|
|
LITR
5831 World / Multicultural Literature: |
|
Brittney Wilson
The Immigrant Narrative: When a Dream is but a Dream
As long as I can remember, I have heard America referred to as a cultural
“melting pot” where anyone from anywhere could come to seek a better life than
what was available to them in their country of origin. When I was younger, it
sounded as simple as that—hop on a boat or plane, arrive in the U.S., and live
the dream. You work hard, start the family, buy the house, have the kids, and
die happy having lived your life to the absolute fullest. But having grown up
and seeing firsthand, life in America, even for natural-born citizens, is rarely
as glamourous as the fantasy depicted ironically by American reality TV shows.
This “American Dream” is a recurring theme in immigrant literature because just
like many children growing up in the U.S. who learned that with enough elbow
grease anything is possible, as many immigrants come here with the same naïve
hopefulness. The immigrant narrative at its heart then shifts the focus from the
American Dream to the real struggle and sacrifice actually experienced when
setting foot on U.S. soil.
In Jennifer Tapp’s essay, “To Dream the Impossible-Realistic Take on
American Dream,” she too touches on the notion of the idealized American Dream
being a farce. Comparing the American Dream to the “rags to riches dream which
Andrew Carnegie wrote about in his autobiography” where he describes starting at
the bottom and working his way to the top. But when you look more closely at his
story, you will notice that he always had a fairly nice home, a supportive
family, and coworkers and supervisors alike who were willing and able to help
further his career to the empire it became. Without doubting that he did, in
fact, work hard to climb the social ladder with his career, one has to take his
fortuitousness into account when comparing his rare success to stories of other
immigrants who come here illiterate, unable to effectively communicate their
wants and needs, and without the same support from family and friends. These
immigrants hear of American success stories like Carnegie’s and journey all the
way over here with unrealistic expectations only to then, as Jennifer puts it,
feel “shock and a sense of betrayal”.
Growing up hearing the same stories of immense success attained through
good, old-fashioned hard work, and then actually entering the reality of
adulthood in America with all its limitations and stipulations is jarring
enough. But coming of age here being able to read and write the language while
ascertaining a slew of connections makes the whole experience much easier than
having no prior knowledge other than the glitter of lights and slinging of cash
that contemporary television portrays of American-living. One such example from
our readings this semester is when Mr. Pacskowski in
The English Lesson, a professor of
music in his home country of Poland, is forced to leave the political climate
oppressing the Jewish community and come to America with his family in hopes of
finding a better life here. But when he and his family arrive, their old
problems are replaced with new ones that come with not knowing the language and
having an education from another country with different regulations than our
own. He is forced to start over as a janitor at a local hospital while learning
English so that eventually he can build his way back up to everything he had
already worked so hard to acquire in Poland. Though he may be able to regain his
position eventually, it is questionable whether America will ever be exactly
what Mr. Pacskowski had envisioned for himself and his family when they came as
political refugees.
Another couple of examples from our readings came from Chitra Banerjee
Divakaruni’s “Restroom” and her “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs”. In “Silver
Pavements, Golden Roofs”, Divakaruni tells a story of an Indian woman, Jayanti,
coming to Chicago to attend college while staying with her aunt and uncle who
also came to America in search of the American Dream. Her visions of
stereotypical American excess and beautiful living arrangements were quickly
dashed when she arrived at their low-income, apartment which she said was “not
at all what an American home should be like. . . .” (Divakaruni 73). Things she
had heard in stories or seen in magazines or on TV prior to coming to America
had led her to believe that her aunt and uncle would live in a nice, suburban
brick home with lovely interior decorating and two cars parked in the driveway.
But her uncle summed up these unrealistic expectations and naivete of American
living when he says that, “we all thought we’d become millionaires. But it’s not
easy” (75). Amy L. Sasser, who also
used these examples from Divakaruni in her essay, “Fantasy and Falsehood: The
Immigrant Narrative and the American Dream,” writes that, “Many immigrants can
easily identify with these ideals. . . .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”.
Likewise, in Ellen Kirby’s essay, “Immigrant Narratives: Writing the
Tension Between American Dream and American Reality,” she explains how
immigrants have to contend with the reality of America with all its struggles
that cannot be worked around and everything that must be sacrificed along the
way to even attain a comfortable life here. The “pure possibility” and
“unalloyed victory” that immigrants connect with the American Dream are
eventually lost and replaced by the reality of the immigrant narrative which
“acknowledges the things which must be lost”.
