Immigrant Stories Critique - Essay Example

Immigrant Stories Introduction Immigrant stories are stories which tell the life experiences of the immigrants into the United States. The immigrant families struggle to cope with the American culture, norms, beliefs and practices in the new cultures. These people are faced with the challenge of the changes in the immigration system in the US. Kingston, Mukherjee, Gish, Lahiri and Jhumpa, were Asian women writers who narrated their lives in American as immigrants. Major common and the greatest motive of the immigrants in the immigrants stories, is contained in the common and similar theses that they always strive to meet as their goal in the new cultural setting. The common thesis is always, “their aims and what they do to meet their objective is to construct a micro society”. Such is the type of society where the immigrants’ values and norms are incorporated and treated with respect without the subjection to the alterations to the laws on immigration (McMichael, Leonard & Shelley 175). The Nature of the Immigrants’ Stories The immigrants’ stories embark on the adaptive strategies of the immigrants so that they are not inconvenienced by the sudden change of environment and the cultural settings. In the “American dream”, a narrative written by the Asian women writers, the intent of the writers is how to create an environment where the actions, beliefs and general interests of the immigrants are not influenced by the mother cultural beliefs and practices of the country they presently inhabit. In the Blue Meridian by Jean Toomer, the objective of the poem is to outline the methodologies that the immigrants use to gain a better stand in the social issues, lives and phenomena related to ethical lifestyles. This paper therefore seeks to explore, what factors do affect the lives of the immigrants in the new settings. Does accepting the new culture affect the lives; cause the problems to the immigrants in the new environments. Immigrants are faced with the problems of culture and lifestyles in the new countries. These are entirely social factors in these places. The immigrants have the problems of language and communication. They get it hard to learn and communicate in English. This presents the hurdle of learning in these regions. In America, the learning modes are through the use of English and for the immigrants to learn the ways of life in the US; they will have to learn the English first. The lack of secure jobs which pay to guarantee the survival of these people, also torment their psychologies in the sense that they are worried on the means to make a living. The Presentation of the Problems The challenges that the immigrants face are majorly caused by the acceptance of the new culture and the mentality of acting in light of the old, past culture. Acceptance of the new culture implies that the immigrants abandon the past ways of living in their mother countries and to adopt the new ways of life in the new environment. The immigrants are isolated in the refuge groups for they do not understand the new ways of life. Apart from being isolated they get themselves sort to be together for their social life standards are the same and do not match those of the original tribes of the land. This implicates their lives even further by being detached from the services that could help them emotionally (McMichael, Leonard & Shelley 125). The gradient between the two cultures is the acceptance of the new culture and this is the source of the problems that face the immigrants in the new cultures. The cultural differences are presented as a problem the moment they strive to meet the cultural demands of the new culture. These are the problems that the immigrants try to solve by the coming up micro societies. The micro societies are the platforms through which the immigrants solve their problems. The ability to form the micro society is determined by the goals that the immigrants to reverse the oppression they face in the new cultures (Belasco & Linck 109). In the American dream, the Asian women postulate the power to overcome the new culture’s challenge by setting a platform for the fellow immigrants on micro societies. The dream of America reveals objectives and hopes of the immigrants and refugees in America, where by the immigrants and the original occupants of the land be able to eat on unified table. To achieve this, they embrace the new culture as they refer to their last culture. The challenges that they face are to an extent solved by this ability to merge the two cultures. They isolate themselves from the major culture stream to get the momentum to learn and be educated through the contemporary language that is the American English. The American Dream The motive of the immigrants to form the micro society is to move beyond the binary oppositions and come up with a common platform to learn from the challenges of the culture. They articulate the vision of Luther King Jnr in the American dream to set them a pace in meeting the challenges of isolation, low economic development, poor education and poor delivery of services. It is found that the American government in many occurrences has always strive to sideline, isolate and deport the immigrants. The current government is the verge to incorporate the micro culturalists, immigrants since it is expensive to take back twelve million immigrants back to their fore fathers’ lands. This is the dream that the Asian women desire to realize to the immigrants. It gives them the opportunity to share equally the prospects that Native Americans enjoy in their homeland. Kingston’s, the woman warrior presents a narrative of the imperialist immigrants with the ability to transform and align the native and the old culture to find a solution to Chinese American nationalists. In the story, the Chinese-American nationalists faced the problems of trans-cultural boundaries in America. Some of the immigrants came up with a less responsive strategy to combine the cultural dimensions of the two cultures. It is an adaptive measure to meet the objectives of the micro society, where both the immigrants and the natives are offered same opportunities (Baym & Robert 251). There are no criteria that follow in the process of delivering the services to the people. The Blue Meridian, By Jean Toomer In the Blue Meridian by Jean Toomer, Jean is in a position to merge the ways of life of the white and black Americans. He copes with the variance of the cultures and withstands the transition, where he adapts to the new life as he holds on the core issues that the initial culture demands. In this way Jean is able to redirect the oppressiveness of the culture and transforms the lives of the immigrants to a more sustainable and comfortable life. He got the ability to influence the cultural settings of the people and merge both of them to address concurrently the interest and ways of lives for groups. He realized that fully accepting the new culture poses a varied scope of problems to the immigrants. In this case, this problem is presented in the form of the problems facing the families living outside their main stream social construct of the Native American culture. The Ways to Address the Cultural Transition Problems of the Immigrants The micro societies and the enlightened Natives address these problems by reconstructing the existing service delivery programs and coordinating them in a better way so that the immigrants access them with ease. The objective is met to create a uniform platform for both the Natives and the immigrants. This is also done by targeting the needs of the immigrants more directly than ever, especially on issues to manner the social and health problems. The provision of services to curb mental illness and overall body disabilities should be incorporated to the target objectives to help realize the goal of improved service universal deliverance. Conclusion The immigrants’ stories are built to reflect on life challenge of the immigrants in the contempt to meet the needs of the new cultural settings. They focus on the dispensation of the challenges that the new culture impose onto the lives of the immigrants. Kingston, Mukherjee, Gish, Lahiri and Jhumpa, in their stories show the need to address the issues that challenge the lives of the immigrants. In Blue Meridian by Jean Toomer, these problems are addressed by providing the solutions of racial differences and enlightenment of Natives to accept the immigrants as part of their own cultural setting. These stories are with a common theme of facing the challenge of cultural transitions and this they do by creating micro societies (Lauter, Richard & John 85). Works Cited Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. , 2013. Print. Belasco, Susan, and Linck Johnson. 1865 to the Present. New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2008. Print. Lauter, Paul, Richard Yarborough, and John Alberti. The Heath Anthology of American Literature: Beginnings to 1800. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013. Print. McMichael, George L, J S. Leonard, and Shelley F. Fishkin. Anthology of American Literature. Boston: Longman, 2011. 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