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LITR
5831 World / Multicultural Literature: |
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Umaymah Shahid
23
June 2016
Successful Immigration
An
Immigrant’s story is full of hope, disappointment, failure, and success. At the
root of the immigrant’s story is an undying sense of optimism. Optimism is what
defines the Immigrant narrative and plays an active role in providing the
Immigrant a sense of hope at his or her lowest point when trying to assimilate
to the dominant culture. Optimism gives the Immigrant the determination to work
hard because through hard work the American Dream is achieved and a better life
can be lived. Lori Wheeler, Jonathan Anderson, and Carol Fountain’s midterms
each reflect on the theme of hope, resilience, and optimism that defines the
Immigrant narrative.
Lori
Wheeler’s essay (2014), “Writing their own story…and yours, and mine: The
Immigrant Narrative,” highlights the immigrant narrative as one where people
leave the Old World to assimilate to a new one. This New world is not only a new
land but also a land of opportunity and hard work. Wheeler points out a very
important aspect of the American Dream, and that is that it is not a dream that
one has when one sets out from the Old World, but a lifestyle that “demonstrates
you have assimilated into the dominant culture and have become part of the
larger group that now associates itself with the US and not the Old World.” As a
group, immigrants strive for success and know if they work hard enough they can
make a better life for themselves. However, as Wheeler points out, many
immigrants are not expecting to be exploited or discriminated against by
society. She boldly questions why Americans are hypocritical to expect when
people go to other countries they would pay more than what the average citizen
would but are shocked to see how immigrants are exploited and discriminated
within their own country. Wheeler asks, “how do we as a people expect to take
advantage of a place without expecting it to take advantage of us?” Citing Gish
Jen’s “In the American Society,” Wheeler points out how Ralph Chang exploits his
own employees, does not seem taken aback when his daughters are waiting on
others at the golf party, and after throwing his jacket with the keys into the
swimming pool walks away calmly as if the entire affair was quite normal.
However, what Wheeler fails to point out
in her essay is that not all immigrants come to the United States expecting to
be exploited or discriminated against. For example, Bikram Uncle and his wife do
not seem to take favorably to the discrimination and exploitation in Chitra
Divakaruni’s “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs.” Instead of the calm demeanor Mr.
Chang expresses after the jacket incident, Bikram Uncle slaps his wife out of
frustration at the way he and his family are treated in a land that is supposed
to provide equal opportunity and reward hard work.
Another important point Wheeler brings up in her essay, which was touched upon
in class discussions, was the idea of a recipe Immigrant narrative. The fact
that it is literature begs one to ask “how much is the immigrant narrative
shaped to fit within the development of a plot that has the literary purpose of
communicating a universal theme about the US and immigration in general?”
Successful immigrant stories are mostly what one reads and the unsuccessful
immigrant narratives seem to be swept under the rug. Thus, although one might
see Bikram uncle and his wife as failed immigrants, the story ends like any
perfect immigrant recipe, with Jayanti on the balcony reshaping and rewriting
her immigrant story. Could it be
perhaps be that the Immigrant genre does not give room to failed immigration?
Wheeler, however, does not delve further into the question and leaves it almost
open-ended.
Jonathan Anderson takes Wheeler’s point about living the American Dream and
immigrant exploitation to an individual level.
In his midterm (2014), “In Defense of Reinventing the Wheel,” Anderson
points out that Immigrants come to the United States expecting an ideal social
order and a continent “imbued with the ability to grant whatever it is that
[they] want most.” Anderson makes a very good point about immigrants being
clumped as one entity and not as individuals. By looking at them as individuals,
Anderson further explores how each immigrant makes decision that affect both
his/her life for better or worse. He gives the example of Carnegie who took
decisions that led to his rise in power and independence. In contrast, Bikram
Uncle and his wife become further tangled in discrimination and financial
trouble. Both Wheeler and Anderson make the point that immigrants, despite the
optimism they have, receive a shock factor when coming to the United States,
which forces them, as Anderson points out in his essay, to rewrite their
narrative. Taking Anderson’s approach to analyzing each immigrant as an
individual makes me question how much certain terms, such as model minorities,
are brushed upon entire entities even though certain individuals do not fulfill
the expectations of those terms.
