Abby Arthur Johnson, Ph.D.
Telephone: 703-998-5369
E-Mail: abbyron@cox.net
Fall 2009
A new literature of immigration has emerged from the approximately twenty-million people who have emigrated to the United States following passage of the 1965 Hart-
Celler Immigration Act. Drafted by those who came to this new world as well as by individuals who identify with their experiences, these narratives delineate dramatic, unforgettable rites of passage. “To know America,” it is accordingly important to have an understanding of the immigrants’ histories and stories, as noted by Louis Mendoza and
S. Shankar, editors of Crossing Into America. This course focuses on selected essays, narratives, and poems that are representative of the new literature of immigration and that address cultural values relevant to national identity, generational conflict, and cultural assimilation.
General Requirements
Assigned readings (see list of required texts)
Occasional short exercises (e.g., a one-page statement on a particular aspect of an assigned reading)
An essay on one of the assigned authors
An in-class midterm examination
A take-home final examination
Required Texts
Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Plume, 1992.
Mendoza, Louis, and S. Shanker, eds. Crossing Into American: The New
Literature of Immigration. The New Press, 2003.
Mengestu, Dinaw. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. Riverhead Books,
2007.
Mukherjee, Bharati. Jasmine. Grove Press, 1989.
Mullins, Meg. The Rug Merchant. Penguin Books, 2006.
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Schedule
Session 1, September 10—Introduction to the Course and Viewing/Discussion of An
American Story, a film featuring Richard Rodriguez
Assignment for Next Class: Read the following in Crossing Into America: The New
Literature of Immigration:
Leti Volpp, “The Legal Mapping of U.S. Immigration, 1965-1996,” pp. 257-269
“Introduction: The New Literature of Immigration,” pp. xii-xxvi
Ramon “Tianguis” Perez, from Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant, pp. 3-14
Julia Alvarez, “Our Papers,” pp. 15-20
Frank McCourt, from Angela’s Ashes, pp. 28-38
Tara Bahrampour, from To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America, pp.
39-56
Sandra Cisneros, “Geraldo: No Last Name,” pp. 57-58.
Session 2, September 17 – Introduction to the New Literature of Immigration
“We define the new literature of immigration as that literature emerging out of communities formed or re-formed . . . by post-1965 immigrations.” One “of the defining characteristics” is that the authors are “living and writing in close proximity to the experience of immigration either because they are immigrants themselves or because they are members of communities in which the experience of immigration is ongoing and foundational.”—Crossing Into America: The New Literature of Immigration, ed. Louis
Mendoza and S. Shankar
Assignment for Next Class: Read the following in Crossing Into America: The New
Literature of Immigration:
Rob Nixon, from Dreambirds: The Strange History of the Ostrich in Fashion,
Food, and Fortune, pp. 68-71
Andrei Codrescu, “Bi-lingual,” p. 72
Salvador Mendoza, from Between the Lines, pp. 76-79
Sylvia Martinez, from Between the Lines, pp. 83-88
Jamaica Kincaid, “Poor Visitor,” pp. 97-111
Nola Kambanda, “My New World Journey,” pp. 147-155.
Session 3, September 24 – “Crossing Into America”
“Like everyone who travels towards a new life in a land they’ve never seen, I wondered how much of me would survive the crossing, how translatable I would be. No migrant
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ever knows how much they’re going to need or want their past”—Rob Nixon,
Dreambirds: The Strange History of the Ostrich in Fashion, Food, and Fortune
Assignment for Next Class: Read the following in Crossing Into America: The New
Literature of Immigration:
Richard Rodriguez, “Mexico’s Children,” pp. 197-219
Aurora Levins Morales, “Immigrants,” pp. 237-243
Benjamin Alire Saenz, “Exile,” pp. 244-254.
Session 4, October 1 – “Crossing Into America” (continued) and Viewing of
Crossing Arizona
“For years after we left Puerto Rico for the last time, I would wake from a dream of something unbearably precious melting away from my memory as I struggled desperately to hold on, or at least to remember that I had forgotten. I am an immigrant, and I forget to feel what it means to have left. What it means to have arrived.”—Aurora Levins
Morales, “Immigrants”
Assignment for Next Class: Read Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine, pp. 3-135.
