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Immigrants and their Children:
Second Generation Americans Split between Cultures
Priscilla DeGregory
May 10, 2010
Junior Colloquium: Dick Cluster
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Immigrants and their Children:
Second Generation Americans Split between Cultures
As the child of a French immigrant, I have always had a unique relationship with
my mother that other friends could never quite relate to. Our struggle to understand each
other and get along often seemed to go beyond the regular obstacles of a mother-daughter
relationship. Bearing this in mind I was prompted to further explore other secondgeneration Americans’ experiences with their immigrant parents. One of the more
important elements of this quest seemed to hinge on the language experience of secondgeneration Americans. Since this linguistic factor contributes to the immigrants’
relationship with their children, it will be useful to look at statistics on how secondgeneration children are raised linguistically. Additionally, looking at some fictional
stories, we can gain an even deeper understanding into the emotional impact that this
apparent or subtle language barrier can have. However, language is not the only
determining factor. So too are the varying histories and customs that the immigrants bring
with them. Several stories will be drawn from in order to see how the immigrants’
histories and memories impact their lives once in America. Finally, another factor that
seems quite pertinent in immigrant families are the sacrifices and trials that most parents
endure when uprooting their lives to come to America in hopes of giving their children,
or potential children, a future that they could never have had otherwise. Through different
stories we see that this sacrifice is almost never fully appreciated by the children, and can
often be a point of contention, where parents want acknowledgment of it and instead only
receive criticism for their inability to assimilate as their children have.
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It is also discovered that there are three main scenarios that can result regarding
the lingual path of second-generation Americans. The immigrants’ children will either be
monolingual (speaking only English), bilingual speaking their parents’ tongue as well as
English, or they can speak English with varying degrees of mastery of their parents’
native language. Whatever the level of mastery of the native language may be, there are
large pressures that push their children to speak English. Consequently, within three or
four generations, the family will usually become completely monolingual (Alba et al.
2002), with the exception of enclaves that foster the preservation of certain foreign
languages (Portes and Schauffler 1994). In the past, immigrant families quickly
assimilated linguistically, driven by a patriotic or quasi nationalistic concept that
“American English both reflected and constituted the democratic and rational nature of
the country…the acquisition and use of English was seen as the litmus test of citizenship”
(Portes and Schauggler 642), and, because of this fact, bilingualism was actually seen
negatively. However, it was later discovered that those who were bilingual would “enjoy
a greater degree of cognitive flexibility and an enhanced ability to deal with abstract
concepts than their monolingual peers. Instead of creating “confusion,” having two
symbols for each object enhanced understanding” (643). Yet the large majority of thirdgeneration Americans on, are English only speakers. Alba et al. argue that the two most
prominent factors leading to monolingualism are the family situation and the communal
context (478). The family situation could include, whether both parents are from the same
country, whether the immigrants speak their native tongue at home, or whether or not
other immigrant relatives live close enough to have an effect. The communal context
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refers mainly to whether or not the family lives in a bicultural region, for instance in
Miami, Florida there is a large Cuban community.
Let us take a closer look at some specific findings of Alba et al. in “Only English
by the Third Generation? Loss and Preservation of the Mother Tongue Among the
Grandchildren of Contemporary Immigrants”. One question that they ask was what is the
percentage of children (from ages 6-15) who spoke only English at home, by generation.
If we look at Appendix A we discover some interesting findings. Among secondgeneration Americans, the percentages of people who spoke only English varied widely
according to which country their parents emigrated from. For instance, the lowest
percentage of monolingual second-generation Americans was among children from the
Dominican who were 8.4% English only speakers, ranging all the way up to 67.7% of
Japanese speaking only English by the second generation. However, when we look to the
third generation, the statistics become more uniform. Each country included in the table
shows around 90% of the children in this generation speaking only English. Cuban,
Dominican and Mexican families have lower percentages of the third-generation
speaking English only, and this could be explained partially due to enclaves of these
cultures in various regions. However, in homes where the mother tongue is spoken, thirdgeneration Americans have a slightly lower percentage of speaking English only,
revealing that if the language is spoken in the home through generations, the mother
tongue can hold on a little longer.
Alejandro Portes and Richard Schauffer’s study seems to be asking more complex
questions regarding bilingualism versus monolingualism among future generations of
immigrants. For instance, their study asked which language the future generations prefer
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to speak, using a sample of South Floridian Youths in 1992. They also ask what some of
the determinants are that factor into the linguistic outcome of the immigrants’ children, as
well as how this affects their academic achievements. To the question of preference,
85.8% of U.S. born second-generation Americans preferred to speak English and, out of
the study’s entire sample, 81% of males and 79% of females preferred to speak English
(Appendix B). In addition, according to Appendix B, by the second-generation only 27%
of males and 33% of females spoke their parents’ native tongue well. This overwhelming
preference to speak English instead of a native parental tongue led Portes and Schauffer
to conclude that, “Even highly educated immigrant parents do not stand much of a chance
of transmitting their language to their children. Their illusions of communicating with
their children and grandchildren in their native language will come to naught for the most
part” (659). They argue that most variables that could influence the staying power of the
parental language cannot withstand the forces of assimilation. They also contend that this
is only a loss in terms of academics and intelligence and that it will take policy change in
the U.S. to ever significantly alter this fact.
