Amy L. Sasser

19 June 2012

Fantasy and Falsehood:

The Immigrant Narrative and the American Dream

          Move to America, the Land of Opportunity.  Work hard and fly right.  Obey the rules, treat others as you want to be treated, and keep your nose clean.  If you do these things, you will be a success:  big house, nice car, happy family and money to burn.  That is the American Dream.  Anyone can do it if they simply apply themselves with just the right amount of pressure at just the right time.  At least, that’s the fantasy, the bill of goods the immigrants were sold that included oceanfront property in Arizona.  As base and unfounded as most of these clichés seem, they have been the fuel for the conflagration of desire in untold numbers of foreign citizens seeking a better way, a better life for themselves and their families.  However, as is often the case with cliché, things are not always as they seem.  Not every Texan has a ranch with a hundred acres and a thousand head of cattle.  Not every resident of Washingnton, D.C. is involved in politics.  Not every Californian is a sun-bronzed, blonde-haired surfer with little to no education.  So, what happens to an immigrant who comes to the U.S. to seek out a new life when the reality of this American life hits them full-force, when they learn that the fantasy and the dream are barely more than slogans on a tourism brochure?  One way to examine this unexpected culture shock is to look at the Immigrant Narrative.

          So, what is the immigrant narrative?  At its heart, a narrative of any sort is simply a mimetic retelling of events.  Most are very story driven—not a mere statement of fact, but an engaging recall of a particularly poignant moment or series of moments.  The best narratives will have some action or inciting moment, some conflict that pulls the reader into the work as an active participant.  Immigrant narratives tell a story like any other sort of narrative, but many also draw the reader into an education about another culture without ever realizing they’ve entered into a place of learning and growth.  One can begin to see that the desires of an immigrant—love, success, revenge, satisfaction—are no different than one’s own.  Some of the earlier immigrant narratives can serve to illuminate the particular struggles of those arriving in the United States in the fledgling days of this country, while more modern pieces will illustrate unique challenges to modern transplants.

          The American Dream begins to take shape early in the written word, notably when Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur writes his Letters from an American Farmer in 1782.  He speaks of an Englishman arriving on the shores of this new world, and how very different it is from the Europe they know:  “The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe.  Some few towns excepted, we are all tillers of the earth” (Crevecoeur 3.2).  He goes on to clarify that all are “animated with the spirit of an industry . . . because each person works for himself” (3.3).  He speaks of families intermarrying, underscoring the idea of the “melting pot” where different nationalities live together in relative peace and prosperity—with the exception of African-Americans and Native Americans.  These words served to feed the wanderlust of those seeking a better opportunity or a better life.  This ideal America represented in some early works continues nearly 150 years later when Andrew Carnegie’s autobiography is released, detailing his rags-to-riches rise from a lowly immigrant to a major captain of industry.  He speaks of the importance of family and credits much of his success to his early poverty because he was raised by his parents rather than a governess or nanny (Carnegie 7.6).  Many immigrants can easily identify with these ideals, and can strive all the harder to make of a go of it as Carnegie did.  The immigrant narrative, however, goes on to show us that this cultural richness may not be as open and accessible as new residents in the US once suspected.

          Immigrants to the United States often expect to come ashore and work hard to make something of themselves.  They do not expect tremendous struggle from the moment they arrive—after all, they have not come on one of the slave ships from Africa, bringing men like Olaudah Equiano against his will.  Newcomers who may otherwise be considered a “model minority,” a minority group who tends toward higher degrees of success and assimilation to the dominant culture, may be forced into extreme circumstances in order to comply with unexpected laws.  Look, for example, at the family of Hom Hing in Sui Sin Far’s “In the Land of the Free.”  Hom Hing has lived and worked in San Francisco for many years, but when his wife becomes pregnant, he sends her back to China so that his son could be born in his country (Sui 4).  When she returns several months later, however, they have no paperwork for the boy to be allowed to enter the country.  Of course, they never expected such a problem, and they are forced to relinquish custody of the child to “the great Government at Washington” (7).  They end up desolate from the pain of separation and destitute from the legal expense before they are finally reunited with a boy who does not know them and “hide[s] himself in the white woman’s skirts” over ten months later (11).  For all their hopes and dreams to be shattered upon what should have been a happy arrival, the hidden nightmare within the American Dream becomes all too clear.

          Another fine example of the struggle facing a new immigrant to the United States, Chitra Divakaruni’s “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs” details the first arrival of Jayanti, a well to do Indian woman who comes to Chicago to attend college.  Divakaruni provides a nice counterpoint in having Jayanti stay with her aunt and uncle, also Indian immigrants, who have been in the states for some time, struggling to attain that dream.  Jayanti is immediately assailed with the reality of the city she’s arrived in, and is upset that it doesn’t match the fiction she’s constructed in her head.  When she gets to her aunt and uncle’s home, “the apartment is another disappointment, not at all what an American home should be like . . . .  the neat red brick house with matching flowery drapes, the huge, perfectly mowed green lawn . . . the shiny concrete driveway on which sat two shiny motorcars” (Divakaruni 73).  Later, as she is speaking to her uncle, he sums up the sentiment nicely, as he comments, “’we all thought we’d become millionaires.  But it’s not easy’” (75).  Ellen Kirby’s essay, “Immigrant Narratives:  Writing the Tension Between American Dream and American Reality” touches on some of the same issues, and explains why reaching this ideal is, as Jayanti’s uncle said, not easy.  She tells her readers that “instead of pure possibility, immigrants must contend with limitations and constrictions that cannot be worked around.  Instead of unadulterated personal triumph, the immigrant must compromise and sacrifice things . . . .   The American Dream speaks of unalloyed victory; the Immigrant Narrative acknowledges the things which must be lost” (Kirby).

          While the American Dream itself need not be lost, the Immigrant Narrative at large would seem to clearly indicate that a shift in focus might be in order.  Rather than proselytizing about the virtues of hard work as a means to achieve your wildest desires, perhaps we should focus more on these mimetic experiences as a way of truly preparing immigrants for what they may face when they reach our shores.

Works Cited

Carnegie, Andrew. Selections from Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie. Ed. Craig White. 1920. Web. 19 June 2012. <http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/hsh/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/immigrant/

CarnegieAutobio.htm>.

de Crevecoeur, Hector St. Jean. Letters From an American Farmer. Ed. Craig White. 1782. Web. 19 June 2012. <http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/hsh/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/French/

Crevecoeurexcerpts.htm>.

Divakaruni, Chitra. "Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs." Imagining America: Stories From the Promised Land, A Multicultural Anthology of American Fiction. Ed. Wesley Brown and Amy Ling. Revised. New York: Persea Books, 2002. 70-83. Print.

Far, Sui Sin. "In the Land of the Free." Imaginng America: Stories From the Promised Land, A Multicultural Anthology of American Fiction. Ed. Wesley Brown and Amy Ling. Revised. New York: Persea Books, 2002. 3-11. Print.

Kirby, Ellen. "coursesite.uhcl.edu." n.d. Immigrant Narratives: Writing the Tension Between American Dream and American Reality. Web. 19 June 2012. <http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/hsh/Whitec/LITR/5731im/models/mt/mt10/mt10kirby.html>.