Author: Michaela McGovern

The twenty-first century brought many changes to New York City. The inherent character and essence of the city changed at this time as new immigrants and new leaders, as well as new urban developments and issues, came to the forefront.

By the end of the twentieth century, NYC had outdone itself in terms of the range and number of immigrants living there; by the 1990s, immigrants comprised the highest percentage of the city’s population since the early 1900s. As new groups of people came to New York, they “simultaneously challenged and enriched the nation’s most diverse ‘Immigrant City.’”

One immigrant group that had an important impact on New York is Asians. These immigrants, namely Chinese and Korean, worked hard to create a variety of professional establishments to serve their co-ethnics, thereby bringing new vitality to declining neighborhoods. Asians endured the weight of the model minority myth at the same time that they worked and assimilated in the city; stereotypes of Asians as intelligent, driven, and hard-working created an image that many Asian immigrants strived to live up to.

In addition, Latinos came to form one of NYC’s dominant immigrant groups. Before the later half of the twentieth century, Puerto Ricans comprised the dominant Latino group in New York, contributing to the city’s culture through “music, language and strong family traditions.” In the 1960s and 70s, however, this changed as new immigration increased, bringing other Latino groups to the city. Dominicans made up one of these other Latino groups. Despite their differences, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans are both transnational people and have had to deal with being considered too Puerto Rican/Dominican in the America but also too American in Puerto Rico/the Dominican Republic. Dominicans’ citizenship in the U.S. has allowed them to seek local political power through city and state elections. Despite the economically mixed experiences and separate cultural/ethnic identities of Latino immigrant groups, Latinos have found satisfying, sustainable lives in New York and have ultimately created a much more inclusive identity among Latinos from all different countries and cultures.

West Indians comprised another dominant group of immigrants in NYC. Upon coming to the U.S., West Indians had to experience and reassess ideas of race in ways that they did not have to in their countries of birth, where race just wasn’t an issue. West Indians eventually acquired success in business and other professions, and a rift soon formed between West Indians and African Americans. Although West Indians immigrants in New York maintained a strong cultural identity and sense of ethnic pride, their common race inevitably connected them to and united them with African Americans. This interconnectedness of race and identity has contributed to NYC’s face of diversity.

In the 1990s and 2000s, New York’s political leaders demonstrated how “a city is an experiment in the social contract.” Rudolph Giuliani changed the face of New York from liberal to much more conservative and created a lot of social turmoil with his approach to issues of race as well as many other issues. In spite of the contentions caused by Giuliani, many people consider him a great mayor due to the significant lowering of crime rates while he was in office as well as his response to 9/11.

I don’t know if I would exactly deem Emma Lou unreliable, but she certainly demonstrates a lot of ambiguities in her attitudes towards race that paint her as a pretty hypocritical and confused character.

For instance, she resents her dark skin and pure black features, yet she seeks black solidarity. While she hates being a dark-skinned girl herself, she has a strong desire to belong in the larger black community, which becomes clear when she goes to California to attend college. She expresses a strong interest in the black people living in California and really seeks out other black students at her university to befriend, yet when Hazel Mason befriends her, Emma Lou feels actual revulsion at her ‘vulgarity’ (Hazel says and does nothing vulgar, unless you classify imperfect English grammar and speaking loudly as particularly vulgar behavior) and does not want to be friends with her. Also, for someone who seems to care so much about establishing herself in and belonging to the black community, Emma Lou cares a lot about what the white students think of her, which can be seen in the way she monitors her speaking while talking to Hazel at the registrar’s office.

To be honest, I neither Clare nor Irene struck me as very admirable or sympathetic characters. In the beginning, I could definitely sympathize with Irene, but as the story progressed I found it harder to understand her and her hypocrisy.

