Mary Brooks

American Immigrant Narrative: Fact or Fiction

When considering the idea of a narrative of any kind one must be cognizant of the definition of that word to avoid misconceptions. According to dictionary.com, a narrative is “a story or account of events, experiences, or the like, whether true or fictitious”. By the mere fact that it is story, there will be truth, exaggerations of the truth and lies. This does not mean that the narrative is not representative of the plight or the experience of being an immigrant. It simply means that each story must be taken on its own and not assumed to be true for all immigrants. These stories are cultural narratives, described in Dr. White’s critical sources page, as “charged with meaning; otherwise it is not a story, merely a sequence of events”. These are the stories that tell us all who we are and explain why we are here. These experiences of the immigrant are a wonderful place for stories of finding a place in an unknown world. These are, however, stories no closer to the ultimate truth than anything else represented to the masses as the facts. These are the stories that dramatize the common human emotional states no matter where or who you are with the recurrent themes of hope, freedom, acceptance, success and rediscovery.

The American dream is a dream of hope, it is a hope for a better future that all of us share and that the immigrant narrative holds up as the first step in the narrative journey. As described in Objective 2c, “Stage 1: Leave the Old World”, this step out of the old world is a step based purely on hope for something better. This step is exemplified in “Soap and Water” when this hope is described as “the dream of the unobtainable was the only air in which the soul could survive”. This description of how the hope for something seemingly unobtainable can keep an immigrant going even when it seems out of reach is decidedly a literary construct. But it describes clearly the feeling of leaving all that is known to you and surviving on hope alone on a path to an unknown future. As Crevecoeur so nicely puts it, the old world is an “invisible power giving a few a very visible one [power]” Where as according to Crevecoeur, the new world is hope “the spirit of an industry which is unfettered and unrestrained, because each person works for himself”. It is hope for Andrew Carnegie in “A sunny disposition is worth more that fortune” that propels his family from Scotland to the New World. Hope is a universal truth that is easy accessible even to those who did not need to physically leave the old world and come to a new one. There are many who emotionally need to leave an old way of being for a new path and in that way the immigrant narrative speaks to us all. But, hope, in and of itself is not a fact that can be upheld by the immigrant narrative, it is but a choice and hardly a universal fact.

With hope comes freedom, represented quite clearly in the immigrant narratives as the New World. In Objective 2c, “Stage 2: Journey to the New World”, this step into what the immigrants consider a new world opens up the doors to freedom. While Crevecoeur describes the new world as a “fair country discovered and settled”, I am sure that the Native American’s would agree that the country was neither newly discovered nor newly settled. This is a part of the immigrant narrative that is very subjective both in the settling of the new world and in the actual journey to the new world. The Native Americans find that what is so lovingly called the New World by Crevecoeur is but the beginning of a nightmare. As Handsome Lake clearly portrays the coming of the Europeans and the bringing of the Indian’s destruction, “…I did not dream that these people would suffer so. Then did even the devil himself lament that his evil had been so great”. The journey to the New World was also not about freedom for the African’s brought here to be slaves. Theirs is a story of brutal hardship and slavery through forced immigration. The immigrant narrative focuses clearly on the hope of the journey the opportunities of a New World forgetting that to some it is neither new or a voluntary journey. It is this blindness to reality, which shows very clearly, that the immigrant narrative exists by clinging to fiction with a complete disregard for the facts of the situation.

Acceptance is another universal desire for humanity, shown in the Immigrant Narrative as something that must be earned with hard work. In Objective 2c, “Stage 3: Shock, resistance, exploitation and discrimination (immigrant here overlaps from minority experience)”, this step is where the immigrant is tested and through hard work can overcome these obstacles. While there is an overlap with the minority immigrant narrative here, I would protest that while the immigrant can work hard and overcome discrimination based on class, the minority will always be recognizable by color alone and thus the immigrant journey [narrative] is not so clearly linked. In “The English Lesson” we find immigrants who are discriminated based on their inability to speak English, but that their willingness to “not be afraid to try” is what keeps them going forward even if they never reach success. However, when the dominant culture is considered in this stage of the narrative it is through hard work that their lives are made better. As Crevecoeur states, “they receive ample rewards for their labors”, hard work will bring success. This belief in overcoming these obstacles in stage 3 is a fact for the dominant culture but not so clearly a fact for the minority immigrant. The success found by Carnegie as an immigrant following the immigrant narrative path is not a success available to all. And a personal history written by a man [Carnegie] who can afford to hide his faults is certainly not one to be believed as actual fact. The immigrant narrative finds in this stage a universal desire for overcoming hardship to create success, but as “The Lesson” states so clearly and eloquently, a “society in which some people can spend on a toy what it would cost to feed a family of 6 or 7” is not a society open to everyone. It is not a narrative where the fact of hard work can overcome the reality of a society where color and class matters.

