Heather Minette Schutmaat

June 18, 2014

1. The Unifying Elements of American Immigrant Narratives

Throughout the course so far, we have identified the fundamental elements of the American Immigrant Narrative in Early American Immigrant Literature, East Asian Immigrant Literature, South Asian Immigrant Literature, and Mexican American Immigrant Literature, as well as examined how the American Immigrant Narrative differs from the American Minority Narrative. By identifying these reoccurring elements in the literature of different American Immigrant groups, I’ve come to understand that while each American Immigrant group is unique in terms of its culture, history, and country of origin, the American Immigrant Experience is similar in terms of its patterns, motives, stages, values, and the idea of “the American Dream,” and therefore their work may be unified under the banner of the American Immigrant Narrative.

As noted in Objective 2, the first stage of the American Immigrant Experience is an immigrant voluntarily leaving an “Old World of limits and traditions” behind. The second stage is an immigrant journeying to “a land of opportunity and change” in pursuit of the American Dream. In his midterm response from 2010, Charles Olson explains, “By definition, immigrants leave the familiar old world they have known for a new world.  Why would anyone leave the home they know for the unknown?  Motivations vary, but the American Dream—in one form or another—seems to be a regular feature of the impulse.” As another student, Carrie C. Scott, explains in her midterm from 2012, “The American Dream is best defined by the man who coined the phrase, James Truslow Adams: ‘But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement’ (Adams 404).” Therefore, the motive for leaving the Old World for the New World (completing the first and second stage) is, in its simplest terms, opportunity.

In “Soap and Water” the narrator’s journey is a perfect example of these stages as she voluntarily leaves the Old World and travels to America in search of the opportunity to pursue her dream of education and self-expression. Anzia Yezierska writes, “Suddenly, there came upon me this inspiration. I can go to college! There I shall learn to express myself, to voice my thoughts.” In many other stories, such as El Patron by Nash Candelaria, we are given various examples of motives for immigration, all of which are variations of the American Dream. In El Patron, the daughter Lola reminds her father of his own decisions as a young adult to immigrate to the United States, and her father responds, “I did not intend to stay in Mexico and starve” (IA 227). While both of these motives are voiced differently, they are essentially the same: both characters immigrated to the United States in pursuit of a life that is “richer and fuller.”

In pursuing the American Dream and climbing the ladder of success, we see that work ethic is not only an essential dynamic of the Immigrant Narrative, but a chief value among American Immigrants, which is also characteristic of the Model Minority, “the label that is often applied to an ascendant immigrant group that exemplifies ideals implicit in the immigrant narrative” (Objective 2b). In “Soap and Water,” we certainly see the value of work ethic:

At the time when they rose and took their morning bath, and put on their fresh-laundered linen that somebody had made ready for them, when they were being served with their breakfast, I had already toiled for three hours in a laundry. When college hours were over, they went for a walk in the fresh air. They had time to rest, and bathe again, and put on fresh clothes for dinner. But I, after college hours, had only time to bolt a soggy meal, and rush back to the grind of the laundry till eleven at night.

We also see the value of hard work and the resilience of American Immigrants in other works such as the poem “Restroom” by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni in which she says:

I know how important the store is. How he saved for it, one meal a day, rice and water, washed his pants and shirt by hand each night. Now it's half his. A bad part of town, he wrote, but good money, especially in liquor. I know I'll be a good worker. I'm used to it, digging in the bajra fields all morning, then home to cook chapatis for twelve over the open wood fire, pulling water from the well through the burning afternoon.

In stories such as Andrew Carnegie’s we see the ways in which such work ethic pays off. In his autobiography, Carnegie writes:

And that is how in 1850 I got my first real start in life. From the dark cellar running a steam-engine at two dollars a week, begrimed with coal dirt, without a trace of the elevating influences of life, I was lifted into paradise, yes, heaven, as it seemed to me, with newspapers, pens, pencils, and sunshine about me. There was scarcely a minute in which I could not learn something or find out how much there was to learn and how little I knew. I felt that my foot was upon the ladder and that I was bound to climb. . . .