Amy Sasser again points out the shared opinion here that in order to
better prepare immigrants for the world that they will actually enter into when
they reach our shores, that we should change the focus from the American Dream,
“proselytizing about the virtues of hard work as a means to achieve your wildest
desires,” to the “mimetic experiences [of the immigrant narrative] as a way of
truly preparing immigrants,” for the real struggles life here. The American
Dream makes it seem so easy to come very quickly into wealth, happiness, and
respect as soon as you work hard. The reality is that living, working, and being
successful in America comes as a result of much more than that, even for U.S.
citizens, so the myth needs to be debunked and stay that way in order for any
real success in America can be achieved by a better prepared immigrant.
Works
Cited
Carnegie, Andrew. The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie. LITR
5731. Web. June 2010.
<http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/immigrant/CarnegieAutobio.htm>.
Divakaruni, Chitra. "Silver Pavements,
Golden Roofs." Imagining America:
Stories from the Promised Land. By Wesley Brown and Amy Ling. New
York: Persea, 2002. 70-83. Print.
Divakaruni, Chitra B. "Restroom." American Immigrant Literature. Craig
White, n.d. Web.
<http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/immigrant/impoems/DivakaruniRestroom.htm>.
Mohr,
Nickolasa. "LITR 5831 American Immigrant Literature UHCL 2002 Fiction-nonfiction
Dialogue." LITR 4333 American
Immigrant Literature UHCL 2002 Fiction-nonfiction Dialogue. Craig White,
n.d. Web. 22 June 2016.
<http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4333/models/2002/fnfdialogue/fnf02branchsahmel.htm>.
Praying for Wings: Assimilation versus Resistance to America
Immigrant and minority narratives both often speak of what is lost in the
process of becoming American. However, the immigrant narrative more often tells
a story of voluntarily seeking refuge in America, putting everything they have
on the line in order to secure a better life for the immigrant and their family
than what they had in their home country. This draws a huge distinction between
the immigrant and minority narratives when you take into account that most
minority stories detail an involuntary loss of the life they had before they
were forced into America. This theft of their past, their culture and sense of
belonging, makes the minority narrative one of resistance to the dominant
culture. In contrast, the willingness and hope to assimilate that is portrayed
in many immigrant narratives sheds light on the nature of their stories with
volition compared to force.
In Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur’s
Letters from an American Farmer, the early American immigrant is painted in
a somewhat lighter sense when Crevecoeur describes the settlement of a this new
country by Englishmen who must all feel a shared sense of “national pride” in,
“the work of my countrymen, who, when convulsed by factions, afflicted by a
variety of miseries and wants, restless and impatient, took refuge here. . . .”
(3.1). This sets up a recurring theme of the U.S. as a destination for people
from all over the world hoping or needing to escape the political and/or
economic climate in order to avoid the perils growing in their home land which
threaten their very livelihood.
A couple centuries further in history, Sui Sin Far would write her short
fiction piece, In the Land of the Free,
in which a husband and father, Lae Choo has voluntarily left his wife and infant
son in China to venture to the U.S. in search of economic opportunity in San
Francisco. Finally, after “twenty moons” of his wife remaining back in China to
care for her ailing parents and birth their son, Lae Choo sends for them both to
come join him in California to officially begin their new life together in the
Land of the Free (Far ch. 3). Hom Hing is very obviously hopeful and excited
about their fresh start in a place with so much freedom and opportunity when she
uses language reminiscent of that used in “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”, calling
her son her “olive bud” and mooning over his father’s work thus far to secure a
living for the three. Hom Hing in describing San Francisco to The Little One
says, “[T]here is where thy father is making a fortune for thee. Thy Father! Oh,
wilt thou not be glad to behold his dear face. ‘Twas for thee I left him.” It is
safe to say she had fair images of a land of liberty and of pilgrims’ pride when
she agreed to come. However, the awaiting customs officers dashed those images
quickly when they take the child from his parents, using U.S. law to commandeer
the child until they can procure his required documentation. Hom Hing learns
after a year of the justice system twisting her arm and her pocketbook and
eventually regaining a son who rejects her for the dominant culture that America
is not simply a beautiful place of opportunity and freedom but that they would
have to make great sacrifices in order to make and keep their new life here.
