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LITR 5831 Seminar in
World / Multicultural Literature American Immigrant Literature |
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Carrie Brownstein
Sleater-Kinney
Todorov
self-other
equal but different 42, 75, 167, 239
Declaration notes
How does the opening of the Declaration embody or reflect "the American Dream?" How do the Declaration's narrative and values resemble an immigrant narrative?
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. ["Naturalization" is the making of immigrants to citizens; e.g., the INS = Immigration and Naturalization Service]
He has excited domestic insurrections* amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages*, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. . . . [*"domestic insurrections" = slave revolts, supposedly instigated by the British to weaken American war effort; **Indians as victims of immigration and population growth; Indian warfare depicted as terrorism]
omitted section on slavery
Constitution notes
1.2.3 Indians, 3/5
1.8.4 Naturalization
2.1.5 natural born citizen
4.1.3 fugitive slave clause
Article 14 born in the USA
Carnegie notes
1.1 small one-story house, poor but honest parents, of good kith and kin
1.3 optimistic nature
1.4 journalism, literacy, William Cobbett
1.4 mend shoes; cf. 2.18 bind shoes
1.7 poetry and romance (< royal folks)
1.8 father's business success
map of America, looking for
1.10 an intense admirer of the
1.11 denunciations of monarchical and aristocratic government, of privilege in all its forms, the grandeur of the republican system, the superiority of America, a land peopled by our own race, a home for freemen in which every citizen's privilege was every man's right
1.12 [aristocracy v. meritocracy].
1.13 creative destruction (hand looms to steam looms)
1.14 poverty
2.1 ["Presbyterian Church . . . infant damnation" refers to Calvinist doctrine of predestination or determinism vs. "free will," a theology also maintained by the American Puritans and "Pilgrims"]
2.2 left the Presby church
2.3 home influences, family values, domestic pleasure
2.4 My first business venture
2.5 evidence of organizing power
2.5 I did not understand steam machinery, but I tried to understand that much more complicated piece of mechanism—man.
2.5 networking
2.6 With the introduction and improvement of steam machinery, trade grew worse and worse in Dunfermline for the small manufacturers [economies of scale]
my father's sweet voice sang often to mother, brother, and me:
[2.7] "To the West, to the West, to the land of the free,
Where the mighty
2.8 chain migration
[2.9] I had left school forever, with the exception
2.9 Wallace, Bruce, Burns, fairy tales, Arabian nights
2.14 interpretation of reality through literature
2.15 ethnic enclave?
2.16 westward migration
2.17-18 [individual crafts?]
2.17 father weaves, markets, fails; problems of economy of scale, distribution of labor, capital
2.18 mother binds shoes; cf. 1.4
2.18 we had no servant
2.18 gems of Scottish minstrelsy . . . a moral
2.19 children of honest poverty
2.20 [mother creates community; cf. boyhood friends]
Chapter III. Pittsburgh and Work
3.1 great question, get to work, help the family to a start in the new land; prospect of want, x-dependent on others
3.5 my father found it necessary to give up hand-loom weaving and to enter the cotton factory of Mr. Blackstock . . . a hard life
3.6 Scotch and wished to relieve me from the engine [steam-loom]
3.6 penmanship, figures
3.8 learned double-entry bookkeeping.
3.11 generations divide
3.13 a great mistake not to seize the opportunity.
3.14 my first real start in life, heaven, ladder
newspapers, pens, pencils, and sunshine . . . learn something
Chapter IV: Colonel Anderson and Books
4.1 time for self-improvement, books
treasures of literature were unfolded to me.
4.2 Colonel Anderson opens library to boys, although we did not now work with our hands, some of us had done so, and that we were really working boys
4.3 windows were opened in the walls of my dungeon through which the light of knowledge streamed in. Every day's toil and even the long hours of night service were lightened by the book which I carried about with me and read in the intervals that could be snatched from duty.
CHAPTER VI. RAILROAD SERVICE
6.1 pure and good x base and vile
6.2 coarse men
tree of knowledge
refined young men, striving to improve themselves and become respected citizens
6.3 gold pieces as art
Uncle and Aunt Hogan, who had removed elsewhere
property-holders
6.4 management of affairs
make an investment for me
financially connected with my leader and great man
security for a loan
6.5 revenue from capital
something that I had not worked for with the sweat of my brow. . . . the goose that lays the golden eggs." . . .
CHAPTER VII. SUPERINTENDENT OF THE
7.3 strike
all men who had signed the paper, pledging themselves to strike, were dismissed
7.4 Slight attentions or a kind word to the humble often bring back reward as great as it is unlooked for. No kind action is ever lost.
about such actions: they are disinterested, and the reward is sweet in proportion to the humbleness of the individual whom you have obliged
7.5 necessary that we should have a servant. It was with the greatest reluctance my mother could be brought to admit a stranger into the family circle.
evertheless we could not escape the inevitable servant girl. One came, and others followed, and with these came also the destruction of much of that genuine family happiness which flows from exclusiveness. Being served by others is a poor substitute for a mother's labor of love.
