Eric Wilson

The Complexity of the American Dream as Exemplified in

American Immigrant Literature

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  These powerful words not only set off a chain of events leading to the founding of the United States of America, they have since found their way into the hearts and minds of people around the world, drawing an eclectic array of immigrants to her shores.  Indeed the phrase “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” is likely the earliest articulation of what is now commonly referred to as the American Dream.  But the American Dream is fraught with complexity.  And I would argue that nowhere is the complexity of the American Dream thrown into starker relief than within the American immigrant narrative.  In order to examine this proposition it is important to gain some perspective as to how this idea of the American Dream is reflected in American immigrant literature. 

In Letter III, entitled “What is an American?” of his Letters from an American Farmer, Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur writes, “…urged by a variety of motives, here they [immigrants] came.  Every thing has tended to regenerate them; new laws, a new mode of living, a new social system; here they become men:…here they rank as citizens.  By what invisible power has this surprising metamorphosis been performed?  By that of the laws and that of their industry.  The laws, the indulgent laws, protect them as they arrive, stamping on them the symbol of adoption; they receive ample reward for their labours” (2).  In his correspondence, Crevecoeur tells of a land in which anything was possible, provided one was sufficiently industrious. Indeed, as it is expressed by the narrator in Yezierska’s “Soap and Water,” “for hundreds of years the persecuted races all over the world were nurtured on hopes of America.  When a little baby in my mother’s arms, before I was old enough to speak, I saw all around me weary faces light up with thrilling tales of the far-off ‘golden country’” (4).  What is perhaps most alluring about this new society, and indeed the American Dream itself is the meritocratic notion that if you just work hard enough, and play by the rules, then the sky is the limit.

When examining the American immigrant literature to which I’ve been exposed thus far, it strikes me that one of its more prominent features/recurring themes is a focus on hard work generally, and education specifically, as paramount to achieving the American Dream; and herein lies its complexity.  For while hard work and education are necessary to achieving the American Dream, they are not sufficient; there are no guarantees.

In Yezierska’s “Bread Givers,” Max’s work ethic reveals itself quickly upon his arrival in America.  He speaks of having nothing but a bundle on his back, and was therefore forced to work immediately upon disembarking in order to survive.  On coming upon a foreman in need of workers, before even waiting for an answer, he “snatched up a shovel from the stack and dug into the snow” (1).  He goes on to say “at the end of that day, when I was paid a dollar, I felt the riches of all America in my hand” (1).  His triumph was short-lived, however, as there was no more work shoveling snow the next day.  Left with no other option but to walk the streets, he happened upon an old man, struggling with the pushcart from which he sold clothes.  Again, without really giving the man any other option, Max was given a job driving the pushcart and yelling “Pay cash clothes.”  The excerpt notes that, in subsequent paragraphs, Max goes on to tell how he rose from driving that pushcart to owning his own store and a chain of stores.  It therefore seems reasonable to infer that Max’s perspective when recalling the opportunity America afforded him is informed in large part by the fact that he was ultimately successful.  The system worked for him, and the American Dream became a reality.

Contrast this with the protagonist in “Soap and Water.”  The story’s narrator finds herself being denied her college diploma, and told that she would not be recommended as a teacher, because of her personal appearance.  “She told me that my skin looked oily, my hair unkempt, and my finger-nails sadly neglected.  She told me that I was utterly unmindful of the little niceties of the well-groomed lady…And she ended with ‘Soap and water are cheap.  Any one can be clean’” (1).  The narrator simply cannot comprehend why such considerations were remotely relevant.  She had worked so hard.  “While they condemned me as unfit to be a teacher, because of my appearance, I was slaving to keep them clean.  I was slaving in a laundry from five to eight in the morning, before going to college, and from six to eleven at night, after coming from college.  Eight hours of work a day, outside my studies.  Where was the time and the strength for the ‘little niceties of the well-groomed lady’” (2).  She speaks of her longing to go to college being borne out of what was essentially unfathomable desperation.  Yet it never seemed to occur to her that her physical appearance might have any bearing on her success in America.  When confronted with this harsh reality that her hard work and attempts to further her education were not determinative with respect to her ability to be hired as a teacher, she is at least temporarily stopped in her tracks.  “I was so obsessed and consumed with my grievances that I could not get away from myself and think things out in the light.  I was in the grip of that blinding, destructive, terrible thing—righteous indignation” (4).  How could this be possible?  She had done everything that could have possibly been asked from her, and so much more.  The sense of betrayal felt by the narrator here is palpable; “I was tricked and foiled” (4).  At this point in her story, her faith in the American Dream has been momentarily shaken, its meritocratic nature called into question.  Instead she finds an empty slogan under which hard work and education are supplanted in favor of more superficial considerations; thus the complexity of the American Dream.  As further evidence of this complexity, take the fact that the narrator confesses that even in her “darkest moments of despair, hope clamored loudest” (4).  Ultimately, after reencountering Miss Van Ness, “one from the clean world human enough to be friendly” (5), she finds her faith restored “singing a song of new life: “America! I found America” (5).

