The documentary, My American Girls, focuses on the lives of the Ortiz family residing in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. It provides an insightful window into the lives of this family and the difficulties they face. This is a reflection of the lives of many immigrant families throughout New York City. The community and the environment play a vital role in the development of the children within the family.
The neighborhood and community supported the Ortiz family, but at times it also affected their lives negatively. The support the Ortiz family receives from their community is evident in their weekly barbeques and events where their friends and family congregate to celebrate and dance like they did back in their native home in Puerto Rico. Monica’s surprise graduation party is another example of the community’s support. The neighborhood the Ortiz family resides permits their children to be more in touch with their ethnic roots but because it is a less affluent part of the city, as Sandra complains one night while accompanying her daughter back home because of unsafe conditions, the police are less inclined to enforce the law there. This issue of safety is one that usually comes with living in a neighborhood with working-class immigrants.
Mayra and Aida were more inclined to participate in neighborhood events than focus on her studies. They represent the challenges children of immigrants face in America. They are more in touch with their Puerto Rican roots, but as a result are much more detached from the social standards in America. Monica is the most Americanized of the three daughters in terms of culture and social standards. She moves into the city and attempts to “draw a line” between her life and her family’s. However, we see that because she conforms to American social standards, she appears to be the most successful of the three daughters academically, socially, and financially. In terms of upward mobility, she moves to a much more affluent neighborhood of the city. So does this mean that assimilation to traditional American standards results in natural upward mobility for immigrants or children of immigrants?
In the video, the daughters in the Ortiz family lived in a house with their extended family. The basement, first floor, second floor, and the third floor are all partitioned to families within their family (i.e. the Ortiz family that was interviewed lives on the third floor). This is a characteristic of Sunset Park that Min Zhou describes in her writings, but instead of one family renting parts of the house out to others, the Ortiz family was large enough to all find work and pay for the house this way. Min Zhou’s writing focuses on the influx of Asian immigrants. She mentions how in 1990, the neighborhood was fifty-one percent Latino, but that an increasing number of Asian immigrants were moving into Sunset Park. However, this documentary was filmed in the late 1990s and depicted the image of a still prominent Latino community within the neighborhood.
My American Girls reflects the lives of many immigrants in New York City and the difficulties they face. In this film we see the importance of culture and we also see how American culture can clash with the culture of immigrants. Even within the ethnic neighborhoods immigrants reside in and seek comfort from, there are conflicts and safety issues. The difficulties immigrants face in a new country are endless, however as in the case of the Ortiz family, some are successful in achieving their dreams, but “do the ends justify the means”?
