| This study traces the arc of immigrant writing in the United States from the early twentieth century to the present, and examining the ways in which the most recently arrived have sought to assimilate into, reconfigure, or reject America and its Dream. Peopled by immigrants and the descendants of immigrants, America continues to be a largely hostile frontier, notwithstanding its mythic promise. Renowned across the globe for its prosperity, for its attachment to equality and justice for all, the nation remains inhospitable to newcomers, its inhabitants reluctant to give up any portion of their hard-earned success. No matter that there is room enough or wealth enough: if you are "fresh off the boat," then, as an immigrant, you must prove yourself worthy, and assimilate. Becoming American is much like learning English—it is something the immigrant achieves over time. Only through pain and sacrifice, by overcoming prejudice, social exclusion, and economic hardships, can immigrants finally access what becomes their personal American Dream. It is not, therefore, an easy dream to access. For those who manage to gain a sense of belonging, who come to view themselves as truly American, the United States does indeed become home, although there is a price to pay for such inclusion—if inclusion it is. Most immigrants, however, remain attached to their origins, their cultural dislocation precluding any thought of truly belonging.;Surprisingly, the nation's mythic promise persists in spite of—or perhaps because of—the difficulties wave after wave of newcomers have faced. Representing opportunity for immigrants from all over the globe, the America's self-mythologization remains irresistible. This study tests the gravity of this mythos through a reading of a selection of texts written by both first- and second-generation immigrants to the United States: Carlos Bulosan's America is in the Heart (1946), Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine (1989), Jumpha Lahiri's The Namesake (2003), and Salman Rushdie's Fury (2000).;Common threads run through these texts: the empowering liberation that comes with mastery of English, the peculiarly privileged subject position of the author in relation to the minority he or she portrays, the difficulties and potentialities that accompany migration, the rejection of ghettoization, the unrelenting critique of a nation that does not live up to its dual mantras of opportunity and equality, and the battle between originary and adoptive cultural identities, to name but a few.;Despite noteworthy similarities, these texts vary significantly in their approach to Americanization. They offer differing perspectives on the nature and repercussions of assimilation—whether for immigrants or for the native-born population that accommodates them. Fixating on the American ideal of equality, America is in the Heart counterpoints the nation's philosophical foundation with the harsher, inegalitarian reality experienced by Filipino immigrants. If Jasmine likewise critiques certain aspects of America, its author, Bharati Mukherjee, depicts the immigrant as a reconfigurative force that alters the nation it finds. Lahiri's The Namesake, on the other hand, views neither assimilation nor reconfiguration as possibilities. It represents the plight of the marginalized immigrant—whether first-or second-generation—as one of hopeless liminality, characterized by a permanent sense of loss. While Rushdie addresses the above subject positions in Fury, he goes further: placing a foundering American Empire at the center of a hyper-technologized, postmodern world, Rushdie identifies, and resists, an emergent and potentially universal marginalization that accompanies globalized consumption. It is a vision that bodes ill for postcolonial and/or minority identity and discourse. Whether Rushdie's text is anomalous or heralds a troubling paradigm shift is, as yet, uncertain. |
