Immigrant Identities in U.S. American Literature:
Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and
T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain
Table of Contents
1Introduction 3
2Multicultural America? The Concepts of Ethnicity and Identity in the American Context 4
2.1Identity: Us vs. Them 4
2.2Ethnicity and Race 6
2.3Americanness 6
2.4Otherness 10
2.5Immigration and Immigrant Identities in Literary History 13
3Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets 15
3.1Maggie’s Otherness 16
3.2Violence, Fear and Poverty as Fixed Components of Life 19
4T. C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain 23
4.1Emphasis on Ethnicity as Otherness in T.C. Boyle 24
4.2Violence and Fear, Borders and Boundaries, Territory and Intrusion 27
5From ‘Melting Pot’ to Multicultural America? 30
5.1Hypocrisy and False Morals 30
5.2Prejudice and Racism 34
5.3Deconstruction of the American Dream 37
6Conclusion 40
7Works Cited 42
Immigrant Identities in U.S. American Literature:
Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and
T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain
Introduction
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame.
With conquering limps astride from land to land
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightening, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-handed
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Emma Lazarus’s Poem at the Foot of the Statue of Liberty, 1883 (in Gjerde 312)
The United States of America has been and still is often regarded as A Nation of Immigrants (Kennedy). Emma Lazarus’ poem and her “Mother of Exiles [who] glows world-wide welcome” (in Gjerde 312) has many times been taken as the nation’s motto. But is this welcoming attitude to the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” (Lazarus in Gjerde 312) really a long-standing American trait? And who are these masses?
The present paper aims at identifying representations of immigrant identities in two works of American literature which appeared nearly precisely one hundred years apart: Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain, asking where are the similarities, and where lie the differences? At first glance, the selected novels do not seem to have much in common.
Crane’s short novel of 1893 deals with an immigrant family of Irish descent in the slums of New York, Boyle’s 1995 work is set in the outskirts of Los Angeles and brings together two couples who could not be more different: unauthorized immigrants from Mexico and a wealthy white family. However, an analysis will try to show that questions of and struggles with identity, the dreams and hopes of immigrants and the attitudes with which they are greeted by the ‘natives’ remain similar in literary representations throughout this time, also considering the historical and sociological backgrounds at the times of writing.
Author’s positionality shall be regarded and the literary realities of the acceptance of the ideal of America as a nation of immigrants will be challenged.
The above outlined objectives will be met by firstly examining the theories behind some key concepts of immigrant identities in the U.S.A., aiming at representing briefly the positions and discussions of the contexts of Crane and Boyle. The second part of this paper, chapter 3 and 4, will be studying Maggie and The Tortilla Curtain separately, focusing primarily on the representations of the protagonists’ otherness and the ‘realities’ of their lives.
In the fifth chapter they are brought together, examining the authors’ representations, outlooks and, if possible, opinions on issues strongly connected to immigration and building a life in a new country: the ‘clashing’ of values, stereotypes and prejudices, sometimes racism, and the deconstruction of the American Dream, still representing the main pulling force of America to foreigners.
Multicultural America? The Concepts of Ethnicity and Identity in the American Context
The chapter below aims at providing a very brief overview of certain key concepts regarding American immigration: questions of identity, ethnicity and race, Americanness and Otherness, and their treatment in literature over time. It will become clear in the following, but it shall nonetheless be stated at this point already: These concepts can neither be clearly defined nor strictly differentiated, and what will be presented here is only the smallest glimpse of what could be and has been said about these concepts, their meanings being subject to frequent changes in discourse.
Identity: Us vs. Them
The question of identity, of who we are and what makes us ‘us’ has been raised time and time again and still is debated by various persons and scholars belonging to many different disciplines. Identity as a construct is hard to grasp and almost impossible to define (Huntington 21). In the following the aim is not to clearly state what identity, in general, American or immigrant, is, but some ideas concerning identity shall be given to enable a better analysis of the concept in the literary representations discussed here.
As a starting point, Samuel Huntington defines identity as “an individual’s or a group’s sense of self. It is a product of self-consciousness, that I or we possess distinct qualities as an entity that differentiates me from you and us from them” (21).1 He farther mentions that an individual may define and redefine multiple identities within certain groups, but that identities of groups are usually more stable.
He understands identities to be constructed and “imagined selves” (Huntington 22), that are situational, meaning that the aspects of his or her identity a person stresses most may change depending on the situation (Huntington 24). For example in an economic context, a person might highlight his or her position and field of occupation, but when traveling, that same person might identify his- or herself rather with her region or country of residence.
