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What is Ethnic Literature?
During this term we have read four books considered under the genre of Ethnic Literature. The Jungle, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Native Son, and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents all include the basic elements of this genre. Ethnicity itself, “… is not a matter of who you descended from but what group you consent to join (Columbia 362). While race is a part of ethnicity the identifying factor is determined by the individual and the culture they adopt. Ethnic Literature contains, at its heart, the struggles and sacrifices of people trying to assimilate into American Society and culture. In an effort to cope with these struggles the characters in these stories tend to turn to drinking, violence, prostitution, or other deviant behaviors. The depictions of these struggles tend to open the eyes of the American consciousness to the problems that these people face. Though each book deals with different ethnicities, they all have these basic things in common. In Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle, Jurgis, a Lithuanian immigrant, and his family come to America in search of a better life. Upon their arrival in the United States, the family comes across a number of problems, the most important being their lack of fluency in the English language. Because of this fact the family is dependent on other people who may not have their best interests at heart. Despite this, Jurgis gets a job at a meat processing plant in which the working conditions are horrible. The meat processing plants at that point, in the early 1900s, were unsanitary and very dangerous. The workers were required to work upwards of 10 hour shifts, Monday through Saturday, of miserable painstaking work for less than 20 cents an hour. As a result of this labor, Jurgis eventually wound up being injured and his family became hard pressed for money.
White 2 Meanwhile, members of the family were dying, his wife was being sexually assaulted by her boss, and their whole life was hitting rock bottom. Eventually Jurgis’ wife dies from childbirth and his son drowns in the street. As a result of this Jurgis runs away from home leaving the family to fend for themselves. In response to the struggles that Jurgis and his family incur, they turn to alternative means of survival. While Jurgis is away from his family, he begins to rob people in order to eat. Because he can’t get a job anywhere and he is on his own, this act which he couldn’t picture himself doing in the beginning of the book becomes his only choice. In the meantime, Marija, a member of his family, turns to prostitution in order to provide for the family that Jurgis has left behind. Marija explains her situation when she says, “When people are starving and they have anything with a price, they ought to sell it, I say” (Sinclair 277). When things turn for the worst people are forced to do anything they can to survive, whether by legal or illegal means. Another theme of this book that was prevalent in the three books we read, as a class, is drinking. The workers in the stockyards use drinking as a means to escape from reality. In Chapter 14 of the story Jurgis turns to drinking, and to explain why, a passage in the story says: He was working in the steaming pit of hell; day after day, week after week-until now there was not an organ in his body that did its work without pain, until the sound of ocean breakers echoed in his head day and night, and the buildings swayed and danced before him as he went down the street. And from all the unending horror of this there was one respite, a deliverance-he could drink! He could forget the pain, he could slip off the burden; he would see clearly again, he
White 3 would be master of his brain, of his thoughts, of his will. His dead self would stir in him, and he would find himself laughing and cracking jokes with his companions-he would be a man again, and master of his life (Sinclair 134). This passage explains that because of the hardships that Jurgis must endure, his only relief is in drinking. Before this point, Jurgis would drink only when he was eating, but now he drinks more frequently and always has a craving for alcohol. Even though he should be saving his money to buy food or clothing for his family, he is driven to use this money to buy alcohol in order to preserve his sanity. The book, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, is seen through the eyes of Francie Nolan. Francie is 11 years old when the books starts, and the story is a bildingsroman of her life growing up in Brooklyn, New York. Francie’s