This recurring theme of voluntary sacrifice is seen again in Chitra
Divakaruni’s “Restroom”, in Anchee Min’s
The Cooked Seed, and in Reyna Grande’s
The Distance Between Us. All three
women decide to leave their respective home countries to venture to America in
search of something better—to make money to better support a family back home,
to escape an oppressive political climate, or to keep the family together.
Divakaruni writes of the sacrifice she chose to make of leaving her daughter
back in India to come be with her husband and generate a better income than they
could have done back home but soon learns that her husband has been shot in the
very store she was going to join him to work in. Grande wants to remain with the
family that loves her so she leaves the mother who never took care of her and
the poverty back in Mexico to “sneak across the border like a thief” with her
father, sister, and brother in journey of “El Otro Lado” and all the economic
opportunities that land had to offer (Grande pp. 94). Likewise, In Min’s story,
she sought refuge from the resulting oppression of the rule of Mao back in her
homeland of China. She too has to make the choice of leaving her family behind
and the guilt that would come with the new excess America would bring her in the
forms of running water and a bed-things the dominant culture take for granted
every day.
Alongside the immigrant narrative seen in
The Cooked Seed and the common themes
of voluntary sacrifice and a jarring new way of living in America, the
contrasting minority narrative can also be seen through her roommate, Takisha.
Takisha resents the eventual friendship that Anchee makes with a white girl down
the hall due to the remaining racial tension between African Americans, blacks,
and the dominant culture of whites at the time. Having no idea of the oppression
that Anchee faced back in China, Takisha explains that her ancestors were slaves
and when Anchee tries to understand the meaning of the word “slave” along with
struggling with the tense of Takisha’s sentence, says, “. . . .you’d never
understand what it is like to be owned. You were never owned and never will be”
(Min pp. 212). Coincidentally, they had more in common than Takisha imagined and
while Takisha never experienced slavery personally, Anchee personally suffered
the oppression of being property back in Mao’s China.
Takisha’s resistance to the dominant culture compared to Anchee’s hunger
to assimilate shows a clear distinction between the immigrant and minority
narratives and their contrasting agencies of volition and trying to regain what
was taken from them. The resistance and urge to claim what has been stolen from
them is seen again in Elethia by
Alice Walker. In this story, the dominant culture is stealing the history of the
African Americans and the memory of Albert by wiping that history and memory
clean while replacing them with an inappropriately happy vision of what the
dominant culture wants to see and use to sell their food. Elethia, mirroring
that same resistance to the dominant culture, sees through the façade and
avenges the damage done to her people by burning the mummied remains of Albert,
setting him free finally. Elethia and Takisha both exemplify the reluctance and
resistance to the dominant culture because they see what was taken from them and
lost, not by choice but by force with little to no hope of the same
opportunities and freedoms which the immigrant narratives so often speak of.
This bleak hopelessness of the minority narrative when compared with the
bright dreams of the immigrant narrative shows the distinction between the
attitudes and resulting stories of the two parties. The act of choice creates
the distinguishing factor here and can discern for the reader exactly how while
immigrants may pray for America, the minority is praying to make it in a place
they see as having taken from them.
Works
Cited
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.ht>.
Divakaruni, Chitra. “Restroom.” http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/immigrant/impoems/DivakaruniRestroom.htm
Far,
Sui Sin. "In the Land of the Free." Imagining America: Stories from the
Promised Land. By Wesley Brown and Amy Ling. New York: Persea, 2002. 3-11.
Print.
Min,
Anchee. “The Cooked Seed.” Imagining
America: Stories from the Promised Land. By Gordon Hutner. Atria Publishing
Group. Print.
Grande, Reyna. “The Distance Between Us.”
Immigrant Voices: Contemporary Perspectives on Finding the American Dream.
By Gordon Hutner. Atria Publishing Group, 2012. Print.
Walker, Alice. "Elethia." Imagining America: Stories from the Promised Land.
By Wesley Brown and Amy Ling. New York: Persea, 2002. 307-09. Print.