Considering these quantitative findings, let us now look at some fictional accounts
to examine language and other factors that influence immigrants’ relationship with their
American raised children. First, let us look at language in various stories involving
immigrants’ families in the U.S. If we assume that the statistics stated above could be
applied to American families in general, then we could assume when reading these
stories, that most second-generation Americans do not speak their parents’ native
language fluently.
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A common thread in these stories was the way in which the immigrant parents, no
matter how well they knew English, could never fully impart to their children their
thoughts or successfully communicate on the same wavelength. This boundary is one that
would not be felt to the same degree in homogenously English speaking families and
plays into this unique relationship I’m exploring. In addition to this, it seems that the
presence of another language seems to have an impact as well on the children. If English
is their second language, then their process of assimilation can play into their relationship
with their parents. Will the children abandon their mother language for the cause of
fitting in? Whether or not they retain their first language the statistics previously
examined suggest that they will certainly prioritize English as more important to learn
and speak.
In a short story called “The Unforgetting” by Lan Samantha Chang, a Chinese
couple and their child move to Iowa in pursuit of a better life. The three of them seem to
remain very distant from each other and the story at times implies that this is partially
influenced by the parents’ experience with language as well as their son, Charles’s,
experience with assimilation. Charles’s teacher notices that he is behind in his
vocabulary, and thus in his learning, because he is not yet fluent in English. She suggests
to his parents that they not speak Chinese at home (Spack and Zamel 87). When
Charles’s father, Ming, becomes aware of this, he worries that Charles “might get lost
between his two languages” and so, “in the next few months, he gradually stopped
speaking Chinese. Since they did not test him, Ming never knew how long it took for all
of those words to be forgotten” (88). Whether or not their family spoke English in their
home, Charles would have eventually learned to speak English fluently. So why was it
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encouraged by the teacher to abandon Chinese in the home? This could be a reflection of
patriotism whereby the act of speaking English is perceived as more nationalistic or as an
affirmation of citizenship. In addition, the outdated idea that a child will become
confused between the two languages appeared in this passage as well. Another way in
which this story addresses immigrant families’ relationship with language, is in a passage
when the mother, Sansan, thinks about the loss that comes when communicating in
English. She reflects on the fact that “over and, over, they reached for certain words that
had no equivalents in English (93)…in English, Sansan seemed to hide from her more
complicated thoughts. Her English world was limited to the clipped and casual rhythm of
daily plans” (94). This limitation that comes with what can be lost in translation had a
great impact on the depth of her ability to communicate with her son. If she was so
limited, and could not express more nuanced, complex and significant thoughts, this
could inhibit her from forming a relationship with her son that may have been deeper if
communicating in her native tongue.
In another story, written by Jhumpa Lahiri called “Hell-Heaven”, a daughter
named Usha narrates about her continuous struggle with her mother as she grows up.
Language manifests itself as a determining factor in their relationship. For instance, Usha
greatly admires an American named Deborah, who is like an aunt to her and functions as
a foil to Usha’s mother. She muses, “Deborah and I spoke freely in English, a language
which, by that age, I expressed myself more easily than Bengali, which I was required to
speak at home” (Lahiri 69). Though Usha does not directly say that she prefers to speak
English it seems implied in this story, just by the mere fact that she highlights that she
and Deborah speak in English—adding to the list of reasons why she feels closer to
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Deborah than to her mother. Her use of the word required also suggests that she has no
volition to speak Bengali. Later, in the story Usha’s preference for English appears when
she is talking about Deborah and her Indian husband, “with their two identical little girls
who barely looked Bengali and spoke only English and were being raised so differently
from me” (75). In this story, Usha resists Bengali culture and consciously chooses
American culture over it, and language is just one of the aspects that factors into this
strong rejection of the Bengali culture.. Thus, perhaps one of the reasons that secondgeneration Americans shed their mother tongue or resist bilingualism is because it
represents a piece of their parents’ culture that they are trying to escape—most likely
prompted by the strong desire to fit in. Finally, Usha may see her mother’s lacking
English as a reason to respect her less, as when her mother gossips about an Indian friend
who has, in her eyes, abandoned his Bengali roots: “ “He used to be so different. I don’t
understand how a person can change so suddenly. It’s just hell-heaven, the difference,”
she would say, always saying the English words for her self-concocted, backward
metaphor” (69). It is apparent that Usha uses language to enforce the divide between her
mother and herself, picking out her errors perhaps to suggest greater character flaws in
her mother.