Success is the ultimate goal of the immigrant narrative and is often correlated with assimilation into the American dream and culture. Described in Objective 2c as “Stage 4: Assimilation to dominant American culture and loss of ethnic identity (departs from minority experience)”. This stage is one that will probably take generations for truly successful assimilation into the dominant culture to occur. There are ways to short circuit the process such as intermarriage or having the courage and the openness to leave tradition and culture behind at an early stage. But, as described in Objective 2d, assimilation is a three generation process not something that can occur when an immigrant steps off the boat or plane onto the new world. In “Thank God for the Jews”, we see the beginning of assimilation and its struggles in a first generation couple. They are living the American dream he is a doctor and she is a house wife and they live a life just outside their traditions but completely aware of those traditions. As they struggle to find halal meat, they discover an openness to accept kosher meat instead, “what’s kosher is okay for us”, which shows an openness they would not have been able to allow at home. However, this stage in the immigrant narrative is not really meant for model minorities like Fatima who do not allow themselves to assimilate completely into American society. While it maybe a fact that assimilation leads to success in American society, the idea that it is the only path to success must be rethought. Stage 4 is not a fact for many of the model minority immigrants that are entering the country today; it appears to be a fiction created by the dominant culture to limit the American dream.

In a society where stage 4 is never really met, how does one enter the fifth and final stage in objective 2c “Stage 5: Rediscovery or reassertion of ethnic identity (only partial)”. This stage is the stage where after three generations the descendant of Irish immigrants opens an Irish Pub, the descendent of Polish immigrants learns to cook Polish meals and the Chinese American marries a new immigrant from China. This is the stage where romanticism and a desire to connect with something bigger takes root. While it may be true that this rediscovery of the past occurs, in a society where intermarriage is the norm for the dominant culture what exactly is the culture to rediscover? The melting pot that began in the 1700’s makes it difficult to say that an individual of the dominant culture is more one ethic group than another. Individuals of the model minority never really give up all their culture and traditions, so rediscovery after generations is more about limits to dilution than rediscovering something that is completely lost. Stage 5 can be considered to be a fact of the immigrant narrative, however by its very nature rediscovering the past is both nostalgic and romantic and thus fiction.

It cannot be said that everyone’s immigrant narrative is the same or that everyone will follow diligently in these five stages. Since as stated in Objective 3e that the second generation writes the narrative, the distance afforded by telling the stories of your parents allows for much of the facts to be glossed over. There is also the difficulty that those who write immigrant narratives that fall outside the expected norm will not get published. So, what does one do with the immigrant narrative? Is it fact or is it fiction? I believe that question is almost unanswerable because I believe that in every case of fiction there is a grain of fact. The immigrant narrative cannot be so clearly cut along the lines of truth and lies or fact and fiction. It is the story that describes us as a nation, it is a story that allows for those who want more to come to this country and believe that they can be successful. It is the American Dream, and it is a work of beautiful fiction.

Minority and Immigrant Narratives: Purgatory or Paradise

The minority narrative emphasizes the idea that the American Dream found by the immigrant narrative is inaccessible to all. However, the immigrant narrative holds that the American Dream is not meant to be just for some, it is meant to be for all. These differences between the minority narrative and the immigrant narrative create what some might call a dialog, but others would see as a strained argument. As described in Objective 3b, “Minorities did not freely choose the American Dream and may speak of exploitation instead of opportunity”, the minority experience is very different from the immigrant narrative. In “The Lesson”, Sugar summarizes the minority experience quite clearly “…that this is not much of a democracy if you ask me. Equal chance to pursue happiness means an equal crack at the dough, don’t it?”. This discrepancy between the minority experience, be it African American or Native American, creates tension between immigrants and minorities that can be seen in their respective narratives. The American Dream becomes something unobtainable to some, a source of oppression to others and happiness for many more.

