Zizi Sigh

When American Immigrants Tell Their Story

          American immigrants with their various backgrounds, agreed to relocate their home to American and become a part of its society that embraced many immigrants before. “Freedom, Equality, and Opportunity”, glittering words tangled in immigrants’ dreams. They left their country behind them to merge in another culture. Such a process is painful for them. However, they grind their teeth on whatever life scratches that they have, motivated by their faith in turning their dream into reality. Withstanding American immigrants’ waves since the 17th century to our present time, their pens narrate their success and the fruit of their immigration and hard work.

          One of the earliest immigrant Europeans is Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecœur (1735-1812). Though he was a French/Canadian lieutenant, he saw America as his dream land because of the social construction of the society, no aristocratic class. The integrity and merit were powerful motivations to Crèvecœur. Such qualities that he missed in his home country where equality between citizens were not a thought in a society ruled by social classes. He says in his letter III “What Is an American?”:

 “He is arrived on a new continent; a modern society offers itself to his contemplation, different from what he had hitherto seen. It is not composed, as in Europe, of great lords who possess every thing and of a herd of people who have nothing. Here are no aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, no invisible power giving to a few a very visible one; no great manufacturers employing thousands, no great refinements of luxury. The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe.” (Courssite.com)

In the previous quote, Crèvecœur wrote this letter after he was completely assimilated into the American society. He described it as modern since it is based on equality among all social and economic classes. Meanwhile, France was ruled by a monarchy system where lords and royalty do not leave room to common people to climb the social or economic ladder.

In other words, this is one distinctive feature in the immigrant narrative where they compare and contrast their country of origin and America. We, as readers, may understand their motivation of migrating from their country.  

As the case with Crèvecœur, he was not satisfied of being a mere lieutenant, but he was ambitious to find a fruit of his hard work. Eventually, he mastered his dream and became a successful owner of a farm. While his assimilation process was taking place in America, Europe became an abstract place to him. America became something more than a dream to accomplish. It was rather a belief to which he wished everyone converts. He referred to himself as “An American Farmer” which reveals the shift in his sense of nationalism. In other words, Crèvecœur identified himself as an American, not as an immigrant anymore since he fitted perfectly in the American dominant culture during the 17^th century. In other words, his assimilation process was not as hard as the later examples of immigrant narrative due to his ethnic group, white middle class European.

It is fair to say that most American immigrant narratives have common features, but some of them may have an easy assimilation process based on a common belief and culture. As such, they do not encounter high risk of discrimination. In other words, they do not build an antagonizing perception of the new culture. Crèvecœur is a good example of that since he was married to an American woman and identify himself as an American. However, other immigrants may suffer during the assimilation process if they come from completely different cultures or belief systems. Anzia Yezierska, for example, is a second generation of Jewish Russian parents. Her parents immigrated to the United States around 1890 when she was a child and settled in the immigrant neighborhood in Manhattan. Her fiction narrative tends to symbolize the process of assimilation. For example, though the narrator is motivated by the American dream, she experiences temporarily a sense of alienation in the hosting culture:

 “But this last time when she threatened to withhold my diploma, because of my appearance, this last time when she reminded me that “Soap and water are cheap. Any one can be clean,” this last time, something burst within me. I felt the suppressed wrath of all the unwashed of the earth break loose within me. My eyes blazed fire. I didn’t care for myself, nor the dean, nor the whole laundered world. I had suffered the cruelty of their cleanliness and the tyranny of their culture to the breaking point. I was too frenzied to know what I said or did. But I saw clean, immaculate, spotless Miss Whiteside shrivel and tremble and cower before me, as I had shriveled and trembled and cowered before her for so many years”.

The narrator here expresses her feeling of humiliation and anger towards the dominant culture –white European culture. Yet, each character, action, and object in the short story stands for something. Yezierska implements dynamic elements of immigrant narrative where the immigrant is treated as a minority. If we were to look at names, we understand the symbolic journey of assimilation that the narrator is going through. For example, Miss Whiteside, as well as soap and water, is a symbol of dominant American culture. The narrator tries hard to earn professional skills by obtaining a diploma from an American educational institution. Yet, she refuses to wash and become an American woman like Miss Whiteside. She, in fact, reinforces her past culture over the American culture. She maintains her old identity that represented in the dirt and fair. At this point, the narrator does not reach the final stage of assimilation like Crèvecœur. She yearns to be part of America, her dream, but without losing her culture as a first generation Jewish Russian. In some way, she goes through the third stage of assimilation where her new culture clashes with the old one.