Michiko Kakutani comments on language and translation of a different sort in
Lahiri’s stories when he posits, “Their children too are often emotional outsiders: having
grown up translating the mysteries of the United States for their relatives, they are fluent
navigators of both Bengali and American culture but completely at home in neither; they
always experience themselves as standing slightly apart, given more to melancholy
observation than wholehearted participation” (Kakutani 2008). What begins as merely
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lingual translation, can morph into the great feat of translating cultural ideas. In this way,
in Lahiri’s stories, language translation serves to represent an act that goes beyond
translating words. The children in Lahiri’s stories are “Often cast in the role of facilitator
or fixer, they are accustomed to serving as their parents’ go-betweens” (Kakutani 2008).
The novel The Bonesetter’s Daughter, by Amy Tan, is about a Chinese immigrant
woman named LuLing and her daughter Ruth and their dysfunctional relationship. In this
story, language plays a large role in how they interact. LuLing is dependent on her
daughter because she never mastered English. She can speak English, but she pays little
attention to grammar, which hinders how she communicates her ideas. In a part of the
novel when Ruth takes LuLing to the doctors to inquire about her mother’s deteriorating
memory, we see just how dependent LuLing has become on her daughter over the years
in aiding her to clarify her thoughts. Ruth acts as a translator for her mother, sometimes
only translating her English into a more coherent form. The doctor asks her mother basic
questions to test her memory and in the following excerpt he asks her who the last five
presidents were:
“Last five year still Clinton.” Her mother had not even understood the question! Of course she
hadn’t. She had always depended on Ruth to tell her what people meant, to give her what they said
from another angle. “Reverse order,” means “go backward,” she would have told LuLing. If Dr.
Huey could ask that same question in fluent Mandarin, it would be no problem for LuLing to give
the right answer. “This president, that president,” her mother would have said without hesitation,
“no difference, all liar. No tax before election, more tax after. No crime before, more crime after.
And always don’t cut welfare. I come this country, I don’t get welfare. What so fair? No fair. Only
make people lazy to work!” (65)
The fact that Ruth always concerned herself in helping her mother to communicate with
people, may have further enabled her mother to remain at the same level of mediocre
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English, never being forced to improve. This in turn bound her mother to Ruth, wrapping
the two of them into a codependent vicious cycle. The text also illustrates how
idiosyncratic LuLing is, and Ruth not only needs to translate her words but also her
thoughts. Though Ruth loves her mother very dearly, these factors play into why Ruth
seems to lack respect for her mother at times. It’s as if she uses her mother’s reliance on
her to her advantage, sometimes using it as leverage or holding back and censoring what
she wants her mother to hear.
Lisa Dunick reflects on the ways in which Tan uses language in her work to
address cultural barriers between the Chinese immigrant mothers and their daughters in
her stories. Tan uses talk-story, which relies heavily on dialog, to demonstrate language
dynamics. “Tan emphasizes her conscious desire to give validity to the voice of those
who speak “broken” or non-standardized Englishes in her novels…Most importantly, she
says that she “wanted to capture what language ability tests can never reveal: her
[mother’s] intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of
her thoughts” (Dunick 10). In other words Tan is attempting to capture or represent all
that can be missed when her own mother would speak in broken English. In writing these
novels, she is honoring her own mother and acting as a translator just as the daughters in
her stories do. Tan is essentially showing the reader what can be omitted when one tries
to communicate in a language that is not their mother tongue.
Now that we have examined the language complexities that arise within
immigrant families, we can move on to the histories and memories that play into, and can
hinder, immigrants’ relationships with their children. In “The Unforgetting”, Ming and
Sansan struggle with how their memories and yearning for the customs of their homeland
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inhibit them from fully enjoying their life in the U.S. and further inhibit them from ever
fully connecting with their son. Sansan inquires of her husband, “ “How will we make the
space in our minds for everything we need to learn here?” Without a pause, he answered
her, “We will forget.”” (Spack and Zamel 86). And then later on in the story when Ming
begins to perceive the chasm that lies between him and his son, he ponders “the world of
his past had grown every day larger and more vivid until it pressed against his mind,
beautiful and shining. And he wondered if perhaps this world had pushed his own son out
of his house—if they had lost their son because of their stubborn inability to forget” (95).
Because Ming and Sansan are holding on to their past with such fervor, the new
memories and new customs pale in comparison. These memories are inhibitors for
building new ones with their son. Thus, he probably never sees his parents when they are
truly happy. He may even blame himself for their unhappiness, knowing that they
sacrificed their history for a new history in America.
Memory appears as a factor in Usha and her mother’s relationship as well in
“Hell-Heaven”. Her mother falls in love with an Indian man Pranab Kaku, Deborah’s
future husband in fact, and one of the reasons she loves him is because they are from the
same neighborhood in Calcutta. Her mother was able to recount memories to him about
her life in Calcutta. “Pranab Kaku listened to these stories with interest, absorbing the
vanishing details of her past. He did not turn a deaf ear to her nostalgia, like my father, or
listen uncomprehending, like me” (Lahiri 66). Her mother was desperate to reminisce
about her past and the experiences that formed her, but these histories and stories were
lost on her daughter. Usha unknowingly may have been neglecting her mother’s very
being by showing a lack of interest in her roots, reinforcing the already existing gap
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between them. And again, her mother seems unable to form new memories in the new
place because of an unwillingness to relinquish the past.
In The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Ruth, from childhood on, had a very tumultuous
relationship with LuLing that may have resulted from her mother’s tendency to dwell on
the past. However, in this story LuLing’s past haunts her, not because of idealistic
memories that represent a place and time that she longs for, but rather, because she feels
great guilt, that she cannot relinquish, remaining from her earlier life in China. LuLing
suffers from Alzheimer’s but, some years before the disease began to wreak havoc on her
memories, she wrote down her history. She gives the pages to Ruth. ““Just some old
things about my family,” she had said, with the kind of awkward nonchalance that meant
the pages were important. “My story, begin little-girl time. I write for myself, but maybe
you read, than you see how I grow up, come to this country.”” (Tan 12). The pages are in
Chinese and Ruth must translate them in order to understand, which she never gets
around to doing. LuLing comments on this saying, “Too busy for mother,” LuLing
complained. “Never too busy go see movie, go away, go see friend” (14). Like Usha,
Ruth’s disinterest in her mother’s history seems to be an obstruction between them. If
Ruth had known the origins of her mother’s idiosyncrasies perhaps they would have
understood each other better, allowing for a more enjoyable relationship. When Ruth
finally does read her mother’s story, she says “It feels like I’ve found the magic thread to
mend a torn-up quilt. It’s wonderful and sad at the same time….She should have told me
these things years ago. It would have made such a difference—” (322-333). We see that
this history from LuLing’s life in China is a substantial factor in determining her
relationship with Ruth. If Ruth had known earlier she may have been able to connect with
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her mother more deeply. This history was present in Ruth and LuLing’s lives, yet it was
ignored, like an elephant in the room. It determined aspects of their relationship. For
instance, LuLing imparts her superstition and guilt onto her daughter because of her
history, and this guilt and superstition is partially how the two navigate their relationship
with each other. Like how LuLing believes that Ruth can divine the future and speak with
ghosts when Ruth draws answers to LuLing’s inquiries in sand with chopsticks. Ruth has
used this behavior pattern her whole life to steer her mother toward decisions that were to
Ruth’s benefit. Also, the impact of LuLing’s story is highlighted by the loss of her
memory. As she forgets her story she becomes happier and lighter. “Happy. Ruth
pondered the word. Until recently, she had not known what that might encompass in
LuLing’s case…LuLing had let go of most worries and irritations” such as, “the sense
that a curse loomed over her life and disaster awaited her if she was not constantly on
guard” (357). It’s as if her memory loss released her from her history—the one that
prevented her from being happy and prevented her from having a healthy relationship
with her daughter. The entire novel speaks to the effects that immigrants’ stories can have
on their relationship with their children. The parent may resent the child for their lack of
interest and the child may be uninterested, as if acknowledging the story is an
acknowledgment of a culture they are trying to evade. Dunick offers insight into this
disinterest:
Throughout her texts, Chinese-born mothers attempt to perpetuate these cultural memories in the
stories told to their American-born daughters, but often with mixed results. For the daughters,
these talk-stories do not represent a stable text but depend solely on the mothers' memories. Thus,
the mothers' continual revision of their stories often signals an erasure or loss of China as referent
for the American-born listeners (6).
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Perhaps since Ruth doubts her mother in general, she is reluctant to listen to her stories,
questioning their validity. Dunick argues that The Bonesetter’s Daughter is more
multidimensional than Tan’s other books because of its use of written story as opposed to
talk-story. LuLing is finally successful in communicating with Ruth, but it is only when
she is in her last years, and it’s through the medium of writing. After Ruth reads her story
and understands her mother’s history, the two are able to reconcile—the history no longer
serving as an obstacle, but now as a bridge.
The next part of the essay will focus on the trials and sacrifices of these
immigrants for their children, and how they can go unappreciated and ignored. The
parents in these stories often so badly want a certain life for their child, and have a path in
mind on how to help their children obtain that goal. This often results in the child feeling
trapped by their parent’s narrow expectation, and thus they resist it. And in turn, the
parents perceive this resistance as ungratefulness for their sacrifices. In “The
Unforgetting” Ming thinks about some of the things that he left behind when he left
China including some of his dreams, such as his dream to earn a Ph.D. He scolds himself
for dwelling on these memories “It was for Charles that Ming had taken his job in Iowa
and bought his house, because he had believed, since Charles was born, that he could
make a new life in America” (89). As the gap between Charles and his parents begins to
reveal itself, Ming attempts to grasp onto his relationship with his son. One night Ming
goes up to offer Charles some Chinese food that Sansan had made, but Charles refuses it
and then closes his door in his father’s face, proceeding to lock it. “The image of the door
disturbed him, as if Charles had access to another world inside that room, as if he might
disappear at will, might float from their second-story windows and vanish into the
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shimmering, yellow Iowa Light”(93). Ming is haunted by his son locking the door, later
having a nightmare about it. The locked door serves as a symbol of the divide that Ming
and Charles have between them, resulting from their ambivalence over cultures. Ming’s
desperate attempts to salvage his relationship with Charles end up pushing Charles even
further away. Finally, the family breaks apart when Charles gets accepted into Harvard.
Ming cannot understand why his son would want to go to a school far away instead of
going to one of the in-state Iowa schools, taking it as a lack of appreciation for his
sacrifices. The father is so fixated on what he desires for his son that he loses sight of
what his son desires for himself. Ming and Sansan discuss this. “What did you expect?”
she asked, “Sons in this country leave their parents and make their own homes, with their
women.” Her voice was tense, accusatory” (96). She revisits this when she says, “Isn’t
this what you wanted for him? That he should become like them?” (97). Ming seems to
feel ambivalence. On the one hand he sacrificed in order that his son could have a better
life, but on the other he does not want his son to have such a life at the price of
completely rejecting his roots. The story accentuates the difficulty second-generation
children have reconciling the two cultures—at some point they will be forced to choose,
and usually they choose the American way.
In “Hell-Heaven” Usha’s mother sacrificed her happiness in order to establish a
better life and offer her daughter what she could not have. She leaves all of her family,
lives with an absent husband and is under-stimulated in her role as a housewife. Usha’s
mother is so unhappy with her life in the U.S. that she almost takes her own life at one
point in the novel. Yet, Usha merely looks down upon her mother for this. “I began to
pity my mother; the older I got, the more I saw what a desolate life she led…I learned to
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scream back, telling her that she was pathetic, that she knew nothing about me, and it was
clear to us both that I had stopped needing her, definitively and abruptly” (77). In this
case, it is as if her mother’s sacrifices were so severe that they were at the expense of her
identity and they disabled her and Usha from being able to make a connection. And just
as how Ming attempts to impose his cultural beliefs onto Charles, and this is met with
total rejection, so too are Usha’s mother’s. Her mother feels that she is owed Usha’s
compliance in recompense for her own trials. Michiko Kakutani comments on this when
he stated, “Like many children of immigrants Ms. Lahiri’s characters are acutely aware
of their parents’ expectations; that they get into an Ivy League school, go to med school
or grad school, marry someone from a good Bengali family.” He builds on this when he
commented, “Ms. Lahiri shows how some of these children learn to sidestep, even defy
their parents’ wishes. But she also shows how haunted they remain by the burden of their
families’ dreams and their awareness of their role in the generational process of
Americanization” (Kakutani 2008). In other words, the expectations that come with the
parents’ sacrifices, end up being a heavy burden on their children—sometimes too heavy
to carry, leading to the breakdown in their relationships.
In another short story called “English as a Second Language,” by Lucy Honig, a
woman named Maria Perez, a Guatemalan immigrant, had to flee to the U.S. and raise
her five children alone in a new country not speaking a word of English. In this story she
is being honored by the mayor of New York City for learning to read and write at age 45
in both English and in Spanish. He begins to innumerate her accomplishments saying,
“At the age of 45, while working as a chambermaid and sending her children through
school, Maria herself started school for the first time. In night courses she learned to read
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and write…This meant Maria was going to school five nights a week! Still she worked as
many as 60 hours cleaning rooms at the Plaza Hotel” (137). This is clear story of
sacrifice by an immigrant parent for her children. She was working a low prestige job just
to feed and educate her children while trying to educate herself with the scraps of hours
left over. She was successful in her feat, “her son is now a junior in high school, her
youngest daughter attends the State University, and her oldest daughter, who we are
proud to have with us today, is in her second year of law school on a scholarship” (137).
After she goes home and is watching the award ceremony on T.V., her son comments,
““Mama, look, your eyes were closed there, too,” chided Jorge, sitting on the floor in
front of the television set…. “Turn if off!” she yelled to Jorge. “Off! This
minute!””(140). Arguably the author chose to include this moment between Maria and
her son to show the lack of appreciation from her son. She has made these huge sacrifices
to give her children a better life than the life of violent surroundings that they had in
Guatemala. Yet, instead of being proud of his mother, Jorge picks out a little flaw about
her, unable to grasp the meaning of the ceremony, unable to be proud of her. This is a
clear illustration of how second-generation children never seem to fully appreciate their
parents’ trials, especially when they are young.
Ultimately, this essay was an exploration into the experiences of secondgeneration Americans with their immigrant parents, spurring from a desire to place my
own relationship with my French mother in a greater context. I found that my mother and
I had a very challenging relationship that arose in high school, and it always seemed
when I compared it to other mother-daughter relationships, that there was a unique
dynamic that came out of our cultural and lingual differences that my friends and their
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parents did not have. My exploration demonstrated that indeed I was right. Some of my
own hold ups included a compulsive need to correct my mother’s grammar and misuse of
expressions, which always wore her down and made her feel inferior. Yet, at the same
time I was missing that, in fact, she has greater knowledge than I do because of her
bilingualism. In addition, I never gave my mother the full respect she deserved for her
adventurous move to the U.S. leaving all of her French family behind, going to an
American university, and starting a family here. Jhumpa Lahiri writes a very pertinent
excerpt in her first collection of short stories, Interpretation of Maladies, about how
admirable it is to successfully start a new life in new lands. A father thinks about his son
and says:
Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no
obstacle he cannot conquer. While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I
have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite
ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first.
Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each
person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are
times when it is beyond my imagination (311).
It seems as well, that these stories suggest that the children will, in most cases, reject their
parents’ culture, or at least experience great difficulty attempting to reconcile the two
cultures, maybe never fully fitting into one or the other. However, sometimes later in life
the child may try to recapture or explore the culture on their own. These stories and
statistics elucidate just how strong the forces of assimilation are, where secondgeneration American’s prefer English to their parents’ mother tongue and often by
choosing English as their preferred language they are also choosing American culture
over their parents’ culture. This gravitational pull by assimilation is such that, as we
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discovered through the statistics, the mother tongue rarely survives through the thirdgeneration of an immigrant family. In my own case, French did not even fully survive
through the second-generation. My mother never spoke it when I was growing up, but as
I’ve become an adult and have a desire to delve into French culture, I have made it my
own goal to become fluent in French, a task that has proved quite daunting at times.
Though I have learned that I was not alone in my struggle to get along with my mother in
high school, due to cultural differences, I have learned that now that I am an adult, it is
time to show my mother the appreciation she deserves, for moving to a new land, starting
a new life, learning a second language, and always doing all in her power to give my
siblings and I the best life she could.
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Appendix A
Alba, Richard, John Logan, Amy Lutz, and Brian Stults. “Only English by the Third
Generation. Loss and Preservation of the Mother Tongue Among the Grandchildren of
Contemporary Immigrants.” Demography. Aug. 2002: 472.
DeGregory 21
Appendix B
DeGregory 22
Appendix B
Portes, Alejandro and Richard Schauffler. “Language and the Second Generation:
Bilingualism Yesterday and Today.” International Migration Review. 38.4 (1994): 649.
DeGregory 23
Annotated Bibliography
I. Works Cited
Alba, Richard, John Logan, Amy Lutz, and Brian Stults. “Only English by the Third
Generation. Loss and Preservation of the Mother Tongue Among the Grandchildren of
Contemporary Immigrants.” Demography. Aug. 2002: 467-484.
Alba, et al. were comparing the current wave of Asian immigration to the
European waves of immigration as documented in the 1940 and 1970 censuses, to see if
the language resiliency of the immigrants’ mother tongue is more or less uniform in all
three times periods. Their essay was useful to me not because of their comparison of the
current Asian immigration to the past European waves of immigration, but rather,
because I was able to pull from their statistics basic questions about language resiliency
through generations. They ultimately argue that the mother tongue on average is weeded
out by the third generation regardless of the various factors that comprise each family’s
language experience, and this was the fact that interested me.
Chang, Lan Samantha. “The Unforgetting.” Language Lessons: Stories for Teaching and
Learning English. Eds. Ruth Spack and Vivian Zamel. Michigan: The University of
Michigan Press (2008), 85-99.
A Chinese family moves to Iowa to give a better life to their son. The father,
mother and son seem to grow further and further apart from each other as they each
learn to cope with culture shock and assimilation. This story was useful because it
touched upon all of the themes I wanted to explore, such as language difficulties, and the
immigrant parents’ histories, memories, and sacrifices, and their child’s inability to
appreciate them.
Dunick, Lisa M.S. “The Silencing Effect of Canonicity: Authorship and the Written
Word in Amy Tan’s Novels.” Melus. 31.2. (2006), 3-20.
This article discussed how reviews of Amy Tan’s works often pin her writing style
as a talk-story one, whereby the mothers in her stories convey their histories to their
daughters through dialog. Dunick argues that there is another layer that is often missing,
which is that her work also uses literacy and written word to transfer histories from
mother to daughter. This article was useful since one of my themes was about how an
immigrant’s history plays a large role in her relationship with her child.
Honig, Lucy. “English as a Second Language.” Language Lessons: Stories for Teaching
and Learning English. Eds. Ruth Spack and Vivian Zamel. Michigan: The University of
Michigan Press (2008), 132-144.
This story is about a mother who emigrates to the U.S. from Guatemala as a
single mother with five children. While working a full time job she learns to read in write
for the first time in her life and imparts her passion for education to her children. This
story was pertinent because the mother makes huge sacrifices and must endure many
trials to achieve what she did and to ensure a safe and successful life for her children,
which is quite applicable to one of my themes of how the immigrant’s sacrifices factor
into their relationship with their children.
DeGregory 24
Kakutani, Michiko. “Wonder Bread and Curry: Mingling Cultures, Conflicted Hearts.”
The New York Times (2008),
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/books/04Book.html?_r=1, accessed on May 13,
2010.
Kakutani reviews Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth, summarizing all of the
stories and discussing how her stories talk about immigration and relationships and the
role that children play as functioning as a cultural bridges between their parents and
American culture. This article was very useful because it added to my themes involving
history and sacrifices and the role that these play in the immigrant families. This article
was useful in talking about broader topics in Lahiri’s work, but offered little on the
chosen story “Hell-Heaven” itself.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. “Hell-Heaven.” Unaccustomed Earth. New York: Alfred A. Knopf
(2008), 60-83.
This story is about a mother-daughter relationship and their cultural struggle
with each other. The mother wants her daughter to remain culturally Bengali while the
daughter yearns to be American but cannot fully fit herself into either culture. This story
was useful because it touched upon all three of the themes I was exploring in my essay.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. “The Third and Final Continent.” Interpretations of Maladies. Maine:
Thorndike Press (2004), 273-311.
This is a story about a man who moves from India to Cambridge Massachusetts,
and his experience living with an old woman. The story isn’t particularly pertinent to my
essay because it does not focus on the immigrant’s relationship with his son. However,
the quote I used in my conclusion was very useful, in addressing the feat of moving to
another country and establishing a life there.
Portes, Alejandro and Richard Schauffler. “Language and the Second Generation:
Bilingualism Yesterday and Today.” International Migration Review. 38.4 (1994): 640661.
Portes and Schauffler also looked at language resiliency through generations.
However, they go further to ask what language second-generation American’s prefer to
speak and they also seek to understand whether the bicultural enclaves that have popped
up in certain regions are exceptions to the average immigrant family’s experience or if
these enclaves would follow the same pattern. They also asked some more nuanced
questions such as how bilingualism affects intelligence and whether various determinants
break the norm of the third-generation being monolingual. I found this essay most helpful
in its inquiry into the question of preference of language by the second-generation
Americans.
Tan, Amy. The Bonesetter’s Daughter. New York: Ballantine Books, 2003.
This book is about an immigrant Chinese mother and her daughter who live in
San Francisco. The two have a dysfunctional relationship, which is partially a result of
the mother’s history and hardships from her life in China. Her daughter does not
discover her mother’s story until her mother is struck with Alzheimer’s and it is only
through writing that the daughter finally appreciates her mother’s trials. At the end of the
DeGregory 25
book the two are finally able to forgive each other for the pain they caused in the other,
perhaps because the story finally came to the surface. This book touches upon all of the
themes I was exploring but was particularly helpful in informing the theme of the
immigrant parent’s history affecting their relationship with their child.
II. Other Works Consulted
Brett, Lily. “What Do You Know About Friends?” Language Lessons: Stories for
Teaching and Learning English. Eds. Ruth Spack and Vivian Zamel. Michigan: The
University of Michigan Press (2008), 157-164.
This story is about an immigrant woman in Australia. She was very intelligent and
accomplished academically back in her home country of Germany, but when she enrolls
in classes at a university in Melbourne she does quite poorly. Being out of her comfort
zone and receiving her first bad grade she drops out. This story is not applicable to my
essay because she is an adult, it takes place in Australia and it does not discuss parentchild relations.
“Colonial Encounters.” Language Lessons: Stories for Teaching and Learning English.
Eds. Ruth Spack and Vivian Zamel. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press (2008),
13-60.
“Colonial Encounters” is an entire section of the book comprised of four stories
by four different authors. This section of the book discusses learning English in an
Anglophone colony. This was not particularly relevant to my topic because the stories are
in countries other than the U.S. and they do not really touch upon parent-child relations.
Hull, Akasha. “Uncommon Language.” The Women’s Review of Books. 18.9, (2001),
13.
This was a brief critique of The Bonesetter’s Daughter, that argued that Tan
crafts the mothers in her stories better than she does the daughters, but Hull still thinks
the novel is strong. This review was too brief to be usable in my essay but offered an
interesting critique of Tan’s novels.
Jimenez, Francisco. “Inside Out.” Language Lessons: Stories for Teaching and Learning
English. Eds. Ruth Spack and Vivian Zamel. Michigan: The University of Michigan
Press (2008), 66-72.
This story is about a boy who is thrown into an English school when his family
moves to the U.S. and how he did not know a word of English and his struggle to adapt.
The story was not relevant because it primarily took place in the classroom and did not
touch upon parent-child relations.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of Maladies. Maine: Thorndike Press (2004), 11-272.
Except for the quotation that I used from the last story, I did not use any of the
stories from this collection simply because I already chose one of Lahiri’s stories from
Unaccustomed Earth, and I did not think it would be necessary to include more than one
of her stories since they often have similar themes. However, there are some stories in
DeGregory 26
this book that touched upon some of the themes I was analyzing, though none of them
touched upon all three of the themes simultaneously.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. “Part One.” Unaccustomed Earth. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (2008), 3222.
This first part of Lahiri’s book did have some other stories that related to my
themes, but in “Part One” “Hell-Heaven” related to all three of my themes, and perhaps
I also gravitated toward it because it explores a mother-daughter relationship where the
other stories do not, talking instead about a parent-child relationship, an interracial
relationship, a sibling relationship and a love triangle.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. “Part Two: Hema and Kaushik.” Unaccustomed Earth. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf (2008), 223-333.
Part two of the book is about Hema and Kaushik two childhood friends both from
Bengali immigrant families. As children Hema had a crush on Kaushik but he was
indifferent to her. When they meet many years later as adults, they find their similar
upbringing links them. These stories at times touched upon my themes, but ultimately
there were more aptly fitting stories in Lahiri’s body of work.
Lam, Andrew. “Show and Tell.” Language Lessons: Stories for Teaching and Learning
English. Eds. Ruth Spack and Vivian Zamel. Michigan: The University of Michigan
Press (2008), 73-84.
This story is about an American boy who takes a Vietnamese boy under his wing
in school. The Vietnamese boy barely speaks English and is picked on, but the two forge
an endearing relationship. Again, it is not particularly useful in addressing parent-child
relations.
Lorre, Christine. “The Canon as Dialectical Process: A Study of Three Recent Chinese
American Narratives.” The French Journal of American Studies, 110 (2006) 78-96.
This article discussed three different Asian American authors and their works,
one of which was Lan Samantha Chang. It was useful in giving me some background on
Chang but it did not offer me any insight into “The Unforgetting”, nor did it offer insight
into my subject. I looked at it hoping to get a critical perspective on “The Unforgetting”
but there was little available on Chang, thus I never ended up finding a work on Chang to
use.
Mohr, Nicholasa. “The English Lesson.” Language Lessons: Stories for Teaching and
Learning English. Eds. Ruth Spack and Vivian Zamel. Michigan: The University of
Michigan Press (2008), 116-131.
This story is about a teacher and her experience teaching a classroom of ESL
students all from different countries. It does not touch upon the themes being explored in
my essay, but rather, looks at how adults learn and how where they come from informs
the way in which they do so.
DeGregory 27
“Private Lessons.” Language Lessons: Stories for Teaching and Learning English. Eds.
Ruth Spack and Vivian Zamel. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press (2008), 165213.
This section of the book is a compilation of five stories, which discuss the intimate
relationship that arises between a teacher and his student, when tutoring English. These
stories were inapplicable to my topic of immigrant parents and their children.
Rosten, Leo. “The Rather Baffling Case of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N.” Language
Lessons: Stories for Teaching and Learning English. Eds. Ruth Spack and Vivian Zamel.
Michigan: The University of Michigan Press (2008), 102-115.
This amusing story is one of my favorite stories in this collection. It’s about a
woman who teaches ESL students, and the funny misunderstandings that arise on a daily
basis due to errors when first learning a second language. The teacher wonders
throughout the story about one particular student Hyman Kaplan, who seems unteachable. The teacher cannot pin point the root of his errors, since there was no pattern
to his misunderstandings and grammar mistakes in English. Sadly, there was no way for
me to fit this into my essay given that it does not discuss any of my themes.
Schillinger, Liesl. “American Children.” The New York Times. Apr. 2008.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/books/review/Schillinger3-t.html, accessed on May
13, 2010.
This was an interesting review that favored Unaccustomed Earth, but it
summarized the book more than it critiqued it, not offering much useful insight. Anything
that I may have pulled out of this review for my essay was also said in the other review
that I chose to use by Kakutani.
Wiebe, Rudy. “Speaking Saskatchewan.” Language Lessons: Stories for Teaching and
Learning English. Eds. Ruth Spack and Vivian Zamel. Michigan: The University of
Michigan Press (2008), 62-65.
This very short story is about young boy who does not want to give up speaking
German for English, and how he sees the world in terms of the German language. The
story focuses on a snapshot of the boy’s life to convey his reluctance to speak English. It
did not address child-parent relations thus was not useful.
Zaldivar, Raquel Puig. “Nothing in Our Hands but Age.” Language Lessons: Stories for
Teaching and Learning English. Eds. Ruth Spack and Vivian Zamel. Michigan: The
University of Michigan Press (2008), 145-156.
This is the story about an elderly Cuban couple who leave their educated wealthy
lives in Cuba because of political suppression that ended up being the cause for the
imprisonment of their daughter. She will be released from prison the year that they come
to the U.S. They are starting their lives all over again in the U.S. so that they can be
established and offer their daughter a secure place to live, when she gets out. This story
was useful in discussing the sacrifices of the couple for their daughter. However, since
the daughter herself was not present in the story and in the dialog, it was lacking some of
the parent-child dynamic that I’m exploring. In addition, the daughter is an adult in
DeGregory 28
Cuba, so the story does not touch upon the struggle of a youth trying to reconcile two
cultures.