Sadly, not all faith lost is restored.  Sui Sin Far’s “In the Land of the Free” begins with such optimism:  “See, Little One—the hills in the morning sun.  There is thy home for years to come.  It is very beautiful and thou wilt be very happy there…Yes, my olive bud; there is where thy father is making a fortune for thee” (3).  Lae Choo can barely contain her excitement as she nears America, bringing Little One to meet his father, Hom Hing, for the first time.  After returning to China to give birth to their child at the insistence of her husband, Lae Choo is finally making her way back to San Francisco following a near twenty-month absence.  Upon her arrival, this newly reunited immigrant family is faced with circumstances they could not have possibly imagined.  “’I’m afraid,’ said the customs officer, ‘that we cannot allow the boy to go ashore.  There is nothing in the papers that you have shown us-your wife’s papers and your own—having any bearing upon the child” (4).  As Little One had not been conceived at the time Hom Hing and Lae Choo had their immigration papers drawn up, he was not mentioned therein; and as a result of his being born outside of the U.S., his legal status was found to be in question.  After great agony, Lae Choo, “accustomed to obedience…yielded the boy to her husband, who in turn delivered him to the first officer…Thus was the law of the land complied with” (5).  Distraught at having her only child kept from her, Hom Hing attempts to console Lae Choo, patting her shoulder reassuringly, telling her “there is no need to grieve so; he will soon gladden you again.  There cannot be any law that would keep a child from its mother!” (6).  Unfortunately, getting Little One back does not happen as quickly or easily as either had hoped or expected.  “Five months had passed with Lae Choo through the Golden Gate; but the great Government at Washington still delayed sending the answer which would return him to his parents” (7).  In this case, Hom Hing and Lae Choo may take issue with Crevecoeur’s characterization of America’s laws as ‘indulgent’.  Hom Hing seems truly confounded that the fact he was a Chinese merchant who had been in business in San Francisco for many years in no way changed legal implications of sending Lae Choo back to China to give birth to their son.  Hom Hing incorrectly assumed that no ‘law would keep a child from his mother.’  Rather than protect and stamp on them the symbol of the adoption, the laws of America have profoundly alienated these immigrant parents (Lae Choo especially) from what they believed America to be.   Faith is temporarily restored when Jack Clancy offers his services in getting Little One back.  “Oh…you are a hundred man good!” (8).  Yet when Clancy informs them that his services come at a hefty price, faith is lost again; “You not one hundred man good; you just common white man” (9).    Finally, having nothing else to offer, Lae Choo piles up all of her jewelry (sans a particularly meaningful ring given to her by Hom Hing) before Clancy for him to sell in order to obtain the money necessary to reclaim Little One.  He complies, despite the slightest hesitation.  Finally the necessary paperwork was obtained, and Lae Choo went to the mission to bring Little One home. 

“The mission woman talked as she walked.  She told Lae Choo that little Kim, as he had been named by the school, was the pet of the place, and that his little tricks and ways had delighted everyone.  He had been rather difficult to manage at first and had cried much for his mother; ‘but children so soon forget, and after a month he seemed quite at home and played around as bright and happy as a bird.’ 

‘Yes.’ Responded Lae Choo.  ‘Oh, yes, yes!’

But she did not hear what was said to her.  She was walking in a maze of anticipatory joy” (10-11).