It is noteworthy that culture and assimilation symbolism have religious backgrounds that are related to Judeo –Christian tradition. In the previous quote, we have water and soap as the main symbols that relat to Yezierska’s cultural background. In other words, she shows a similarity between assimilation to a new culture and conversion to a new religion. Immersing someone’s body in water is an important step to convert to a new religion. Such a symbol demonstrates cultural assimilation in immigrant narrative in the short story.

It is true that she assimilates to American culture eventually, but he finds her place in the society with other immigrants, not the dominant culture that represented in Miss Whiteside. In other words, though immigrants assimilate into the American society in the end, they still choose a place that reminds them of their culture.

In the same way Lali, in “The English Lesson” by Nicholasa Mohr, accept the fact that “everybody got a chance to clean toilets!” She also reaches a certain point where she assimilates by taking Basic English courses under the request of William who shares her cultural background. Both of them are ambitious and willing to work hard to make their dream true. Lali saw in her marriage from Rudi a ticket to accomplish her dream in America, “expecting great changes in her life”. However, the language and culture barrier stopped her. Instead living dream, she was imprisoned in her husband's Kitchenette most of the time. She is trapped in the third stage, like the narrator in “Soap and Water”. Later on, Lali shows another feature of the immigrant narrative which is hard work. “Equality”, to her, means working on minimum wages like many immigrants who had been in the same job before her. In other words, recycling immigrants through minimum wage jobs is essential in the process of assimilation.

Along with Lali’s story comes Ms. Susan Hamma, a third generation of German immigrants. Because Ms. Hamma takes charge and teaches English, she represents the dominant culture figure like Miss Whiteside and Crèvecœur . Though she appears to be kind to her students and has no “preference to any student”, her actions in the classroom contrast her words. In other words, the dominant culture in America is selective about embracing immigrants based on the common culture and belief systems.

Away from the dominant culture’s selection of immigrants, Goergy Djanikianin, his poem “In Elementary School Choir”, express is willing to join the new culture through identifying with similarities between the new and old culture:

“Oh what a beautiful morning. . . . The corn                             [1.4]

 Is as high as an elephant’s eye,”                                             [1.5]

Though I knew something about elephants I thought,              [1.6]

Coming from the same continent as they did,   [same continent = Africa]  [1.7]

 And they being more like camels than anything else.” 

Though he is a complete stranger to the song, he sings it as if he has been singing it all his life. The song measures the height of a corn by an elephant’s eye that the speaker has never seen before. However, he compensates his ignorance by offering a similar measurement from his culture, camels. Later in the poem, he shows a strong sense of nationalism similar to Crèvecœur when he imagines his ancestors with the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts. In other words, Djanikian is not longer refer to Egypt or Armenia as hi country. His identity and loyalty lay under the American flag.

Again, we see Linda Deemer and Mr. Mr. Kephart,  the American dominant culture, appear in a remote setting from embracing Djanikian. It is true that he learns to pronounce the city correctly in the end which signal his assimilation. However, Linda disappears before he communicates with her. In a symbolic level, Linda is the final stage of assimilation to the dominant culture. Her disappearance leaves us skeptical after all flowery images of readiness to join the American society. On hand, we have Djanikian sings and relocate his ancestors’s cemetery in Plymouth. On the other hand, Linda disappears from the classroom and he speaks fragmented words. In some way, I think he conveys the duality of his cultural identity, so he cannot be 100% American or Egyptian. For that reason, he fits in the American society to some degree, but not the dominant culture.

Promises and dreams are initiated basically with immigrant stories about a successful cousin or brother in America, “‘Tell me about your running away’. I edged my chair nearer to him, in my excited eagerness”. With different backgrounds of American immigrants, their narrative show a similar pattern: leaving their country, dreaming about life in America, staring from scratches, working hard, and accomplishing their dreams. The willingness to join the American culture withstand of different dreams shows this pattern: a long series of hardship and their counties, they assimilate through believing in their dream to be successful Americans.