Possible sources of identity can be of ascriptive (age, gender, race), cultural (ethnicity, language, civilization), territorial (city, state, country, continent), political (party, ideology), economic (profession, class) or social (friends, team, status) nature (Huntington 27). Furthermore, he describes identities as “defined by the self but […] [also as] the product of the interaction between the self and others [since] [h]ow others perceive an individual or group affects the self-definition of that individual or group” (Huntington 23).
The ‘Us vs. Them’ mentality is stressed in connection with the psychological views of Sigmund Freud (qtd. in Huntington 25),2 claiming that distinction from ‘the other’, at times even from an enemy to be of great importance (Huntington 24-26).
In the given context, distinguishing between ‘us and them’ is moreover a question of ethnic, racial and cultural identities. In conformity with what was outlined above, it seems natural, that an individual or group within a new environment would have to redefine one’s self-views within, beyond and in separation to that environment and its people, as will they. Stuart Hall however points out that “[i]dentity is not as transparent or unproblematic as we think” (222), and that especially cultural identity “is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as ‘being’.
Ethnicity and Race
Just like Hall suggests that (cultural) identity is always changing, so does Marilyn Halter for ethnicity and race. She argues that ethnicity, also a social construct, consists of “features of a shared culture and a real or putative common ancestry. […] [But] is not a primordial human characteristic but rather ethnic groups are involved in a continual process of reinvention in response to changing historical circumstances and shifting realities both internal and external” (Halter 162).
Race, in itself a rather problematic term, is also described as socially constructed, because “there are no longer (and may have never been) pure and fixed racial entities” (162). Noel Ignatiev agrees, saying that “no biologist has ever been able to provide a satisfactory definition of ‘race’ […] [hence] [t]he only logical conclusion is that people are members of different races because they have been assigned to them” (1).
Despite this, Halter states that the “realities of race persist as powerful constants in the dynamics of everyday life in the United States […] [as] [r]ace […] still matters, shaping perceptions and influencing behaviors at all levels of society” (162). She farther mentions that the classification of a certain immigrant group or people as a race or an ethnic group is subject to change, depending on historical circumstances (Halter 163).
Ignatiev’s How the Irish Became White shows precisely that phenomenon, examining how the Irish went from oppressed to oppressor in the eighteenth and nineteenth century (2), which he explains does not mean that “they all became rich, or even ‘middle class’” (Ignatiev 3), as Crane’s representation in Maggie, written and set at the turn to the twentieth century, shows.
Americanness
In consideration of Halter’s statement that race and ethnicity are still a reality in everyday life in the US, how can American identities be described, how those of the ‘Other’, here mainly Irish and Latino?4 Individual, group and also nation’s identities are symbolic and discursive constructions (Wodak et al.) and “can be contested and changed” (Olneck 204).
Michael Olneck shows that this is particularly true for the United States as it is neither “a patria […] nor an ancient ‘homeland’” (204, emphasis in original) and thus could not necessarily count on the “durability of the nation” (204), which is why he sees “anxiety about holding together” (205) as a founding element in American culture and identity. The fact that the US, from its very beginning, consisted of a very diverse population, whose diversity is to this day increasing still, and, in connection to that, the strong belief in individualism complicates recognition for what is shared, and therefore hinders linking America’s diverse people to one another (Olneck 205).
I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed, a democracy in a republic, a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.
I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies. (Page)
The aim of the Creed was to unify the American people through the commitment to these principles that should provide “rhetorical, ideological, and moral resources and guidance” (Olneck 205). Huntington describes, in a simplified matter, how throughout US history, components of identity, such as ethnical, racial and cultural issues, should have been of decreasing importance.
Yet, Americans have not only excluded and discriminated against certain peoples, they have enslaved and massacred others, and limited immigration to regions of favor, mostly north-western Europe (Huntington 49).5 As for America as a Nation of Immigrants (Kennedy), Huntington argues that “large-scale immigration has been an intermittent feature of American life” (46), with peaks and drops in numbers, but in which “over the years, immigrants have played a central, and in some respects, more than proportionate role” (46), while Olneck adds that most Americans can identify with the statement to a certain degree, but at the same time it creates feelings of “permanent flux, loss as well as fulfillment, repeated encounters with strangers, and unsettledness” (205).