When finally reunited with Little One “she fell on her knees and stretched her hungry arms toward her son.  But the Little One shrunk from her and tried to hide himself in the folds of the white woman’s skirt.  ‘Go ‘way, go ‘way!’ he bade his mother” (11).  While this is where the story ends, it seems inconceivable that whatever modicum of faith in the American Dream that may have been regained at finally getting the Little One back, despite the steep financial cost, was in this moment lost forever.  Lae Choo will likely never be able to reconcile the American Dream with the America whose legal niceties have so damaged, perhaps from her perspective irrevocably, the mother-child bond. 

To conclude, it’s interesting to note that when considering the complexity of the American Dream as it is reflected in the American immigrant narrative, I began to realize that, in many respects, this complexity is the tie that binds American immigrants together with natural born citizens.  While those of us born here start out much closer to the American Dream than those who long to live it from afar, in many cases risking everything for a chance at it, we all share this same complex relationship.  While we all aspire to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” and even though the Declaration of Independence refers to these as “unalienable Rights” with a capital ‘R’, there are no guarantees.  For some of us, our faith in the American Dream will never waiver.  For others, it will falter, only to be restored.  And in some tragic cases, one’s faith in the American Dream is shaken to its core, never to be regained.  Such is the nature of this great experiment known as the United States of America; whether we’re born into it, buy into it, or both.

The American Immigrant and Minority Narratives:

Inextricably Linked, Yet in Constant Tension

The American immigrant and minority narratives are inextricably linked, yet in constant tension with one another.  When comparing the two, it is useful to conjure up the image of a Venn diagram.  While the immigrant and minority narratives at points overlap, sharing distinct similarities, they are often reflective of two starkly different experiences.  In many ways, to know one is to know the other.  As part of the overall objective of this course, we are told it is important to make the distinction that the minority narrative is “not an immigrant story of voluntary participation and assimilation but of involuntary contact and exploitation, resisting assimilation, and creating an identity more or less separate from the mainstream.”

Let us begin with the assertion that the minority narrative is not an immigrant story of voluntary participation and assimilation, but of involuntary contact and exploitation.  In his Narrative, Olaudah Equiano (or Gustavus Vassa, the African), describes the first step of his journey to the New World:

“One day, when all our people were gone out to their works as usual, and only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our walls and in a moment, seized us both, and without giving us the time to cry out, or make resistance, they stopped our mouths, and ran off with us into the nearest wood” (2-3).

Equiano spoke of taking comfort that he and his sister were “in one another’s arms all night, and bathing each other with our tears” (3), only to have this taken from him violently as well.  “The next day proved a day of greater sorrow than I had yet experienced; for my sister and I were then separated…she was torn from me, and immediately carried away, while I was left in a state of distraction not to be described” (3).

We see In Equiano’s Narrative one of the more prominent features of the minority narrative: the separation of families.  Yet while the American immigrant narrative is one of voluntary participation and assimilation, it also often reflects the separation of families, although for obvious reasons not anywhere near as violently as in the minority narrative.  Take for example the protagonist in Divakaruni’s “Restroom,” as she waits to disembark her flight to America from Bombay.  She questions whether she will recognize her husband after the eight years they have spent apart.  She speaks of the “Hollow pit inside me, like after my daughter’s birth.  Had to leave her with my mother-in-law because he said we couldn’t afford a child with us now.  I’ll have to work in the store all day, and who would watch her” (1).  Similarly there is the separation between Panna, who is attending graduate school in the U.S., and her husband who stays behind in Bombay, which is central to the plot of “A Wife’s Story” as well as Little One being separated from Hom Hing and Lae Choo in “In the Land of the Free.”

Another prominent feature of both the American immigrant and minority narratives is the tension between assimilation and resistance.  Course objective 3c notes that while “immigrants typically assimilate and lose their ethnic identity within 1-3 generations, minorities remain distinct or maintain distinct communities.”  Patricia Smith’s poem “Blonde White Women” offers what is, in many respects, a thorough rejection of the dominant culture, or from the perspective of the poem’s speaker, the white culture to which she feels she is expected to assimilate.   It is interesting and powerful to read the poem’s title as its first line: “Blonde White Women…They choke cities like snowstorms.”  On what is likely her morning commute on the T in Boston, she flips through the pages of Ebony magazine “marveling at the bargain basement prices for reams of straightened hair and bleaches for the skin” (Lines 3-4).  The choice of the word ‘marveling’ is telling as it reveals the speaker’s amazement at just how pervasive the dominant culture’s white standard of beauty must be, having found its way onto the pages of a magazine targeted to black women called Ebony.  The poem ends with what I found to be a clever symbolic rejection of this standard of white, blonde beauty held by the dominant culture as the poem’s speaker “shake(s) the snow” from her “short black hair.”  The title plus the first line of the poem establishes the snow as representative of blonde white women, and by shaking the snow from her short black hair, she is playfully yet defiantly shaking off the white standards of beauty held by the dominant culture to which she feels pressure to assimilate.   

