Curious

Too often critics fixate on multicultural literature’s identity awareness. They become disproportionately preoccupied with the cultural discomfort immigrants face as they reconcile contradictory aspects of selfhood into a stable, multicultural identity. It’s all the rage to dissect literature through the frame of identity politics, the study of the shared injustices suffered by specific social groups. But beware; identity politics can misconstrue immigrant literature.

To appraise the immigrant experience as a journey toward self-concept can be incredibly formulaic, sentimental, and cliche. The study of self-identity certainly has power to enlighten, so I do not wish to demean those authors and critics who devote scholarship toward identity exploration. Nevertheless, I dislike the manner in which naive, unrelenting, and sweeping identity politics can eerily transform a multicultural work into little more than a nostalgic (Western) coming-of-age novel, in which the protagonist tackles adventure, conflict, and pain in his or her quest for maturation (replete with the entertainment value of exotic characterization and curious trumpery, of course).

Like Porochista Khakpour, I suspect that American publishers deserve some blame for carving this “maudlin” archetype of immigrant literature. Market demand has an amazing chokehold on publishing companies. Most American readers expect one of two approaches to immigrant literature: romanticization or politicization. Many perceive the immigrant experience romantically. To them it is a journey from intimidation to liberation, from servitude to autonomy, from poverty to wealth. They expect a slow, emotionally-charged maturation process in which a sympathetic protagonist pacifies his/her homesickness for the old country by grasping hold of the American dream and overcoming prejudice in city ghettos.* The rest typically anticipate a political commentary, one which emphasizes the discriminated, marginalized, and misunderstood fate of immigrant groups. These readers anticipate the tale of the disillusioned immigrant, a man or woman who fled to America for refuge only to encounter the same ethnic strife, economic oppression, and political friction he or she fled rampant in the United States.

Although audience expectation plays a large role in the archetypal frame that American publishers impose on multicultural literature, publishers have proven they can downplay the sentimental and/or cultural realism of outdated archetypes in response to the crisis in the Middle East and post 9/11 global tension. (Of course, there is much more room for growth; for instance, I’d love to see migrant accounts of third-world migration to less traditional havens or more contemporary transnational narratives.) Nevertheless, our critical approach must shift as well. To holistically appreciate multicultural literature, I believe you must step beyond the frame of the formulaic identity crisis whenever possible because it implies an absolute beginning and endpoint, a narrative too simplistic for today’s global realities.

Gloria Vando’s Promesas: Geography of the Impossible presents just such an opportunity. While Vando beautifully portrays that discomforting immigrant identity, as a Puerto Rican post-immigrant, Vando views her identity as symptomatic of a larger conflict. Vando frames her own conflicts as arising from contradictions between cultural promises and cultural realities. Her poetry tackles the “disparity between [the] promises and reality” of both Puerto Rican and American culture. As a Puerto Rican immigrant, Vando lives a life of multiple estrangements. Puerto Rican islanders stiff-arm the mainland Ricans, yet mainland Ricans find an “American” identity improbable and unwieldy because of Puerto Rico’s commonwealth relationship with the USA. It’s a tale of transnational gone sansnational. Through two poems in particular, Vando voices her frustration with not only a suspended identity but also–dare I say, more importantly–the manner in which each country’s reality undermines their own mythic culture.

In “Nuyorican Lament” Vando begins by announcing:

San Juan you’re not for me.

My cadence quails and stumbles

on your ancient stones:

*

there is an inner beat here

to be reckoned with–

a seis chorreao, a plena,

an imbred ¡Oyeeee!

and ¡mira tú! against which

my Manhattan (sorry

wrong island) responses fall flat.

Vando continues with a lush explanation of her personal history and instinct to embrace this island which fails to reciprocate. Her closing stanzas depict the bitter injustice the island’s betrayal leaves on her tongue.

And now, you see me here,

a trespasser in my own past,

tracing a faint ancestral theme

far back, beyond the hard rock

rhythm of the strand.

I walk down El Condado, past

Pizza Huts, Big Macs and

Coca-Cola stands

listening for a song–

*

a wisp of a song–

*

that begs deep in my heart.

“Commonwealth, Common Poverty,” the second poem I want to highlight, grapples the universally unsavory dimensions of the American reality. The poem, dedicated to Zoltán Sumonyi, deals so broadly with the immigrant experience and the conflicting interpretations of that experience that I feel justified in posting the poem in its entirety below.

A visitor comes form Hungary as from outer space

dropping into my Midwestern world with poems

about himself and that bracketed place he hails from.

And though the gift he brings is veiled, submerged

in allegory and myth, I recognize myself. Say

to him: this poem you read is about me. He smirks.

*

He has read his poems before and not been heard.

He is weary, somewhat cavalier. His body is taut like

a gymnast’s. His eyes form flat black mirrors of distrust

adjusting to what he perceives as enemy turf. It’s August.

He sheds his jacket, rolls his sleeves above his biceps.

A pulse in his temple keeps rhythm with his words.

*

He tries again, leads me as he reads. I see us both,

two generations earlier, perhaps three, running down once

familiar streets with new strange names, and I am plagued

by what I might have been had nothing changed,

had Teddy’s boys not made it to the top of San Juan

Hill. Like him I, too, yearn for connections

*

between my parents’ world and this one, long for

a tie, cut short by strangers–does it matter

that his were Russians, mine American; or that

his lines allude to Greeks and gifts of death, while

mine–because our history has yet to be revamped–

still lament the Massacre of Ponce? Here we sit

*

in a Kansas City motel, hearing what we say

translated by a man we have to trust–could be

a friend, could be a secret agent–a clean-cut man

in a banker’s suit who keeps his jacket on,

claims he walked from Budapest to freedom, and

converts our pain into passionless sounds. Yes,

*

here we sit, feeling as our ancestors surely felt

the day their world shifted in its global socket

and everything they cherished perished in the quake,

leaving them disfranchised, disconnected from

their past, from each other, from themselves. How

they must have searched then for a look, a gesture,

*

a familiar word to ease their terror: the arch of a brow,

a jawline–something to bind them to their captors,

something so slight it might have gone unnoticed

had all remained whole. And we, their progeny, now

sit here immersed in Russian and American symbols:

we, their future, have become what they most feared.

“Commonwealth, Common Poverty” provides an opportunity to explore more than identity politics (the marginalized and marginalizing). It brings to mind questions regarding the conflict between cultural memory and cultural history, the shape of constructed communities, and the mythic claims one’s personal past introduces. It is this kind of inquiry that attracts me to multicultural literature and begs me to defend it against increasingly outdated and archetypal perceptions of it.

*

*I will say too much if I attempt to issue a rebuttal to this idealism. Suffice it to say that these perceptions are built on the misguided presupposition that all human beings equally value the prodigal amounts of liberty and wealth this country affords its citizens. Too few recognize that many immigrants are seeking some opportunity rather than this opportunity.