 “In the American Society” by the Chinese American writer Gish Jen, also demonstrates the rewards of work ethic. In the first line of “In the American Society” Gish Jen writes, “When my father took over the pancake house, it was to send my little sister Mona and me to college” and then says that they “got rich right away” (IA 159). This also exemplifies the Model Minority, as “‘ideal immigrants’ take advantage of economic and educational opportunities.” In this story, we are also given a good example of assimilation, the “process by which distinct ethnic groups become more like other Americans, especially in terms set by the USA's dominant culture.” Painting a portrait of the mother in “The American Society” and illustrating how she has assimilated to the dominant culture, Gish Jen writes, “She didn’t work at the supermarket anymore; but she had made it to the rank of manager before she left, and this had given her not only new words and phrases, but new ideas about herself, and about America, and about what was what in general… she herself was now interested in espadrilles, and wallpaper, and most recently, the town country club” (IA 159). However, we also see that the father in this story practices “selective assimilation” which is also characteristic of the Model Minority: “’Your father doesn’t believe in joining the American society’ said my mother. ‘He wants to have his own society.’ (AI 159).

            While many of the stories we’ve read so far have exhibited the success of American Immigrants, many of these works also narrate stage three of the American Immigrant experience, which includes the exploitation and discrimination of American Immigrants by the dominant culture, as discussed in Objectives 1 and 4. In “Soap and Water,” Yezierska begins, “What I so greatly feared, happened! Miss Whiteside, the dean of our college, withheld my diploma. When I came to her office, and asked her why she did not pass me, she said that she could not recommend me as a teacher because of my personal appearance.” Here, the dominant culture is discriminating against an immigrant, withholding the diploma she has work so hard for, based exclusively on her physical appearance. In the short story “In the Land of the Free” by the Chinese American author Sui Sin Far, a child is taken from his parents by an American customs officer because of a paper order, which demonstrates the dominant culture’s power over American Immigrants. The child’s parents are also exploited by the dominant culture when their American lawyer takes advantage of them. Such discrimination and exploitation also resembles and overlaps with the American Minority Experience. 

2. The Similarities and Differences of the American Minority Narrative and the American Immigrant Narrative

One of the most important concepts to grasp in order to understand the significant difference between the American Minority Experience and the American Immigrant Experience is “voluntary participation vs. involuntary participation.” As Carlos Marquina points out in his midterm response in the 2012, “The difference between the immigrant narrative and the minority narrative is mainly a matter of choice. Immigrants choose to come to America and assimilate into the established culture in the hopes of improving their economic and/or educational status. ” As I’ve discussed in the first essay, in leaving behind the Old World and journeying to the New World (stages one and two of the Immigrant Experience), Immigrants are participating voluntarily. However, the American Minority Experience involves involuntary participation.

Unlike American Immigrants, “African Americans were brought to America forcefully and involuntarily; instead of finding opportunity, they found slavery and, later, segregation and continuing discrimination.” The Slave Narratives of Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglass powerfully demonstrate this involuntary participation. In the Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, he describes the terrifying experience of being kidnapped and forced into slavery:

Two men and a woman got over our walls and in a moment seized us both, and, without giving us time to cry out, or make resistance, they stopped our mouths, and ran off with us into the nearest wood. Here they tied our hands, and continued to carry us as far as they could, till night came on, when we reached a small house where the robbers halted for refreshment, and spent the night.

Both Equiano and Douglass illustrate slavery as being relegated to subhuman status without a choice, voice, or rights, drawing a thick line between the involuntary participation of American Minorities and the choice American Immigrants make on their own accord to pursue their dreams of opportunity in America. Later African American Minority literature, such as “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara demonstrates the segregation and continuing discrimination of African Americans even after slavery had ended.