However, as personified in the form of Diego Torres from Nicholosa Mohr’s “The English Lesson,” we are reminded that not all immigrants here of their own volition are necessarily interested in fully assimilating into the dominant culture either.  Among the legal aliens in Mrs. Hamma’s class, Diego was the only one who did not want to become an American citizen: 

“I no give up my country, Santo Domingo, for nothing, nothing in the whole world.  OK, man? I come here, pero I cannot help.  I got no work at home.  There, is political.  The United States control most the industry which is sugar and tourismo.  Y—you have to know somebody.  I tell you, is political to get a job, man!  You don’t know nobody and you no work, eh?  Some I come here from necessity, pero this no my country—“ (25). 

Diego Torres’ bristling at the thought of becoming an American citizen is indicative of what is in many respects the ambivalence toward the U.S. held by many in Latin America; including, as illustrated by Torres, those who choose to immigrate here driven by economic considerations, despite what is clearly his mistrust of America, or perhaps more precisely the U.S. government.  This mistrust is likely borne out of decades of meddling, both overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of Latin American countries which has led (to some extent understandably so, from my prospective), to similar feelings of exploitation by the United States government as those reflected in the experiences of African-American and Native American minorities. 

Finally it’s worth returning to course objective 3c and its assertion that “immigrants sometimes measure themselves against or distance themselves from minorities as a means of assimilating to the dominant culture.”  This becomes problematic when, as in course objective 2c’s Stage 3 of the immigrant narrative, they experience “shock, resistance, exploitation, and discrimination” similar to that faced by minorities.  Nowhere is this more vividly brought to life than in Divakaruni’s “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs.”  Jayanti and her Aunt Pratima have finally ventured out of their Chicago apartment for an exploratory walk against the admonition of Bikram-uncle.  They come upon four boys playing in the middle of the street with cans and sticks, whom Jayanti estimates to be between eight and fourteen years old.

“The boys bend their heads together, consulting, then the tallest one takes a step toward us and says, ‘Nigger’…Now the others take up the word, chanting it in high singsong voices that have not broken yet, nigger, nigger, until I want to scream, or weep.  Or laugh, because can’t they see that I’m not black at all but an Indian girl of good family?  When our chauffer Gurbans Singh drives me down Calcutta streets in our silver-colored Fiat, people stop to whisper, Isn’t that Jayanti Ganguli, daughter of the Bhavanipur Gangulis?” (80).

This scene certainly underscores the notion that immigrants tend to sometimes distance or differentiate themselves from minorities as a means of assimilating into the dominant culture.  While it is not entirely clear that this is for the purposes of assimilation, it is clear by the offense Jayanti takes at being called a ‘nigger’ (don’t you know I’m an Indian girl from a good family, who was driven around by a chauffer through the streets of Calcutta), that she considers herself do be of a different stratum than African-Americans, and very much resents being associated with them in any way.  Yet regardless of whether she wants to be associated with African-Americans, she is met with the same slurs hurled at them for centuries.  Jayanti is shocked that the dominant culture does not seem to appreciate this distinction the way she does.   Instead, it tends to lump all people whose skin color is darker into the category of ‘other,’ shooting (in this case, off at the mouth) first and asking questions later, so to speak. 

And this is ultimately why the minority narrative tends to provide such insight into the immigrant narrative, and vice versa.  From the point at which they arrive until the time that they are able to (mostly) assimilate into the dominant culture of the United States, the American immigrant’s narrative is often quite similar to the American minority narrative.  This, despite what Panna husband in “A Wife’s Story” who is “absolutely sure he doesn’t want to see Harlem” (65), might like to think.  Without successfully assimilating into the dominant culture of America, one finds oneself alienated and isolated, the target of discrimination of exploitation.