Carol
Fountain’s midterm (2014), “Hope is a thing with Feathers…like those on the
American Eagle,” revisits the theme of hope and optimism, but what is unique to
Fountain’s midterm is its navigation of hope through the various waves of
immigrants. She explores writers from the second wave such as Crevecoeur and
Carnegie to the third wave with writers such as Sui Sin Far, Anzia Yezierska,
and finally the fourth wave of immigrants such as authors Chitra Divakaruni and
Tahira Naqvi. By analyzing each wave of immigrants, Fountain is able to
demonstrate the repeated recurrence of hope in the American Immigrant
narrative. Of course, this recurrence brings back Lori Wheeler’s question of
the narrative being formed around what the dominant culture wants to be
represented by.
Fountain states in her essay that European immigrants saw education “as a
necessary evil to those who attempt to attain it,” yet, existing as a “part of
the assimilation process” providing “optimism for the future.” She refers
specifically to “Soap and Water” and “The Lesson” to make her point. However,
there are a few inconsistencies in her analysis. Firstly, “The Lesson” is not an
immigrant story, but rather a minority narrative. Secondly, those who attempt to
attain education do not view education as a necessary evil. The main character
in “Soap and Water” desires to be educated; even though the process of being
educated is a struggle, it is not seen as a necessary evil. Rather it would be a
necessity in order to succeed and escape discrimination and marginalization.
Fountain further claims that the reader sees both Mrs. Whiteside and Miss Moore
“as representatives of hope for their respective students.” Although it could be
argued Miss Moore was a representative of hope for her students, she is
irrelevant in the discussion of immigrants, as she falls under the category of
minority. However, Mrs. Whiteside is not a representative of hope for the
immigrant. Rather, she is a representative of the obstruction the dominant
culture creates for immigrants in attaining an education. Miss Van Ness is a
representative of hope for the immigrant character because she helps fulfill the
character’s dream of education.
The
three essays I have reviewed today discuss the topic of resilience and optimism
of immigrants who come to the United States. Regardless of the fact that each of
them face shock, discrimination, and at times exploitation, their desire to keep
trying in order to make a better life in the United States does not diminish.
Lori Wheeler, Jonathan Anderson, and Carol Fountain each bring up interesting
points and debatable ideas while discussing the impact optimism and resilience
have on shaping the American Immigrant narrative.
Umaymah Shahid
23
Jun 2016
One America? The Conflict between the Immigrant and Minority Narrative
The United States of America is known for being a melting pot of
different races, ethnicities, and religions, and people flock to the country to
bask in independence, literacy, and diversity. Through the course of America’s
history, immigrants have come to the United States to build a better life
because it was possible. Regardless of where one came from, the American Dream
was promised to each who stepped foot into the country. However, reading about
America’s welcoming reception to Immigrants exposes the hypocrisy in America’s
dealing with Minorities. Discrimination and repeated obstacles are thrown
towards the American Indian and African American minorities so they find
themselves in the margins of society with little support from white Americans to
move up in the social ladder. From the minority perspective, the American Dream
was an American Nightmare and not surprisingly the Nightmare was applicable to
immigrants who received little to no help in integrating into American society.
Throughout the short stories and poems, the reader can see the conflicting
themes of hope and despair and acceptance and resistance within the immigrant
narrative and in relation to the minority narrative. This essay will explore the
immigrant narrative in relation to minority literature and the dominant culture
from the conception of America and then through the various genres of fiction,
nonfiction, and poetry through the ages.
The conflict between the immigrant and minority narrative begins from the
voluntary migration of Europeans such as Andrew Carnegie and the involuntary
exploitation and slavery of men and women such as Olaudah
Equiano
from Africa (Objective 1). Through the two different narratives
the reader observes the factors that establish the unequal opportunity of both
groups in the pursuit of the American Dream. Carnegie’s family immigrated to the
United States to find financial stability, and through hard work Carnegie
embraced the American Dream “where a man is a man even though he must toil and
the poorest may gather the fruits of the soil” (Carnegie 2.7). His resilience,
hope, and optimism in America being the land of opportunity became possible
because of his labor and ability to take advantage of opportunities that lay
before him. Equiano from Africa, however, had a different story. Kidnapped and
forced on a ship with hundreds of Africans, poor plumbing, and disease, Olaudah
finds himself arriving not in a land of opportunity but a land of slavery.