Session 5, October 8 – Discussion of Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine
“I’m an American writer of Bengali-Indian origin. . . . The national mythology that my imagination is driven to create, through fiction, is that of the post-Vietnam United States.
I experience, simultaneously, the pioneer’s capacity to be shocked and surprised by the new culture, and the immigrant’s willingness to de-form and re-form that culture.”—
Bharati Mukherjee, commentary given in a 1996 interview
Assignment for Next Class: Read Mukherjee’s Jasmine, pp. 136-241.
Session 6, October 15 – Discussion of Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine (continued) and
Viewing of English As A Second Language
“The new geometry mirrors a universe that is rough, not rounded, scabrous, not smooth.
It is a geometry of the pitted, pocked, and broken up, the twisted, tangled, and intertwined.”—A statement from James Gleick’s Chaos, cited at the beginning of
Jasmine
Assignment for Next Class: Prepare for the mid-term examination.
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Session 7, October 22: Midterm Examination (in-class)
Assignment for Next Class: Read Julia Alvarez’ How the Garcia Girls Lost Their
Accents, pp. 3-191.
Session 8, October 29 – Discussion of Julia Alvarez’ How the Garcia Girls Lost Their
Accents
“I think I feel a kinship particularly with USA Latinos. Because I think we’re not easily defined. I’m not a Dominican writer, and I’m not an American writer if we’re going to define an American writer in a traditional sense of somebody who grew up here and has roots here and, you know, had a certain formation. And I think that’s no longer the way we think about American writers at all. That’s been exploded by the literature of the last
20 years.”—Statement provided in the transcript of an interview of Alvarez published in
Salon on September 25, 1998
Assignment for Next Class: Read Julia Alvarez’ How the Garcia Girls Lost Their
Accents, pp. 195-290.
Session 9, November 5: Discussion of Julia Alvarez’ How the Garcia Girls Lost Their
Accents (continued)
“Here they were trying to fit in America among Americans; they needed help figuring out who they were, why the Irish kids whose grandparents had been micks were calling them spics. Why had they come to this country in the first place?”—Garcia Girls (p. 138)
Assignment for Next Class: Read Meg Mullins’ The Rug Merchant, pp. 2-130.
Session 10, November 12: Viewing of Arab Detroit and Discussion of The Rug
Merchant (first half)
“I am Iranian. I never imagined living anywhere else. Certainly not America.”—
Ushman Khan, The Rug Merchant
Assignment for Next Class: Read Meg Mullins’ The Rug Merchant, pp. 131-258.
Session 11, November 19: Discussion of The Rug Merchant (continued)
“The beauty of humanity is that none of us is so very different at our core. As I was writing about Ushman, I never felt he was unlike me. I certainly have a great respect for the vast differences in our cultures and our backgrounds, even our genders, but I loved discovering similarities, too. Love and pain, loneliness and desire are universal
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experiences and we are all linked by them.”—Commentary given by Meg Mullins in a
February 2009 interview
Assignment for Next Class: Read Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven
Bears, pp. 1-130.
Session 12, December 3: Dinaw Mengestu and The Beautiful Things That Heaven
Bears
“Time, distance, and nostalgia have convinced these women that back in Ethiopia, we were all moral and perfect, all of which is easier to believe when you consider the lives that most of us live now.”—The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
Assignment for Final Class: Read Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven
Bears, pp. 131-228.
Session 13, December 10: Dinaw Mengestu and The Beautiful Things That Heaven
Bears (continued)
“I did not come to America to find a better life. I came here running and screaming with the ghosts of an old one firmly attached to my back. My goal since then has always been a simple one: to persist unnoticed through the days, to do no more harm.”—The
Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
Disabilities Statement:
If you believe you have a disability, then you should contact the Academic Resource
Center (arc@georgetown.edu) for further information. The Center is located in the
Leavey Center, Suite 335. The Academic Resource Center is the campus office responsible for reviewing documentation provided by students with disabilities and for determining reasonable accommodations in accordance with the Americans with
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