7.6 neither nurse nor governess was my companion in infancy. No wonder the children of the poor are distinguished for the warmest affection and the closest adherence to family ties
7.7 Any accurate description of
We soon began to consider how we could get to the country
7.8 country lanes and gardens
7.9 aristocratic quarter
musical evenings
10.1 manufacture of iron.
interested in an iron mill
10.3 His German mind made him thorough.
no analysis of material, no scientific treatment
10.5 1862 that the
great oil wells of
CHAPTER XIX. THE "GOSPEL OF WEALTH"
19.1 I resolved to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution.
19.4 this public library was really my first gift
CHAPTER XX. EDUCATIONAL AND PENSION FUNDS
20.1 fifteen-million-dollar pension fund for aged university professors
20.2 Of all professions, that of teaching is probably the most unfairly, yes, most meanly paid, though it should rank with the highest. E
20.3 giving of organs to churches20.4 from no fault of their own, have not sufficient means to live respectably
20.5 answer to the question which will never down in my thoughts: "What good am I doing in the world to deserve all my mercies?"
presence of universal law and should bow our heads in silence and obey the Judge within, asking nothing, fearing nothing, just doing our duty right along, seeking no reward here or hereafter.
CHAPTER XXI. THE
21.1 Peace Society of Great Britain
Directional Orientations of American culture
Texas: Go West . . . Manifest Destiny . . . First Families of Virginia . . . the inevitable westward expansion of Anglo-European settlement
Mexican America: North-South dialectic . . . USA as "El Norte" . . . borderland usu. N-S
East Coast America: also North-South, but implicated in Westward Expansion, leading to U.S. Civil War
North as Puritans: middle-class culture, Calvinist religion, industry
South as Cavaliers: Southern gentlemen and ladies and, oh yeah, slaves and white trash
Of Plymouth Plantation
table of contents?
Exodus narrative: whole nation migrates from Egypt to Canaan (Promised Land), refuses to assimilate with new host culture (Israelites shouldn't worship Canaanite gods or intermarry with Canaanites)
Pilgrims: entire community migrates from Europe to America (Promised Land?), refuses to acknowledge new host culture's humanity or divinities and refuses to intermarry. (compare Crevecoeur)
My preference for Bradford relic of Anglo-American literary studies
Question: how like / unlike the standard immigrant narrative?
Protestantism ch. 1.1, 1.7
plain style: speech: opening
architecture: photos
clothing: modesty, neutrality, professional
knowledge of Pilgrims from England, but less of stay in Netherlands
ch. 3 3.3d primitive churches
4.3, 4.4 dangers of scattering, children
4.7 vast and unpeopled
ch. 11
Mayflower compact
Squanto
starving time
11.11 Squanto a special instrument sent by God
12.12 First Thanksgiving: vision of plenty
12.15-16 x-Christmas
ch 14 commonwealth and capitalism
19.7 Indian women
ch. 21 wealth > x-hold them together
ch 33 content with their conditions
Question: how like / unlike the standard immigrant narrative?
Problem of individualism and family-centered society, accentuated by migration and mobile society (criticize & celebrate)
Can America be a community of individuals?
Earlier semesters: read Exodus story from Bible
compared Jews leaving Egypt for Canaan (Promised Land)
to
Pilgrims leaving England for America (Promised Land)
migration as a people vs. migration as individuals and families (cf. Mormons)
immigration for religious freedom v. economic opportunity
freedom of religion > religion evolves rapidly in freemarket of ideas
religion again becomes comfortable with comfort, wealth, material gain
two-way motion: western migration & modernization, but religious primitivism
we can't stop moving and changing, but our forefathers had it right
Modernization and migration erode communities and extended families
> nuclear families, divorce, people living alone, rugged individualism as model of success
Pilgrims & Puritans as most community-minded of American immigrants
They migrated as a community and work to establish a community based on more than wealth: Christianity > social welfare
Puritan diaspora as base of liberal US: New England and northern Midwest
significance of literacy: the Puritans were never that numerous, but they're over-represented in American literary & cultural studies.
Why?
They wrote everything down, cultivating the most literate middle-class society and the strongest educational system.
Downsides:
community as repression, meddling, policing of morality: blue laws, Salem Witch Trials
Just as the Jews in the Promised Land swore not to mix with the Canaanites (i.e., to intermarry and assimilate)
the Pilgrims and Puritans in their Promised Land mixed little with American Indians (i.e., no assimilation to previous dominant culture, but became dominant culture themselves)
Scots Irish review
Not genealogically motivated, but partly autobiographical
I didn't dislike Scots-Irish culture as much as it dislikes me.
Scots-Irish deny ethnicity: "We're just Americans. Why can't everyone just be an American?"--i.e., an American like me!
However, Scots-Irish / Red-State culture increasingly plays ethnicity game of victimization and grievance: "Take Back America!"
But they don't go there: If Red State culture becomes ethnic instead of "just American," part of its rhetorical and symbolic power diminishes.