However, Olaudah, with his clever mercantile skills and luck of having people who
cared, was able to buy his freedom. Although Olaudah eventually became a
freeman, many did not have that opportunity and remained slaves for generations,
with the raw experience of confinement, torture, and death etched into their
minds. Thus as time went on, white immigrants made up the dominant culture and
embodied the American Dream of hard work and success, while the African American
slaves steeped further and further into dependence, discrimination, and
exploitation, even after the Emancipation Proclamation (Obj. 3b). Thus this wave
of immigration and slavery marks the beginning of the immigrant and minority
narrative and the reader sees consistently through various texts, that
regardless of time, the existent difference in the assimilation and integration
of immigrants and minorities. The narratives become more complicated than just
one group striving to achieve and one not. The complexity lies in the history of
the two groups and how it shaped the way they perceived America and the American
Dream.
The fictional narratives told of immigrant and minority Americans vary on
whether the parties view America as a country of opportunity and freedom or a
country of separation and war. One becomes a narrative of success and pursuit of
freedom and happiness while the other becomes a prison of law and society. In
Nicholasa Mohr’s “The English Lesson,” the main character, Lali, finds America,
specifically her English class, to be a place away from “the world of Rudi, the
luncheonette, that street, everything that she felt imprisoned her” (Mohr
31). In her English as a Second Language class, she sees respectable
professionals, such as Stephan Paczkowski, who build themselves up from the
bottom because America is a land of opportunity and equality. Both William and
Lali demonstrate the model minority with their ambitiousness to take English
classes and excel in their education. Yet this story directly contrasts the
African American short story, “The Lesson”. While Lali and William’s resilience
and hope in becoming Americans and adopting the dominant culture make them more
receptive to American society, Sylvia and the rest of the crew’s resistance to
the system distance them from the dominant culture. They resist education,
resist the dominant culture, and most importantly, resist the deep desire to
escape the cycle of illiteracy and poverty they are stuck in. Minority
resistance is rooted in inequality, as Sugar cleverly observes, “equal chance to
pursue happiness means an equal crack at the dough,” which shows the hypocrisy
in the opportunities available to immigrants and minorities (Bambara
151). While one is encouraged to climb up the social ladder and assimilate
with the dominant culture, the other is constantly repressed and so begins to
refuse assimilation to a dominant culture that robs them of equal opportunity
(Objective 3c).
Moving away for a moment from comparing minority and immigrant narrative,
the non-fiction excerpts provide an understanding of differences
within the immigrant narrative
itself. The non-fiction immigrant narrative shows two opposing sides of American
society: the resistant, discriminatory, and forceful side of the Vietnamese
immigrant from Hayslip’s Child of War,
Woman of Peace, as well as the
accepting, educating, and liberating side of the South Asian immigrant from
Narayan’s Monsoon Diary. Assimilation
and adoption of the American culture is dependent on the reception of those
around the immigrants. The American Dream is not guaranteed to every immigrant,
although it might be pitched that way, and is not present in the very fabric of
the country, but an ideal which only manifests itself when the people around
those individuals help realize their dreams. For example, the model minority is
a blanket statement given to those who come from certain areas of the world, but
if they do not receive support from the American community, they will not be
able to live up to the ideal they came to America with. As a Vietnamese
immigrant, Hayslip faces nasty stares from clerks, criticism from her in-laws
about her spoiled ways, inability to raise her children, and foreign looks which
reflect the third stage of the immigrant narrative of “shock, resistance,
exploitation, and discrimination” (Obj. 2c). In contrast to this reception is
that of Anchee Min’s in The Cooked Seed,
where she is received by both the minority and dominant culture as an “old
friend,” who did not mind “explaining and repeating” English phrases till Anchee
understood (196 and 206). Those around Anchee are supportive of her assimilating
into the dominant culture and thus she is able to fulfill the model minority
expectation – taking advantage of educational opportunities and working hard to
become part of the American society (Obj. 2b). The same academic and emotional
support is shown to Shoba Narayan, an Indian American, who comes to the United
States to get a better education. Narayan is not only dedicated in her pursuit
of education but she finds a supportive group of friends and families who help
her integrate into the dominant culture. America becomes a land of opportunity
as she takes classes such as music and theater, works a variety of jobs just to
explore, and discovers the social side of college through frat parties. Her
professors do not judge her because she lacks the knowledge of some of the
classes or because she is a woman, but give her equal opportunity to pursue her
passions. Thus she finds herself amidst people who help her integrate and
assimilate instead of pushing her away and putting obstacles in her path.