parents, Katie and Johnny, are second generation Americans. Katie’s parents emigrated from Austria while John’s parents are Irish. The Nolans come across some of the same problems as Jurgis and his family, but not as severe. The Nolans don’t have much money and John is an alcoholic, but because they are second and third generation Americans, they are much better off than Jurgis. Katie cleans the apartment complex that they live in, while Johnny can’t hold down a steady job but is frequently a waiter on weekends. Francie is an intelligent young girl who wants nothing more than to graduate high school and go to college to become more educated. In the beginning of the book she states that she wants to read every book in the local library. When her father dies of pneumonia, due in part to his drinking, Francie is pulled out of school and put to work. Sacrificing is a major part of ethnic literature. By coming to America, immigrants are sacrificing, for better or for worse, their lives back home. Because of the appeal of a
White 4 chance for a better life these immigrants come to America. In the case of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, even though Francie and her parents are not immigrants themselves, they must still make sacrifices in order to survive in America. Francie’s education is sacrificed because she must go to work after her father dies. Also during this same time, while Katie is pregnant, she must continue to work until the last day of her pregnancy in order to provide for the family. While the sacrifices in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn were significant, the consequences of those in The Jungle were much more detrimental. Jurgis’ wife, Ona, had to sacrifice her body to her boss in order to keep her job. The children must sacrifice their health by going into the workforce early, and one of them winds up getting frostbite, and dies later on in the book. To survive in a society where they are shunned and disadvantaged people must make sacrifices to get ahead. In The Jungle, Jurgis drinking was an effort to escape from the strain of a long days work, Johnny drank to get his mind off the fact that he couldn’t get work. This process with Johnny is a continuous cycle. The Nolan’s financial situation suffers because Johnny doesn’t bring in a constant paycheck. Johnny drinks to take his mind off of this reality, but because he drinks he can’t get a job. Though the force which drives Jurgis and Johnny to drink are different, they both drink to ease the pain of the world. Another prevalent theme in these stories is the use of sex as a means of escape from reality. In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Francie’s aunt, Sissy, is a promiscuous woman. She desperately wants to have children but every time she gets pregnant the baby winds up being stillborn. Sissy puts the blame of her children dying on her husbands and leaves each husband after her pregnancies. Sissy wants to have the traditional American family consisting of a husband, a wife, and children. In order to find a husband who can
White 5 give her healthy children, she tends to twist logic to justify her means. Sissy leaves her second husband under the pretense, that because she wasn’t married in the Catholic Church, the Church didn’t recognize it and neither did she. This theme also plays a part in Native Son with the women in the novel. Native Son, by Richard Wright, is the story of Bigger Thomas, a young black man growing up in the Black Belt of Chicago. Bigger must face the inequalities of blacks in America and deal with the fact that his life choices are very limited. His girlfriend, Bessie, works hard everyday and drinks and has sex to ease her mind. In a passage of the book where Bigger explains why Bessie drinks, the book says: She worked long hours, hard and hot hours seven days a week, with only Sunday afternoons off; and when she did get off she wanted fun, hard and fast fun, something to make her feel she was making up for the starved life she led. It was her hankering for sensation that he liked about her. Most nights she was too tired to go out; she only wanted to get drunk. She wanted liquor and he wanted her. So he would give her the liquor and she would give him herself…..That was why, she told him, she drank. He knew why she liked him; he gave her money for drinks. He knew that if he did not give it to her someone else would; she would see to that (Wright 131). This passage explains why she drinks, but it also explains why she has sex. She is basically prostituting herself for enjoyment. While she may not be paid in money, Bigger would pay her in drinks, which would help her escape reality.