The African American minority narrative talks of the same hope for success that is desired by the immigrant narrative and the American Dream, it is simply unobtainable to them. The African Americans who came to this country are described by Olaudah Equiano as wanting similar things to the immigrants, such as to learn English and to have the “opportunity of selling my little property” to succeed. The desire to succeed to have ownership over their lives is not unique to the immigrant narrative. However, in the minority narrative ownership over their lives is not just figurative, as it is for the immigrants, it is quite literal. As we are able to see clearly from the journey of Gustavus Vassa, “I who had been a slave in the morning, trembling at the will of another, was become my own master, and completely free” freedom is the key to life. Unfortunately as mentioned in Objective 3b, the minority narrative is one of forced immigration and forced desire for freedom from slavery. It is not from joy and hope that the minority comes to the American Dream, it is by overcoming despair that they attempt to find a reason to keep going. In the world described in Fredrick Douglass’ narrative, as having a “…the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery”, how can one find a path to the American Dream from such awful circumstances, except by sheer luck as Douglass has done. The immigrant narrative of other groups may find discrimination as described in “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs” when the women encounter children who call them an “impossible word which belongs to another place and time”. However, there really is no comparison to the struggles and trials of the African American minority narrative.

The Native American minority narrative is also a narrative of hope for success but that hope is quickly squashed by the dominant culture. The American Dream is completely unobtainable for the Native American’s who are to this day held separate from the American government. That separateness does not stop them from dreaming as Louis Erdrich describes so eloquently in “American Horse”, “In herself she felt the same kind of possibilities [as a butterfly] and closed her eyes”. The dream of all the possibilities makes the young Native American child feel “powerful in that moment” it is only in the years that pass that she becomes broken and lost by the isolation of reservation life. The life that is imaged by the immigrants is completely unobtainable to Native American’s, who while they were here first they are not part of the United States government that Crystos describes as “a crazy person”.  And unfortunately, because they are isolated by the government, the American Dream is unobtainable to them.

Where the immigrant narrative finds freedom in America the minority narrative speaks of oppression. The New world is a place of new opportunity for the immigrants as outlined in Objective 3e. But, for the African Americans that opportunity is for a life of servitude and abuse with no hope of escape. The Alice Walker’s story “Elethia” we find a man who in life fought against the slavery he was born into and even when slavery ended “his mama and daddy didn’t know nothing about slavery’d done ended for near ‘bout ten years…”. The idea that something as important as knowing that the law had changed was kept from Albert’s parents is an awful representation of the oppression that continued past the end of slavery. The minority narrative in this case clearly represents, through Albert, the idea that the dominant culture oppressed the minorities and kept them from any enjoyment of the American Dream that is so prevalent in the immigrant narrative.

The Native American’s fair no better when it comes to the oppression felt while trying to live the American Dream. In “American Horse”, we are presented with Albertine a woman who is about to loose her son. The social worker who arrives at her home describes her mission to remove the child “I want to find that boy and salvage him”. The American Dream that has allowed the dominant society to flourish is not available to Albertine. But, perhaps her son once removed from the oppressive reservation existence will find that dream more accessible. But, even that thought is squashed by the idea in Objective 3f that there is a color code and that it alone has “consequences for destiny”. If destiny is determined by the color of the skin then oppression is all that the minority narrative can reveal to either the African American or the Native American story. While color certainly has its effect perhaps luck is another one of those unknowable factors in determining where an individual’s life ends up.

Narrative is a story written by those who wish to dramatize the conditions they find themselves in or the condition in which they perceive others to have been in. The American Dream is a narrative written to give people hope for greatness that many of us will never obtain. The minority narrative emphasizes all those facts surrounding the loss and oppression of its people. It is a story written by those who are lucky enough to have succeeded in the American Dream as writers and as successes in life. So, is the immigrant narrative far from the minority narrative, I believe the differences between the two narratives can be filled by luck. The luck found by the writers who have been given the opportunity to write these stories and tell the tales of a past they did not experience.