Ok, for some reason I like posting my homework here. But I like to share my work and also let people wut I think and maybe even teach them something new. Either way, this one is on the experiences that undocumented immigrants have to deal with. I hope that you like it. And hopefully I'll get more readers than I did last time. :P This one isn't as long as the last one so don't worry about length, I think that I've written longer blogs before. LOL :P
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A Look At The Immigrant Experience
There is this concept in America about the "Melting Pot" that I learned last semester in my ethnic studies cla$$ It's a concept in which all the cultures in the world come to America and instead of being its own independent culture, it mixes with all the other cultures already here to become something completely new and better than what it used to be. The truth is that this kind of ideology only makes things worse for the people that are immigrating into this country because they are faced with things that they aren't used to. This raises a really important question that all immigrants have to face when they get to this country. Is it more difficult to preserve or to hold on to ones own culture? There are two particular things that put a lot of emphasis on this question; they are a book called Paper Daughter by M Elaine Mar and a film called Avalon. Both stories focus around what each person had to deal with and how the things that they where used to don't apply in this country.
The question of whether it's harder to preserve or hold on to our culture is something that can be answered in both ways depending on the persons past experiences. But I think that it's harder to preserve ones own culture because of all the mixing that has been going on in America that after you have been her for a while your culture isn't what it used to be. An example of this can be seen in Avalon when Sam gets angry with his sons for changing their names when they got married and he said "Who said names were suppose to be easy to say? What are you, a candy bar?" This shows how important this was to him and his family because the family means everything and it's up to the younger generation to carry this name with pride. I can't tell for sure if that's the reason why Sam got mad, but I know that in Mexican culture, the family name is something that is really important especially in the males because they are the ones that are going to pass on the name to their sons and that makes sure that the family name doesn't die. So I can understand why Sam got mad when they did this, to Sam this was a huge insult because this meant that his own sons didn't care about the tradition that the whole family had. This meant that the last name of "Krichinsky" would end when he died and no one would ever know their family legacy and what their roots were.
Another part that focused on how hard Sam was trying to preserve his culture was that he was always telling his grandsons and granddaughters of his youth and what America meant to him. A quote that Sam used a lot during the movie was "I came to America in 1914, and it was the most beautiful placed I've ever seen." This was a window into Sam's mind and what he thought about America. Sam believed in the "American dream" and when he got here he thought that he was going to have a great life just like he had imagined it. But the younger generation didn't care about tradition; the only thing that they were interested was watching TV and playing. It seemed that all Sam wanted to do was to pass on stories, but Americas way of life was working against Sam.
Elaine on the other hand had a similar yet completely different experience when she came to America. She was 5 when she got to America with her parents, and this place was something completely different then what she was used to. To understand this a little better, we have to understand how she was raised and a place where we can see that is when Elaine says, "From birth, I was expected to abide by the adults' rules."(9) This is a glimpse into Elaine's culture because it shows what was expected of her. She had been raised with a lot of care from her mother so that she could grow up to be a well behaved lady and her mother would try to make Elaine act in a manner that was suited for a lady. One time Elaine's mother told her, "Quietly, gently. Remember your modesty – you're a little girl!" This is something that tells us that her parents always cared about her but the wanted to make sure that she grew up in the traditional way of life that the had.
But once that they got here to America is like all the rules that were set in place in Hong Kong just disappeared. Her Aunt was the one in charge at the house and was the one that ran the business, which was really odd to Elaine since the man is always suppose to be in control. This is something that is familiar to me because in Mexican culture the man is always in charge, the women is suppose to obey the decision and respect her husband. I know this because I have a few Uncles that act in this same way even in the USA, but by no means have I ever experienced this at home; you could say that my dad is "wiped."
When Elaine started to go to school it wasn't very pleasant for her, she couldn't understand what the teacher was saying and this is all too familiar to me. Mrs. Tate asked for the answer to the math problem of 3 + 4 but she couldn't figure out how to answer her in English. Elaine knew the answer to this question, she just couldn't figure out how to say "seven". She felt horrible when things like this would happen; she said "There was nothing worse than knowing the answer and not being able to say them." (66) No one wanted to listen to her, even at home when she tried to explain things to her mother. I think that little things like this is what started to make her act different. She wanted to fit in, it's all kid want so it's no surprise that she felt the same way. Elaine could preserve the culture that she grew up with, and she forgot.
Most of the stuff that we've talked about in cla$$ is very familiar to me and to a lot of my friends. My parents are undocumented immigrants from Mexico so I considered myself a Chicano even though I was born in East Los Angeles, California. English is a second language for me even if I was born in the USA, and I can still remember how hard it was to learn the language. When I was little I spend 2 years in Mexico so I didn't really have a chance to learn English until I came back and by then it was difficult to learn. I know what it's like to have a language barrier like Elaine when she went to school and that really brings back memories of when I was a little kid. I couldn't say anything, and in fact I was in the ESL program up until 7th grade while my little brother was already in normal English ****s by the time he was in 1st grade.
The whole "melting pot" concept shouldn't be praised in the way that it is because it's not as good as people make it out to be. When a culture starts to be mixed with something else, it might as well just disappear because there is no telling how much it has changed and how it will effect the younger generation. The only thing that we can do is to raise children with a firm set of belief like my parents did to me. We have to make sure that our culture is preserved because our culture defines who we are and identity is something that important to everyone, no matter where their at.
Works Cited
Avalon. Dir. Barry Levinson. Prod. Mark Johnson, Barry Levinson. Perf. Armin Mueller-Stahl, Elizabeth Perkins, Joan Plowright, and Aidan Quinn. Tri Star, 1990.
Mar, M. Elaine. Paper Daughter: A Memoir. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.
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