced. These
three pieces led me to a greater understanding of the roadblocks placed in the
path of immigrants and minorities with the desire to explore this further in my
midterm essay and research proposal.
Amber Boone’s essay “A Look at
Assimilation and Resistance” focuses on the dichotomy of hope and pain that
characterize immigrant and minority narratives. Her observation that choice
distinguishes immigrants from minorities indicates the primary impediment to
minority assimilation: “they did not choose the ‘American Dream,’ and their
experiences, therefore, may oftentimes model the ‘American Nightmare’” (Boone).
I especially found her discussion of resistance to assimilation as merited
beneficial to her argument. This central conflict between two figures heavily
into her observations into the attitudes that immigrants and minorities take
toward the dominant culture, and I found it a valuable insight.
While Dorothy Noyes’s essay “Resistance
Versus Persistence: How Does Immigrant Literature Differ?” makes many of the
same points as Boone’s essay, I found her concentration on the similarities to
be unique to discussion in class. I agreed wholeheartedly in her point that
“both do well in illustrating the feeling of ‘otherness’ so often ignored by the
dominant culture” (Noyes). This helps to paint both immigrants and minorities as
outsiders in the eyes of the dominant culture and provides an excellent point
from which to discuss the fundamental differences between the two.
My decision to focus on Jessica Tran’s
research report “Rebuilding a New Life” was done mainly with the idea of the
dominant culture as a gatekeeper, and the admittance of refugees figures heavily
into this idea. Her subject of the difficulties experienced by a group that
straddles the line of choice and forced migration brings the two concepts
discussed before together into a unique perspective. I was especially interested
in the research she’d done on the methods the U.S. government used in resettling
the refugees, such as the fact that “official resettlement policy aimed at
dispersing refugees to minimize the impact on local receiving communities and
integrating refugees into the American economy and society as quickly as
possible” (Tran). In trying to make things easier on the host country, the
dominant culture had inadvertently caused more distress to the refugees by
isolating them from possible sources of comfort. By making the process more
difficult, the refugee experience mirrors the minority narrative in depriving
the benefits of an immigrant community in their efforts to adjust to the United
States.
Though the immigrant narrative can be
one of romantic hope, these pieces display the difficulties that immigrants and
minorities can encounter when interacting with the dominant culture. These
difficulties paint the dominant culture into an ironic dichotomy of being both
welcoming and unwelcoming of newcomers to varying degrees. The arbitrary nature
of this process especially fascinates me, and I’d like to explore it further in
my research proposal. As a member of the dominant culture, I think that America
can do better by those who, as my dad once put it, “are half American simply
before they even get here.”