However, given the choice between Clare and Irene, I would choose Irene as the more sympathetic character simply because she has some redeeming qualities to me that I just could not find in Clare. Clare’s blatant rejection of her own racial identity and her active way of othering black people in her social-climbing pursuits not only irritated me, but it also made me feel really uncomfortable with her. I could not bring myself to trust or like her as a character at all for this reason, let alone sympathize with or admire her. Yes, the black experience is an extremely difficult and unpleasant one, especially in America during the early twentieth century, but that doesn’t excuse Clare’s use of her ivory skin to pass as white so as not to have to deal with being an African American woman.

I can definitely sympathize with Irene’s anger at Clare and her husband John’s behavior when race comes up. Although Irene does take advantage of her lighter skinned, racially ambiguous appearance, at least she remains faithful to her sense of racial identity.

Journal entry-writing is one scholarly activity that I can’t say I’ve done in years, which is unfortunate because I really enjoy it. I like having the freedom to express whatever I think about something I’ve learned and/or read without the rigid, standardized parameters that I’ve come to expect to be imposed on my writing.

Even though I think my past journal entries for this class are pretty good in that they are fairly comprehensive, accurate reflections of the thoughts that I had while I read a piece of writing or watched a film, they are clearly a little rough around the edges. This is okay with me, though, because I’ve gotten the impression that these journal entries are not meant to be super polished and perfect. I’ve noticed in reading over my journal responses that my introductions and conclusions are kind of weak, if they’re even present in the entry at all, which they aren’t always.

I definitely prefer writing journal entries over taking notes. For one, note-taking is pretty tedious, and it restricts my thinking to one track, whereas writing journal entries allows me to think about the material I’ve been taught in class in a variety of ways rather than just the single way that my professor or textbook conveys the information. I also like writing journal responses because I feel like an actual human being while I’m doing it. Note-taking makes me feel like a robot, always mechanically recording what I see and hear, processing information on an unrelentingly linear, impersonal level. Also, I feel like I learn a lot more through writing journal entries than I ever would through just taking notes. I retain more information because I’ve made personal connections and reactions to the material, and I’ve thought about the material in many ways, giving me greater understanding of what I’ve learned.

One of the first images shown after the protagonist gets off of the ship to his new home depicts the immigration hub for this place against the larger image of this new city in the background. This image resonated with me because, especially after all of the readings we have done for class, it looks like a fictional, fantasy Ellis Island. The maze of people waiting on line, the cramped yet efficient structure of the place, and the beckoning, hopeful image of the glorious new city waiting for these people on the other side all bring Ellis Island and the experiences that millions of immigrants have had there to mind.

However, the distinctly surreal qualities of this image causes this place to clearly differ from Ellis Island. All of the inscriptions on the signs in the immigration center and on the buildings in the distance are in a foreign language entirely invented/contrived by Tan. This, as well as the overall surreal, fantasy-like illustration of the Tan’s city, places the reader into the protagonist’s shoes in the sense that the reader feels like just as much of an outsider to this city as a result of having no knowledge of its language whatsoever and of having never seen a city quite like this before.

After his family is killed, Vito Andolini travels to the United States. The wide shots and smooth, long panning of the camera through the interior of Ellis Island conveys the hectic yet systematic atmosphere of the immigration process, and Vito kind of fits somewhat strangely into this atmosphere as such a young boy on his own.

The scripting of this scene really gives it its poignance. When asked his name, Vito cannot answer, and one of the immigration officers reads his name and origin (Corleone, Sicily) off of his documentation; the other immigration officer then gives him the name of “Vito Corleone,” thereby giving birth to Vito’s new American persona, which would later become that of a powerful mafia leader, like that of Don Ciccio, the man who killed Vito’s father.

Perhaps the most powerfully scripted and shot part of this scene came when Vito was getting settled in his room, sits down, and looks out the window at the Statue of Liberty. At this point in the scene, Vito’s future as the Don becomes almost tangible, but as he’s looking out at the Statue of Liberty, he still appears so small, young, and fairly displaced.

 

From the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, a significant number of Eastern European Jews immigrated to America, with a particularly large concentration of them settling in New York City, most notably the Lower East Side of Manhattan. This wave of immigrants ultimately effected substantial change and influence on the culture and character of New York.