To evaluate ‘Americanness’ farther, Halter’s statement, supported by many of her fellow scholars, shall be repeated: in the US and for American identity, race still matters (162). In the introduction to their anthology Growing Up Ethnic in America Maria Mazzziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan also emphasize “the complicated terrain of race and ethnicity” (x) and how both “have shaped the identity of […] [the] nation” (xvii).
Paradoxically, the same group is recently developing fears of becoming a minority within the next few decades (Alba). This might be taken as an indication that although often denying or at least “wishing race and ethnicity not to matter” (Skerrett 1), awareness exists to a certain degree that “racial difference […] remains […] to maintain the hierarchy established by conquest, enslavement, and colonization [as] [t]he emphasis placed upon physical differences between peoples was always to the benefit of the dominant white European (or American)” (Skerrett 5).
The shockingly growing numbers of supporters of ‘white supremacist’ ideas are unwilling to give that up, especially now that the President of the United States has decided to turn a blind eye on racism in his country (Landler), as recent events have shown.6 However, limiting these fears to extremist views would be misleading. According to Robert Jones “the country’s changing demographics and culture, especially over the past decade as the country has ceased to be a majority white Christian nation” worries parts of the population, who consider these changes as a threat to “a core white Christian American identity and perceive themselves to be under siege as the country changes around them”.
By highlighting the necessity of a new national narrative, Jones accentuates the important role and meaning such narratives can and do have. As the literary works discussed here come from different contexts, the narratives present in their times vary. The time of Crane’s creative work falls into a frame in which America was still occupied with “rebuilding a nation” (Gray 115).
The Civil War was still present in the minds of the people – of Crane’s own mind too, his bestseller The Red Badge of Courage deals with that topic after all – and had yet to be overcome by the “ideology of success celebrat[ing] the growth of American power” (Gray 115). That rebuilding of the nation however came in “the development of many Americas” (Gary 148), capturing the drastic changes the States underwent, the new frontiers south and west and the differing visions of the future.
Regarding immigration, the idea of the ‘melting pot’ was still the most present, however this will be examined farther in the following chapter. The 1990s held the first realization of America being on its way to becoming a “transnational nation” (Gray 249), again changing its face and state considerably, politically and demographically. America had been able to maintain and farther strengthen its dominance in world politics, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union, which led to high self-esteem as a nation, but could not suppress uncertainties and discussions as to how the nation within should be shaped.
Race and ethnicity are hence consciously or unconsciously recognized as important factors of American identity and so are shared values and ideas as the American Creed indicates. Another aspect of these shared values are the ethics of the Anglo-Protestant culture, which again is a stereotype that excludes both religious and none-religious groups (Mazziotti Gillan/Gillan xi), but Huntington argues that supposedly “people who were not white Anglo-Saxon Protestants have become Americans by adopting America’s Anglo-Protestant culture and political values” (61).7 This has been criticized strongly and also raises the topic of assimilation, which will be discussed in the following, but some features of that ‘Anglo-Protestant’ culture as Huntington sees it shall be presented nonetheless, as they in some ways also work towards what is known as ‘The American Dream’.
Huntington lists “individualism and the work ethic […] [and] moralism and the reform ethic” (69-80) as core elements of that culture. The idea that through one’s own responsibility and hard work and by “playing by the rules” (Clinton qtd. in Hochschild 18),8 basically anyone can make a better life for themselves is the central element of the dream of the nation. Few sayings are linked to the United States as much as ‘from rags to riches’.
While it is true that America has produced some rags-to-riches success stories, and that it remains to this day a country where immigrants seek refuge and economic opportunity; the larger historical picture is more complicated and less sanguine. […] Those who were not of the elite propertied class had to struggle for their rights within a capitalistic system that offered opportunity for some, but also exploited, suppressed, and limited the freedom of many others. (xxi)
Otherness
Defining ‘Otherness’ and other identities, more specifically, immigrant identities is only possibly in delimitation to American identity. The protagonists in the literary works discussed here are foreigners or of foreign descent, in Maggie Irish, in The Tortilla Curtain Mexican and thus the attempt of analyzing this perceived and real ‘otherness’ shall be made.
It has been shown that immigration has been a part of the United States throughout its entire history, but has changed over time and still is changing. When comparing the ten primary sending countries of the 1960s (Fix/Passel 25) to the ones today, the only reappearing country is Mexico (CAP Immigration/Nicholson). As people from all over the world come to the United States, making it a highly ethnical diverse country, the agreement on certain common values is undoubtedly an important factor of living together.