Through the stories of Hayslip, Min, and Narayan the reader can see differences
in America’s reception of different immigrants. There are countless examples of
immigrants being treated like African American and American Indians, who make up
the true minorities. Thus, the idea that America is the land of the American
Dream for everyone is an ideal dependent on many factors.
As fiction and non-fiction literature both informs and exposes minority
and immigrant narratives by showing the reader the differences in each one’s
experience and expectations in the United States, poetry does the same.
Chrystos, in her poem “I Have Not Signed a Treaty with the United States
Government,” displays a strong sense of resistance to the US by declaring it
“terminated,” and commanding it to “[g]o so far away we won’t remember you ever
came here” (ll. 12, 26). On behalf of the American Indians, Chrystos declares
“the United States a crazy person,” with “lousy food,” “ugly clothes,” “bad
meat,” “no children,” “no elders,” and “no relatives” (ll. 4-5 and 9). Although
the dominant culture is created by the settlement of the English Pilgrims and
Puritans, the poem defines the dominant culture, which is the culture to which
immigrants assimilate to, as nothing but lies and garbage (Obj. 4). Thus the
minority not only resists America but also disenchants the dominant culture by
exposing its emptiness. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s poem, “Restroom,” paints a
somewhat different image of the dominant culture and the arrival of an immigrant
to the foreign country. The woman describes the men around her as pale, huge,
and red, yet the women in the restroom are almost seductive with their “bright
red lips, hair short and curling around their faces in golds and browns, bare,
daring honey-colored legs,” “soft” voices and laughs like “silk-rustlings”
(Divakaruni). The woman is in awe of those around her, their physical features,
outfits, and voices, unlike Chrystos who declares that the dominant culture has
“ugly clothes” (ll. 5). While the American Indians revoke America’s soap suds
and claim its “spell is dead” (ll. 25), the woman in “Restroom” is taken aback
by “the white sinks shining like in a fairytale,” and the “water flow[ing] and
flow[ing] over [her] hands, warm and full of light, a blessing.” To the
immigrant, even though this particular immigrant’s husband is in the hospital
after being shot, magic is deep within the fabric of the country creating an
overwhelming desire to embrace it. To the minority, every magical element of the
land is a sign of oppression and thievery creating an overwhelming desire to
resist it.
The American Dream that is perpetuated from the conception of America has
been one of hard work and success. However, through various forms of both
minority and immigrant literature it is clear the concept is not as simple as
that. Although generally minorities tend to resist the dominant culture and
immigrants tend to assimilate, the integration of both is determined on how
America receives them. Minorities often face marginalization, poverty,
discrimination, and lack of support towards social mobility. Immigrants, on the
other hand, receive more support to integrate and become American. However the
stories are not black and white. Both overlap in certain areas where if
immigrants seem to be too culturally, physically, or perhaps religiously
different they face the same fate as minorities. Without the support of fellow
Americans the model minority does not have the opportunity to be the model
America expects and immigrants can face discrimination and exploitation like the
American Indians and African Americans. Thus, sheer willpower and optimism are
not the driving forces of success stories of immigrants. Rather, the support of
Americans coupled with will power and optimism drive the success stories one
reads today.
