Carlos Marquina

The American Immigrant Narrative: Melting Pot? Or Buffet Table?

          The idea of the melting pot has been a long-standing way of attempting to explain the uniqueness of the American immigrant narrative. Crevecoeur first introduced the concept in 1872 as he wrote about the “mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes” from which Americans had now risen. He speaks eloquently of this new Man who is no longer European, but something altogether new along with a new culture and new laws. The new American may have had an English mother and a German father, but he is now an American. Europe has been left behind. This idea of the melting pot has been a huge influence on the American view of immigration. New immigrants are supposed to arrive and jump into the pot. Old lives and customs are to be left behind and the new American culture, with their added spice, picked up. Yet, the melting pot fails as an accurate analogy of the reality of the American immigrant narrative. Since America’s founding, the Puritans did not buy into the melting pot idea. Crevecoeur himself excepted the New England provinces from his idea of the new man since they are unmixed descendants of Englishmen. The Puritans, however, were vital in the development of the American laws and culture by their work ethic and high literacy. So if the melting pot is an inaccurate way of describing the immigrant narrative, how can it be described? Other alternatives have been offered such as the mosaic (Richey final), or the rags-to-riches idea made popular by Andrew Carnegie. These descriptions also fail to take into account the complexities, richness, and possibilities of the immigrant narrative as a vital part of the American narrative as a whole. In order to stick with the food theme, I’d like to propose the American immigrant narrative as a buffet table.

          The mosaic idea, although more accurate than the melting pot because it takes into account the individual struggles and variety within the immigrant narrative, still fails as a proper analogy. Throughout the semester, we were exposed to a very diverse offering of stories, poems, plays, essays, articles, and other narratives from a very diverse cast of authors. These authors were representative of a wide array of immigrant and minority populations in America, yet it was still a very small sampling of the diversity of cultures and nations-of-origin of many immigrants. As explained by Richey, the mosaic analogy is “small fragments in different shapes, sizes and colors merging together to create a larger picture. Not all of the materials may match, they may not fit perfectly together, but when viewed from a distance they create a clearer picture.” Where the melting pot analogy does not allow for exclusion, the mosaic analogy does not allow for spaces where mixing does occur.

Junot Díaz’s story How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie exemplifies this aspect of the immigrant narrative. The main character in the story is not interested in viewing the larger picture of the different women that make up parts of his community. Although there are instances to certain exclusions depending on the girl’s ethnicity or color, the narrator focuses on how those differences can be erased, in his case as a hormonal teenager, through conquest and sex. The story brings a different perspective from Crevecoeur’s western European- influenced melting pot. Díaz, a Dominican-American, brings to the story a different colonial point of view. Whereas Crevecoeur’s new Man was a mix of colonialists, Diaz presents the narrator as a new American who is a mix of colonialists-colonized-immigrant. The New World wave of immigration into America has brought a new sort of immigrant that America had not yet experienced. The mestizo, a person of mixed European and Amerindian descent, is not new in America but the large numbers of Central and South American immigrants have brought a new complexity to the American immigrant narrative. Whereas Old World immigrants, such as Euro-Americans and Asian-Americans, tend not to mix racially, the mestizo immigrants already come from a tradition where inter-racial mixing occurs. This is not to say that racial biases and racism do not exist—the color code is still at play where lighter is better. But inter-racial mixing is less biased for the New World immigrant. Actually, it can be said that mixing into the white culture is preferred. The narrator of the story explains, “The white ones are the ones you want the most, aren’t they(?)” An interesting turn that the story highlights is that the once colonized is now the conqueror, and in his mind any sexual conquest, whether it be a browngirl, blackgirl, whitegirl, or halfie, is fine by him. But by the story’s end, after his conquest, the narrator is still left putting the government cheese back into the refrigerator. A sense of displacement within the American culture is still evident.

This notion is different than some of the Old-World immigrant narratives that were studied in the first half of the semester. Where previous characters, such as Panna in A Wife’s Story or Lali and William in The English Lesson, end their narratives with an optimistic outlook of self-discovery in this new land, the New World immigrant seems less naïve. This is not to say that Old-World immigrants do not suffer in the transition to assimilate to American culture, but through the stories we read, they seem to come out of the struggle with a positive attitude. Some explanations to the New World immigrant taking on a more realist attitude to assimilation is that they have had previous experience with American interventions in their home countries. Diaz makes reference to the United States invading the Dominican Republic. Paule Marshall writes of her grandmother’s death during the 1937 airstrike on Barbados by the English (yes, not American yet still representative of the dominant culture). In El Patron, Tito’s grandfather fought with Pancho Villa (Villa had several skirmishes with the United States). The American experience is already somewhat tainted for these characters. But this does not mean that they do not want to assimilate or become Americans. It just makes for a harder and more complex path to assimilating into the dominant culture. And it seems that assimilation is not really the final result of the immigrant narrative.

To completely assimilate, the immigrant would have to become fully American. But what is that? The core of this class was to discover the immigrant narrative. Objective 2c lays out the basic stages of the immigrant narrative: 1) leave the Old World; 2) Journey to the New World; 3) Shock, resistance, exploitation, discrimination; 4) Assimilation and loss of ethnic identity; 5) Rediscovery of ethnic identity. The “American” is an evolving creature. To be and American today is different than being an American 50 or 100 years ago. This is where the value of this course lies. In order to better understand the American identity, it is vital to understand the complexity of the immigrant narrative. Almost every American is aware of their immigrant ancestry, it is something to take pride in, yet it doesn’t take away from one’s Americanness. It actually adds to it. In Junot Diaz’s interview, he explains how he and other writers of recent immigrant backgrounds are typecast as minority writers. Yet he argues that he writes of the American experience, his American experience.

This aspect is what I found to be most rewarding of this course: the American experience through different perspectives, styles, and genres. Although I am myself a first-generation Mexican immigrant, I can identify with Diaz’s story. I like girls of every color too! Or Tito’s struggle with being forced to join the army, or Panna’s cringing at the insensitivity of cruel jokes made on behalf of Indian- Americans. Back to the analogy of the buffet table, the immigrant narrative is made up of many unique and complex “dishes” all laid out on the table. We are free to choose, as we like, and yes, oftentimes some dishes are preferred over others (model minorities), others are just nibbled at, some completely ignored. The beauty lies in that we can fill our plate and mix and match. Sometimes the flavors work, other times they don’t.