This is contrasted strongly by multiculturalism, “where ethnic and religious groups maintain strong links to their cultural heritage, and it is indeed understood that these differences contribute to the rich diversity of a successful society” (Holohan). Randolph Bourne, who proved to be a great forward thinker already argued during World War I for more diversity: “What we emphatically do not want is that these distinctive qualities should be washed out into a tasteless, colorless fluid of uniformity.” As early as 1916 he dismissed the idea of the ‘melting-pot’ as a failure.
The metaphor of the melting-pot meant that a heterogenous group would ‘melt together’ and thus become a more homogenous crowd with a shared identity. But Bourne argued “[w]hatever American nationalism turns out to be, we see already that it will have a color richer and more exciting than our ideal has hitherto encompassed”. At the end of the century, scholars agreed that assimilation is not a one-sided process, but in fact that parts of immigrant culture may be and are incorporated in the ‘mainstream’ American culture, and thus “that what is ‘American’ and what it means to be an ‘American’ may change” (Kazal qtd. in Olneck 204).9
A people who were fleeing religious and “caste oppression and […] material conditions […] comparable to those of an American slave” (Ignatiev 2), who were first cramped into “districts that became centers of crime, vice, and disease […] [where they were] thrown together with free Negroes […] [with whom they] fought […], socialized and occasionally intermarried, and developed a common culture of the lowly” (Ignatiev 2-3) managed to obtain “entry into the white race” (Ignatiev 4).
This shows how ethnicity and race is yet again a factor of identity, and for the Irish was an option to cast off their Otherness. In order to do so, they were willing to betray “their closest social class competitors […]. The newly arrived Irish-Americans judged that the best way of gaining acceptance as good citizens and to counter the Nativist movement was to cooperate in the continued oppression of African Americans” (McDonald).
This behavior was strongly opposed by their fellow Irishmen on the other side of the Atlantic, and a letter published in the Liberator in 1854 said “passage to the United States seems to produce the same effect upon the exile of Erin as the eating of the forbidden fruit did upon Adam and Eve. In the morning, they were pure, loving, and innocent; in the evening, guilty” (qtd. in McDonald).10 In the same matter Ignatiev concludes: “[i]n becoming white the Irish ceased to be Green” (3).
There is pride in this rise, but there is also loss” (ii). The Irish the US for her are “a people who have thrived in America despite facing oppression on both sides of the Atlantic, […] a people in diaspora […] [who have] preserved […] a sense of their own ethnic uniqueness when faced with the anxiety of losing themselves in a dull, if profitable, American whiteness” (O’Leary1-2).
People have been coming to the United States form Southern America and the ‘Hispanic’ countries for quite some time now, too, but as attitudes towards how and to which extent immigrants should adapt to American culture have changed notably since the Irish were the ‘new immigrants’, Latino identity seems to be more important for self-perception for members of these groups.
In her book The New Americans? Heather Mohamed questions how “the ‘Latino’ experience” (xiii) shapes the identity and its recognition. Mohamed proposes a “politics-to-identity link” (11), the influence of political debate on identity, outlining a comparison of protests to the 1994 Proposition 187and the 2005 H.R. 4437.11 In 1994 the Latino organizations rallied against the referendum, aiming at creating a sense of unity within the group by promoting foreign flags, the Mexican one in particular.
Prosha Croppers 2012 dissertation similarly looks into how politics and Latino identities influence each other, and she also argues that “Latinos have various options in how they identify and mobilize as a group […] [including] national origin, pan-ethnic, or even American based identities” (11). These identities are seen as subjects to high fluidity and complexity (Croppers 5), and she questions how and when which factors of identities are taken on.
According to Croppers, Latinos tend to identify foremost with their national origin, their cultural heritage. Upon arrival in the US, people who come from Mexico, El Salvador, Puerto Rico, Cuba and so forth are classified as Hispanic or Latino, creating a shared ethnicity. In a way, they are thus put in the position to integrate not only into one, but two communities.
Some scholars regard this as highly problematic, as “the exclusion of Latinos within the dominant society is negatively related to the extent to which they identify with the concept American” (Devos et al.). Croppers expects this to change, suggesting that Latino groups show similar progressive patterns of assimilation as European immigrants and claims third generation descendants being three times more likely to identify as American than first generation immigrants (17).
References & Links
DE
Basket