White 6 Bigger’s life is filled with violence and aggression. Because he is held down by White society, he lashes out against the world in order to make himself feel better. In response to an autobiographical selection by Richard Wright: As Wright’s selection makes clear, in the South in the early 1900s it was primarily whites who defined what it meant to be a “Negro.” They did so by making clear what behavior would be acceptable and what behavior would provoke violence, perhaps even death (Social Construction 9). All of Bigger’s actions are driven by fear of White society and the consequences of his behavior. After plans are made, between Bigger and his three friends, to rob a White convenience store, he picks a fight with his friend Gus to get out of going through with it. The main plot of the story revolves around Bigger killing a white girl, Mary Dalton, out of fear that he will be caught with her alone in her room. Lynchings were still popular at the time this story takes place, and that is surely what would have happened to Bigger if he was caught. When the evidence of Bigger’s crime has been discovered, he decides to run away to escape imprisonment. While on the run Bigger kills Bessie out of fear that she will cause his to be captured and, in turn, killed. Bigger is trapped within the constraints of society he doesn’t want to be a part of but won’t allow him to succeed. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents is in many ways the complete opposite of these other books. The story is the tale of four sisters, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia, and their immigration from the Dominican Republic to the United States. The girls come from a wealthy family and must adjust to the American culture once they arrive in the United States. The girls desperately want to be “Americanized” and their behavior consists of how they think normal American children behave. In The Jungle, A Tree
White 7 Grows in Brooklyn, and Native Son, the force behind the character’s deviant behavior is the need to escape from reality. In this book the girls drink, smoke, and have sex in order to fit into American society. In one section of the book Yolanda states: By the time I went to college, it was the late sixties, and everyone was sleeping around as a matter of principle. By then, I was a lapsed Catholic; my sisters and I had been pretty well Americanized since our arrival in this country a decade before, so really I had no excuse (Alvarez 87). Yolanda believes that having sex is a normal part of American teenage life, and in order to fit in she should be having sex. Also, unlike the other books, this novel does not contain an Anti-American tone. In The Jungle America is seen as a filthy environment where immigrants have no chance to succeed. In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn the Nolan family, though they are good people, are continuously presented with obstacles that they must overcome. Bigger, in Native Son, is obstructed by the most indestructible of barriers, prejudice. Because he is black, even though he may have the mental capacity, he is not allowed the opportunities that Whites have. In these three books, though given some opportunities, the main characters never achieved true success. In How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, the girls eventually overcome their cultural barriers and go on to have very successful lives. All of the sisters are financially stable, and besides two mental breakdowns, live pretty normal lives. Due to the point of view that is taken in Ethnic Literature, the genre sometimes has an effect on society that forces political and social change. As a result of Upton Sinclair’s depiction of the horrible conditions of the Chicago stockyards, political
White 8 changes were made to clean up the meat processing industry. After President Theodore Roosevelt read the novel, he set up a meeting with Sinclair. In the meeting Sinclair presented the President with detailed information of the conditions in Packingtown. As a result of this meeting, a Pure Food and Drug Act was passed and labor condition were improved (Benet’s 551). Native Son had a huge effect on the recognition of the racial inequalities of America. The book was thought by some to enforce the stereotypes of a young Black man being a violent and unruly individual. Others believed that this violent depiction was necessary in order to shock White readers into recognizing America’s racial problems (Native Son 1). By showing the thought process of a Black man in America and his fear of White society, people were forced to reconsider their views of Black people in general. Because White society and its Jim Crow laws are depicted as the reason that Black society was in its current state White became more open to change. As a result many Whites joined in the effort to promote civil rights and laws were enacted to preserve these rights. American culture is said to be “mulatto” not “white” (Columbia 362). The culture is a mixture a different people and races and their shared beliefs. Ethnic Literature depicts the struggles of people trying to assimilate into this “melting pot” of culture. The hardships endured by the characters of these novels are described in the pages of these books. Their willingness to sacrifice themselves in order to provide for their families is a theme that reoccurs throughout the genre. The coping mechanisms of drinking, having sex, and doing drugs are also prevalent themes. By reading these novels, society is
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Works Cited
Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. New York: Plume 1992 Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature, 1st edition. HarperCollins Publishers, 1991. Childers, Joseph and Gary Hentzi Eds. The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. Hudson, Christopher, Marijke Rijsberman and Paul Schellinger Asst. Eds. Encyclopedia of the Novel, Chicago; London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1998. “Native Son by Richard Wright (1940).” Hudson, Rijsberman and Schellinger. “Race/Ethnicity.” Childers and Hentzi 362. Rothenberg, Paula Ed. Race, Class, and Gender in the United States, 5th edition. New York: Worth Publishers, 2001. “The Jungle (1906).” Benet’s 551. Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle, New York; London: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2003 “The Social Construction of Difference: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality.” Rothenberg 5-9. Wright, Richard. Native Son, New York: Perennial, 2001