Meryl Bazaman

Immigrant Land, America   

Frederick Jackson Turner asserted that the character of the American land (in the form of the frontier) was highly influential in creating the American intellect with that “restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom.” Yet, Turner’s thesis is problematic. Why do his American intellect characteristics appear to mimic those characteristics valued in the traditional American Immigrant Narrative?   Why does disparity exist among such a presumably uniform, American land populace? Was it really American land that made American people or is America the product of an American immigrant group consciousness that perpetuates itself through the American Immigrant Narrative?   

In order to answer these vexing questions of influence, I believe it is crucial to understand what the American Immigrant Narrative is.  One definition is that the American Immigrant Narrative is related to the American Dream, the belief that if one works hard enough anything is possible (Objective 1 and Objective 2g). As a possibility espoused in early American Immigrant narratives such as Crevecoeur’s work “What is an American?”, the idea of labor as the means to individual prosperity is alluded to accordingly: “Here the rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the progress of his labour; his labour is founded on the basis of self- interest…”(3). As the then optimistic advocate of self-sufficiency derived from individual labor, Crevecoeur’s narrative transcends time and physicality by textualizing this popular American immigrant sentiment. By recording his knowledge as textual truism, Crevecoeur contributes to the establishment of the Immigrant Narrative, where its related American Dream can materialize for immigrant you if you are endowed with the proper assortment of character industrially inclined traits (Objective 2g).

However, this assortment of American Dream required characteristics is textually expanded upon further by Andrew Carnegie with his addition of what Turner calls the American intellect’s “nervous energy.” In the Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, Carnegie declares with absolute certainty: “There was scarcely a minute in which I could not learn something or find out how much there was to learn…” (3). Referred to as one of the quintessential embodiments of American immigrant success, Carnegie’s words bestow a realistic dimension to the American Dream. As a paragon of effortless drive and stamina, Carnegie embodies the constantly striving, man in motion (Objective 2g). Always advancing, always mobile, Carnegie’s immigrant narrative promises its readers that the American Dream is feasible and reachable if the immigrant or American refuses to surrender to the immobilizing forces.

Yet, what if those immobilizing forces are actual physical impediments? What if one possesses industry, self-sufficiency, and energy yet still struggles to make the American Dream materialize for him or herself? In Anzia Yezierska’s “Soap and Water”, the narrator embodies the characteristics found in the previous American immigrant narratives that can presumably cultivate success; however, unlike her predecessors, she encounters a resistant dominant culture that is both discriminating and exploitative (Objective 2c and Objective 4). Giving voice to her overwhelming frustration, Yezierska’s narrator comments resultantly: “I came against the solid wall of the well-fed, well-dressed world-the frigid whitewashed wall of cleanliness”(17). Arriving in America after a dominant culture has been established by immigrant groups that preceded her,Yezierska’s narrator actively struggles with problems that arise from assimilation. Although she accepts the dominant culture’s values and painstakingly labors to accomplish those values, her physical presence is that of the other. Distinguished by the marked features of a hyphen before American and a distinctive class appearance due to her status on the lower echelons of American society, Yezierska’s narrator is faced with two challenges: the challenge to make her own way and deal accordingly with those human forces that actively complicate her obtainment of the American Dream. Here in Yezierska’s story, the short comings of Turner’s thesis become most evident. It is not the land itself that leaves its impressions upon Yezierska’s narrator; rather, it is her encounters with the dominant culture.

These formative, conflicting encounters with the dominant culture are not the only examples of why understanding the American Immigrant Narrative is more effective than Turner’s thesis. A second definition of the American Immigrant Narrative is that it maintains “a unified field or standard for identifying, grouping, and evaluating different ethnic groups” (Objective 1d, Syllabus, 11). As Yezierska’s narrator was evaluated based on her differences from the dominant culture in “Soap and Water”, Mei Mei Evan’s character Lucy can be assessed by how she has assimilated in Evan’s short story “Gussak.” As a Chinese-American, Lucy is portrayed accordingly:  

…reorganizing the filing system and visiting the older, housebound villagers.

She communicated with those who didn’t speak English by having their children act as interpreters. She set up office hours, took blood pressures, administered TB tests and polio vaccinations. She took pride in her efficiency (Evans, 243).

 Based on the Immigrant Narrative as a gauge for “Americanness”, Lucy seems to have acquired the traits lauded by the American Dream. She is industrious, energetic, and resourceful--traits referenced for those who wish to acquire the American Dream. However, like Yezierska’s narrator, she is still a “model minority” or a minority group that accomplishes or seeks to accomplish the ideas of the dominant culture (Objective 2b). Although it is clear the dominant culture values are very much her own, Lucy is still marked as Chinese-American. Despite this overwhelming evidence of assimilation and how much she has psychologically invested into the dominant culture, she is still a model minority within it. She is still one that when she chooses to can communicate with the minorities that are not given model minority status.

            This selective interpretation of the dominant culture as variations within the Immigrant Narrative is even further expanded upon in Jen Gish’s work “In the American Society.” In her story, the narrator’s father is described as a Chinese immigrant who becomes a successful businessman based on a combination of values that are both inconsistent and consistent with those characteristics eschewed by The American Dream and Turner. Resourceful and energetic, but willing to manipulate the law for his family’s benefit, the father of Gish’s story is described as conceiving laws “as speed bumps rather than curbs” (161). In order for to maintain his family’s well-being and maintain the lifestyle they have grown accustomed to, the father character is willing to hire illegal immigrants. By engaging in the hiring of illegal immigrants, the contradiction and “unfettered voice” (Snider, “Immigrant Literature: Catalyst Toward Transcendence”) of the father’s model minority status becomes apparent. Here the father is a capable of living a contradictory existence. On one hand, he is accepted for his industry, energy, and labor. On the other, he refuses to acknowledge the totality of the laws organized by those of the dominant culture.    

            The American is best understood not by land based characteristics but rather the Immigrant Narrative and its variations. Although the characteristics of industry, energy, and individualism are praised within the American Dream and consistently found within immigrant narratives, those studying only Turner’s land based characteristics will only always have an incomplete understanding of America. Interactions between the minority and the dominant culture as well as model minority status are variations that challenge Turner’s American characteristics but fit perfectly within that great invisible bond of the American Immigrant Narrative.