            Similar to the involuntary participation of the African American Experience, “Native Americans were already here for thousands of years before modern immigration began, which causes catastrophic losses; instead of living the American Dream, they suffer the American Nightmare.” Having had their land stolen from them and having suffered catastrophic losses, the Native American Immigrant Narrative is also one of involuntary contact, exploitation, and oppression. In the short story “American Horse” Louis Erdrich metaphorically and poignantly illustrates the power the dominant culture exerts over Native American Minorities when Buddy dreams of “a large thing made of metal with many barbed hooks, points, and drag chains on it, something like a giant potato peeler that rolled out of the sky, scraping clouds down with it and jabbing or crushing everything that lay in its path on the ground” (IA 210). Later in the story, Buddy is taken from his mother by the state. Another powerful representation of the involuntary participation of Native Americans is Chrystos’s poem “I Have Not Sign a Treaty with the United States Government.” Chrystos says, “Everything the United States does to everybody is bad / No this US is not a good idea We declare you terminated / You’ve had your fun now go home we’re tired.”

            Although the American Minority Experience differs greatly from the American Immigrant Experience in terms of participation, the narratives also overlap in some ways. While American Minorities are in search of the Dream (which is different from the American Dream as it “entails setbacks, the need to rise again, and a quest for group dignity”) and American Immigrants are in search of the American Dream, both groups execute hard work in order to climb the ladder of success. Similar to Max’s story in the Immigrant Narrative “Bread Givers” in which he begins his first day of work in America by shoveling snow and later in the narrative owns a chain of stores, Frederick Douglass also demonstrates work ethic and resilience. Douglass writes, “I found employment, the third day after my arrival, in stowing a sloop with a load of oil. It was new, dirty, and hard work for me; but I went at it with a glad heart and a willing hand.” Therefore, like Max, Douglass finds labor upon his arrival and begins his new journey with hard work and ambition.

            Another similarity of the American Immigrant Experience and the American Minority Experience is the discrimination and exploitation both groups endure. As I discussed in the first essay, in “Soap and Water” the dominant culture is discriminating against the female narrator when Mrs. White withholds the narrator’s diploma based exclusively on her physical appearance. We see this same kind of discrimination in Frederick Douglass’s narrative when he says, “When I got through with that job, I went in pursuit of a job of calking; but such was the strength of prejudice against color, among the white calkers, that they refused to work with me, and of course I could get no employment.” Although both groups undergo discrimination based on their appearance, by the end of Anzia Yezierska’s story, the narrator is able to forget her past and find America: “My past was the forgotten night. Sunrise was all around me. I went out from Miss Van Ness’s office, singing a song of new life: ‘America! I found America.’” 

            However, for American Minorities the assimilation process is more difficult than it is for American Immigrants. “Through assimilation, immigrant cultures become ‘unmarked’: ethnic markers (distinct language, clothes, hair, makeup, perfumes) disappear.” However, “minority cultures may remain ‘marked’ by physical differences (skin color, body styles, facial characteristics) and cultural styles” making it more difficult for American Minorotoes to assimilate. These distinct physical markers include, “the color code” which often perpetuates the negative self-image of American Minorities. In the poem “Blonde White Women” Patricia Smith shows the negative effects of the color code: “I practiced kissing, because to blonde and white / meant to be kissed, and my fat lips slimmed / around words like ‘delightful’ and ‘darling.’” However, by the end of the poem, Smith no longer desires to assimilate to the dominant culture’s standard of beauty, but instead finds beauty in her skin color.

            Therefore, while American Minority Narratives and American Immigrant Narratives often resemble each other in regard to discrimination and exploitation, as well as work ethic, they differ in terms of participation and in the process of assimilation. In short, while their narratives may overlap in their experiences as “the other,” “The minority narrative (African Americans, Native Americans) is not an immigrant story of voluntary participation and assimilation but of involuntary contact and exploitation and resisting assimilation to the dominant culture.”