Identities

This week’s reading assignments “The Making of an American” proved to be an interesting issue. By using narrative stories published in the past two decades, Aneta  Pavlenko  was able to  compare narrative identities and how each one were negotiated.  The narratives identities are constructed in American immigrants autobiographies such as memoirs published between 1901 and 1935. They are written by first generation immigrants who came to the USA as adults or as children during 1870 and 1913.  The narrative are taken from many different socio- economic status ranging from successful upper class professional to lower working class individual from different backgrounds. Their stories discuss their assimilation process, second language learning and the relationship between language and identity.  The purpose of these narrative to my surprise was not intended to share personal stories among one another rather it was use to educate other immigrants about the process of Americanization through assimilation. Throughout the article the author discussed interesting topic such as the Americanization, the differences between early twentieth century immigrants and those that came 50 years later, the issue of losing one’s identity and conforming only the “US culture” and many more.

There are many ideas/topics/ issues that are mentions in this article that I would also like to touch upon but cannot due to fear of posting a 4 page blog. As I am writing my response so many different ideas are popping in my head. Therefore there is a possibility that this entry will appear unorganized. One topic I want to talk about is the concept of “old immigrants” vs. “new immigrants”. The memoirs published in the US during the early twentieth century were to implant European immigrant into the American national identity. The “old immigrants” for the most part were composed of European and while they came to the US to achieve a better life just like the “new immigrants” in my perspective they were more accepted into society. The old immigrants had a different mentality compared to the new one. The old immigrants were more fore coming to changing or attempting to change their identity in order to be accepted into mainstream America. In their narrative stories, they express how learning the language was an effortless process and how successful with little as 6 months mastery of the language could occur. The fast mastery of the language was not due to the fact that learning English was easy but it was more attached to the concept of survival. America was not familiar with other languages so the possibilities of meeting someone who spoke your particular language was very slim. The language skill was also needed in order to live successfully for fear of being taken advantage of like the French seamstress. The new immigrant wanted to belong, they wanted to be called American, therefore they needed to establish/fight for their Americanness. The old immigrant reminded me of article B1.1.1 in Holiday and how this individual tried to change his identity and went as far as changing his skin color in order to be view as an American.

On the other hand, you had those that they called the “new immigrants” and they were not held to high standers like the other. According to their narratives they had a different and somewhat difficult experience. Language wise, the new immigrant had a low rate of being proficient in the language. This was due to several factors. During the time of the “new immigrant” assembly lines were becoming more and more popular making the use of language less necessary in the work force. Another factor was due to the high ware on “old immigrants that were already in the US.  To help/force the new immigrants into learning the language some laws were passed that mandated them to attend night classes of be fined.

As a conclusion, I understand that no matter how much each individual try to assimilate to the American culture they were still seen as immigrants. They went through the process of Americanization to change their language, religious, political views and cultural realms but yet they still were not accepted.  A good example of this is show when Constantine Panunzio says “I have been in American for 19 years; I have grown up here as much as any man can; I have had my education here; I have become a citizen… I have come to love America as I do my very life-perhaps more and yet they still call me foreigner”.  As an educator I would be devastated if one of my students felt this way. This also reminded me of the article from Holiday of the relationship between an Iranian woman and her colleagues. After working with them for so long they still viewed her as an Iranian woman and were shocked when she did things that were not stereotypical of women form Iran. In history we are taught that American is the melting pot but now I wonder if that is really true? If we all melt and become one, why is there still discrimination? The other question is, should we all melt? Why can we just co-exist and try to learn from one another instead of wanting to change one another.