Blaisdell - Essays on Immigration

Essays on Immigration

EDITED BY BOB BLAISDELL

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

Mineola, New York

DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

GENERAL EDITOR: MARY CAROLYN WALDRER

EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: JANET BAINE KOPITO

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: SEE PAGES

Copyright

Copyright 2013 by Dover Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

Essays on Immigration is a new compilation, first published by Dover Publications, Inc., in 2013. Bob Blaisdell has selected and arranged the essays and provided all the introductory material. For the sake of authenticity, inconsistencies in spelling, capitalization, and punctuation have been retained in the texts, unless otherwise noted.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Essays on immigration / edited by Bob Blaisdell.

p. cm. (Dover thrift editions)

Summary: The concept of immigration remains central to American culture, past and present. This original anthology surveys the experience from a wide range of cultural and historical viewpoints, ranging from the 17th to 21st centuries. Contributors include Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Jacob Riis, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Daz, and many othersProvided by publisher. eISBN 13: 978-0-486-78320-8 c. ImmigrantsUnited StatesHistory. 2. United StatesEmigration and immigrationHistory.

3. Emigration and immigrationSocial aspects. I. Blaisdell, Robert.

JV6450.E77 2013

304.8'73dc23

2012030162

Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

48902701 2013

www.doverpublications.com

Note

EVEN IN THE best of circumstances, immigration is difficult. With money in hand, a job awaiting him, and a willing wife and enthusiastic children, the Englishman Horace J. Bridges describes his anxiety in On Becoming an American: Some Meditations of a Newly Naturalized Immigrant (1919):

To our little ones the day was one of joyous adventure. They were faring forth into the unknown. The ship, with her marvels of science and ingenuity, was all a wonder and a wild desire. With the full flooding life of boyhood, they found the fleeting moment all-sufficient and all-entrancing. Yesterday was dead; today was so thrilling that tomorrow was unthought of. America was a magic name, like Atlantis or the Hesperides. They wondered at the grave faces of father and mother, for they recked nothing of the pain to their parents that had attended the ploughing up of the soil of heart and memory, and the plucking out of roots that had struck so much deeper than consciousness. Nor did they yet dream of the years of anxious pre- occupation which we already felt ahead,the long labor of mental and spiritual adjustment to a new world of hearts and faces, a new physical environment, new manners and customs, ideals and standards, new life-values, a new social order. Fortunate were the youngsters, in that the change came for them at a time when their world was fluent and plastic, when they had not yet grappled other souls to theirs with the steel hoops of long love and firm-set will; when each new companion was welcome as the morning, and each older face no harder to part from than yesterday when it is gone!

While immigrant children understand America in ways their parents may not be able to and have experiences their parents wont understand, the parents themselves have experiences that their own parents wont sympathize with or understand: Why does raising Delia create such a difficulty? wonders Dympna Ugwu-Oju.

Because I sense that my success or failure as an individual ultimately rests on what becomes of my only daughter. Because each day, each activity, each decision concerning her is a tug-of-war between the old and the new, between my Ibo and American selves, between my mother and me. Because where and when I was growing up, children, especially daughters, accepted their parents authority completely, without question or resentment. Therein lies my conflict, one that Im sure is shared by millions of immigrant women who, like me, are raising American-born daughters. We are having to deal with situations that our mothers could not have anticipated.

Among the surprising situations are the challenges of ones very name being met with confusion: All of us immigrants knew that moving to America would be fraught with challenges, but none of us thought that our names would be such an obstacle. How could our parents have ever imagined that someday we would end up in a country where monosyllabic names reign supreme, a land where William is shortened to Bill, where Susan becomes Sue, and Richard somehow evolves into Dick? America is a great country, but nobody without a mask and a cape has a z in his name, muses Firoozeh Dumas, whose family emigrated from Iran.

A childs idea of back home is less a longing than a desire to reconnect with family history and culture. Returning home then, as an adult, can be an embarrassing and sometimes comical adventure as, for instance, Junot Daz discovers when many years later he returns to the Dominican Republic, the country that he claims but which doesnt return the favor; the people in their native lands now consider them Americans: What I wanted more than anything was to be recognized as the long-lost son I was, but that wasnt going to happen. Not after nearly twenty years. Nobody believed I was Dominican! You? one cabdriver said incredulously, and then turned and laughed. Thats doubtful. Instead of being welcomed with open arms, I was overcharged for everything and called un americano.

All of the writers included here describe their experiences and thoughts on the transformation wrought from a new life in America, with its joys, agonies, and awakenings. Almost four hundred years ago, Richard Frethorne, an indentured servant from England, found himself in a strange and terrifying landa settlement near Jamestown, Virginiaand begged his parents to buy him back out of service:

Wherefore my humble request is that I may be freed out of this Egypt, or else that it would please you to send over some beef and some cheese and butter, or any eating victuals will be good trading and I will send you all that I make of it. Only I would entreat the gain to redeem me, or if you please to speak to the rest of the parishioners, that a small gathering may be made to send me these things or else to redeem me suddenly, for I am almost pined and I want clothes, for truly I have but one shirt, one ragged one and one pair of hose, one pair of shoes, one suit of clothes, so that I am like to perish for want of succor and relief.

Hundreds of thousands of other indentured servants from Europe and slaves from Africa soon came to America and necessarily suffered even more than those who had chosen to come.

Not all who came, but almost all, grew to love their new land. In the middle of the eighteenth century Gottlieb Mittelberger wrote a tract about the ploys of those in Pennsylvania trying to entice emigrants from Germany, a journey that he argued usually ended in death or indenture:

When a husband or wife has died at sea, when the ship has made more than half of her trip, the survivor must pay or serve not only for himself or herself, but also for the deceased. When both parents have died over half-way at sea, their children, especially when they are young and have nothing to pawn or to pay, must stand for their own and their parents passage, and serve till they are twenty-one years old.

The great writer Hector St. John Crevecoeur, on the other hand, was thrilled by the social and political experiment being conducted in eighteenth-century Americathe marvelous mix of European cultures in a new geography: