Essay 1: Review, focus, and extend overall seminar experience to demonstrate learning and preview potential applications in research, teaching, or creative writing.

Katie Vitek

Immigrant Narrative as Cultural Narrative

          The pattern of the immigrant narrative demonstrates its potential as a cultural narrative because it corresponds to that of a coming-of-age story. It encompasses a journey in which a character takes risks, deals with conflict, and overcomes challenges. The characters also tend to be likable, getting readers on their side much like the awkward underdog archetypes of the latter genre. The history of America is also a story about growth - the maturing of an entire people. These similarities in pattern and theme create a parallel between the immigrant narrative and the American cultural narrative. Furthering the connection is the realism of the pattern. Although there are some immigrant narratives that may be deemed “Cinderella stories,” most align themselves more closely with harsh reality. If a character undergoes mistreatment, the reader will share in his insecurity because there is no promise it will end. No one expects a fairy godmother to come and save the day. The same is true in the life of the reader, no matter who she is. In reality, when we experience hardship it comes intertwined with insecurity because there’s never a guarantee of a happy outcome. The only guarantee is that life will go on, and our story will continue, for better or worse. That is one important feature of the immigrant narrative: It doesn’t get resolved. It doesn’t end. It raises questions about what will happen in a character’s future, but then doesn’t answer them. It’s an open-ended genre that reflects real struggles. It strays off the narrative path, much like life. For that reason, it provides a window into authentic American culture. 

          As I wrote in my midterm, one way of describing these features is to say that the immigrant narrative is driven by personal development, not plot development. Although a narrative pattern is recognizable, it is blurred, never static. That is because each story’s individual pattern is dependent upon a character’s actions and reactions, which are not predetermined. For example, in A Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Eugene O’Neill sketches a family portrait by presenting one honest day. Nothing special happens on that day. There is no dramatic event for the story to revolve around or lead up to. The drama is in the ordinary. It is in the tense silences in which the readers ask themselves the same questions the characters are asking themselves – questions about addiction, loyalty, and the brutal truth behind family ties. For instance, when it is clear that a character is drunk, he or she does not make any kind of theatrical spectacle. There is simply the tension of waiting to see if he or she will do so. During casual conversation, the characters drift back and forth between volatile topics and mundane chatter. Edmund notes, “We don’t seem able to avoid unpleasant topics, do we?” Recognition of discomfort is one feature that separates immigrant narratives from other genres. In another genre, snide comments would build into a dramatic fight and perhaps some shocking accusations. Instead, accusations don’t have to be made outright for the audience to feel their existence. Faults are acknowledged just as the discomfort is, and then the story moves on. That’s not to say the story is not dramatic, only that it is not made overly dramatic for effect. It’s real life drama presented in a real way – the way the characters approach it, not the way a formulaic plot would build up to it.

          So what does all this have to do with growing up? The narrative pattern reflects a real-life pattern of dealing with everyday issues: tension, discomfort, insecurity, (relief?), repeat. It doesn’t end in happily-ever-after, or even end at all. In “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs,” Jayanti experiences tension from the anxiety of expectation, the discomfort of living with people she barely knows and having to figure out who they are and how to get along with them, and the insecurity of not knowing whether her expectations will meet with reality or not. Ultimately they don’t, and she pays a harsh price for her ignorance. In the end, she does not learn an encouraging lesson or overcome her insecurity; she is left numb, her story incomplete.  What she takes away from the experience could be applied to the immigrant narrative: “And now it makes sense that the beauty and the pain should be part of each other.” When adults look back on youth, it seems like a beautiful time, but no one can deny that it includes a lot of pain. In the story of an immigrant or minority, there are beautiful times filled with hope and dreams, but always that insistent pain making its way in. The blending of the two emotions lends a feeling of authenticity to these narratives that is different from plot-driven stories which can feel pieced together. Instead of a series of separate episodes that could be labeled positive or negative, multicultural literature weaves the two together like a memory of youth.

          Nowhere is the discomfort more intense than in minority narratives. Minority narratives share the features of immigrant narratives I’ve discussed, but they take those features to a higher level. In “Children of the Sea,” Edwidge Danticat blends the pain of the old world with the anxiety of journeying to the new world. But instead of feeling anxious about how they will survive in the new world, they are anxious about whether they will survive at all. Their journey was motivated by hope, but the reader sees that their reality is hopeless. As the narrator says, “people are just too hopeful, and sometimes hope is the biggest weapon of all to use against us.” We’d like to think this isn’t true, but its presence in minority and immigrant literature makes its resonance hard to ignore.

          In my second research post I looked at the experiences of Native Americans. I found that in the 1870s, Indian reform groups were gaining sympathy for their claim that the right of discovery was unfair. It must have been a hopeful time, until the dominant culture responded to their hope by creating boarding schools. It seems that the more helpful attention the tribes got, the more the dominant culture felt the need to extinguish their hope. We see the same type of treatment in slave narratives. For instance, when Olaudah Equiano came close to reaching freedom, accusations were made that he was planning to escape. The repetition of being hopeful only to be disappointed has an important impact on the minority perspective. That perspective is part of what makes minority narratives more intense. In her 2008 midterm, Dana Kato stated, “For African-Americans and Native-Americans in particular, two groups who did not immigrate to the United States in search of the American Dream, the resistance is not just to a different culture, but to an oppressor who they eye with suspicion.” Because that suspicion is so keenly felt by minority characters, it carries over to readers who worry for the characters. This suspicion may be similar to that of a country questioning its government or a child questioning his parents. The give and take of having one’s happiness depend upon an authority is something that people from every ethnic group can empathize with in some way.

          Despite extreme adversity, these characters have no choice but to keep moving. The patterns of their struggles are shown through the patterns of their narratives, and repeated time and time again. Each experience will be a little different, and we hope that they will move the character closer toward fulfillment. Unfortunately, there is no way to be sure of that. This pattern represents the darker side of growing up. It can also be applied to young adults who face different types of adversity and hope to get past it and build a future for themselves. The applicability of the pattern to so many different groups, whether immigrants, minorities, or even members of the dominant culture, is evidence of its ability to describe an American cultural narrative. No two Americans share identical experiences, but they do share in a struggle to reach their own American Dreams. That dream will differ for each person, depending on what group he belongs to and what that group allows him to hope for. But the fact remains that all Americans must struggle repeatedly to reach a desired end that will likely never come. There are many differences between minority and immigrant narratives, but their similarities are important enough to identify them as partners in a larger cultural narrative that tells the story of a country coming-of-age.