Essay 2

Between Acculturation and Assimilation

With massive immigration from around the world to American in 1980 to our present time, the immigrant narrative shows a similar pattern where the main characters leave their country loaded with dreams and a bright future in the Promised Land, America. Though they undergo some adversity and misfortune circumstances, their faith on the American Dream is never shaken. The the American lifestyle dissolves their culture or some of it after they overcome the culture shock stage to either assimilation or acculturation. So, their African Gele and Sari are substituted with jeans and shirt from Walmart, “Slam Alekum” becomes “Hi”, and America becomes their home. However, none of African Gele, Sari, or Salm Alekum dissolves in the melting pot of America.

Some immigrants refuse to conform to the American society. They actually maintain their cultural identity such as African-American and South Asian American. They surely identify themselves as Americans, but they create a new culture of their own without joining the dominant culture. We, as readers, find refusal instead of conformity to the dominant culture of America. Patricia Smith,  Chrystos,  refuse to assimilate to the American culture because they do not want to have shattered identities where they belong to neither American nor original culture. Such type of narrative is called “ Minority narrative”.  Since they are aware of their capability of creating a distinctive culture, they enforce it over the dominant culture. In other words, they redefine American culture as a salad bowl rather than a melting pot. Acculturation becomes an ultimate goal while longing to be embraced by the dominant culture becomes distasteful deed. We will begin with Smith’s poem:

In first grade, my blonde teacher

hugged me to her because I was the first

in my class to read, and I thought the rush

would kill me. I wanted her to swallow                      40

me, to be my mother, to be the first fire

moving in my breast. But when she pried

me away, her cool blue eyes shining with

righteousness and too much touch

I saw how much she wanted to wash.

At this f recognition, the narrator knows that she will never be part of the dominant American society because of her dark skin. As I have mentioned before in essay 1, the dominant culture is selective when it comes to accept immigrants; having a light skin is a significant criterion in selecting minorities. Smith recognizes her culture by identifying with her mother’s hair and fingers, and embracing her a culture of her own unlike immigrant narration.

However, there are some common points between the immigrants and minority narratives like representing the dominant culture in whiteness or someone with authority.  In “ English Lesson”, “Soap and Water”, and “In Elementary School Choir”, we see a similar representation of the white blond authority over the immigrant narrator. The teacher or the principle in all of these short stories represents the Anglo- American culture. Though the assimilation stages stops at a vague point, immigrants celebrate embracing their new culture and leaving all their old culture behind as the narrator in “Soap and Water” sings in the end: “America! I found America”.  

Chrystos, like Smith, embraces her Native American culture. She romanticizes her tribe’s rights and life, and condemn the American Dream. As Meryl Bazaman analyzes  “I Have Not Signed a Treaty with the United States Government”,  as anarchic poem where Chrystos celebrates her culture over the American culture. By this poem, she refuses many historical facts that her tribe lives on federal aid provided by the United States. I think some lines are harshly said by someone enjoys the commodities and luxuries of the modern life:

This US is theory   illusion

terrible ceremony   The United States can’t dance  can’t cook

has no children   no elders   no relatives

They build funny houses no one lives in but papers                             10

Everything the United States does to everybody is bad

Her poem expresses more than rejection. I will go as far as she expresses a blind grudge.  Each time she mentions US or United Sates, she associates it with negation. In fact, she thinks US is an illusion because it has no ancient past or future like the Native American has. Domestic life is led by law papers as her description to houses convey. This is my interpretation t her lines that loaded with unsolved hatred. It is true that Smith’s poetry full of pride towards her African appearance that does not conform to the dominant culture. However, we do not come across hatred lines, not even by immigrant narrative in their third simulation stage.

When immigrants assimilate to the American culture, they come with a strong willingness to make the best of their worst experience. They are already prepared for “an equal opportunity to clean toilet” (Mohr, 25).  Usually, their perception of America is usually close to utopia in term of the job market, education, living cost, and civil rights. Yet, minority narrative shows a strong connection to their original country, unlike the immigrant narrative.