Initial influxes of Jewish immigrants during this time consisted of people from shtetls who had no previous experience with urban life. The most religious Jews, namely prominent rabbis and their followers, refused to immigrate to America due to their belief that America was spiritually deprived and operated solely under the drive to make money. As more economic, social, political, and spiritual circumstances changed in Europe, greater numbers and more varied types of Jews immigrated to the U.S. As the European economy declined and religious persecution abounded, Jewish immigration to America saw a sharp increase. Soon enough, over half of the Eastern European Jewish immigrants to New York had experience in an urban environment and could be classified as skilled workers.

With the dramatic rise in Eastern European Jewish immigration, numbers of Irish and German immigrants living in certain parts of the city diminished, and the Lower East Side became the most densely populated, congested district in NYC. Although most Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe settled in the Lower East Side, new urban infrastructure brought many of these immigrants to move to other areas like Brooklyn, uptown Manhattan, and the Bronx. These Jews mostly lived in cramped, dark tenements and slums, not acquiring much improvement upon the living conditions of the Lower East Side. In addition, although Jews migrated to other areas of the city, the Lower East Side remained the center for Jewish American intellectual, cultural, and political life.

As anti-Semitic sentiment grew in the late 1800s, leaders of the well-established German Jewish community began voicing their grievances towards Eastern European Jews and their “uncouth” and foreign ways of living. These German-Jews consequently set out to Americanize these Eastern European Jews, establishing organizations and agencies, most notably the Educational Alliance, to train these immigrants for jobs and citizenship. Eastern European Jewish immigrants initially resented the German Jews and their organizations because of their frequent condemnation of Yiddish language and culture. However, once these organizations began to accept Yiddish, eventually providing classes in Yiddish culture and language, Eastern European Jewish immigrants demonstrated new enthusiasm for these programs.

A lot of anti-Semitic remarks were made about the crime rates among the Eastern European Jewish population in the Lower East Side; although no violent crime really occurred within this community, some serious criminal activity, notably prostitution, took place. As a result, the German Jews in uptown Manhattan also created associations to decrease crime and poverty while increasing Jewish quality of life.

In time, eastern European Jews in New York started establishing their own dominance. A majority of them gained a strong foothold in manufacturing, particularly in the garment industry, and many of them formed socialist labor unions. These socialists spoke out about issues of social justice and gave a new sense of brotherhood to the eastern European Jewish community in the city. They started to exercise greater political influence as voters, putting many Jewish and Jewish-advocating candidates in office. Jews in the Lower East Side became progressively more secular while still maintaining their core religious identities and beliefs. Although Judaism definitely saw a decline in New York among the eastern European Jewish demographic, this decline stopped as Judaism became steadily Americanized.

The eastern European Jewish community in NYC ultimately established a great cultural influence. Their unique enthusiasm for learning and intense value of knowledge drove them to get an extensive education, and they contributed greatly to NYC’s theater scene with both common and, later, more sophisticated Yiddish drama.

With deeper reading, the title of Yezierska’s novel becomes more and more indicative of the vital role and central focus on the Smolinsky daughters, most notably Sara, in the story. With their meager wages, the Smolinsky girls provide the bread for their family, both literally and in the more general, figurative sense (money).

This title highlights the inherently sad, unfair nature of these girls’ lives as members of a poor Jewish American family. As daughters and, more importantly, as women, they must live to work for money that will always go to their father, a man, who by nature is owed this money for his innate male closeness to God. Bessie, Mashah, Fania, and Sara must continue to give all of their hard earnings to their father for his use if they are to have any hope for the next world, to be protected and loved by God. It is only through their bread-giving, their service to a man, that they may reach Heaven, where they will continue to serve their men.

Sadly, Reb Smolinsky only views his daughters as bread-givers, his own personal money-makers and life-sustainers. He makes it abundantly clear how he views his flesh and blood when Berel Bernstein asked to marry Bessie, and the threat of her leaving the house posed itself. “[I]f you marry her, you’re as good as taking away from me my living–tearing the bread from my mouth.”