Listen to the Voices: Immigrant Fiction Re-Considered

Abstract

This essay invites a broad overview of immigrant fiction in an era that mocks the social mobility and easy assimilation promised by the American Dream. Attentive reading of immigrant fiction enables us to understand challenges and barriers – topics that recur in immigrant fiction across ethnicity/country of origin. I argue for revision of the traditional paradigm that in the immigrant novel a “hero”/protagonist arrives, after some bumps in the road and modification of expectations, at the desired destination. Today, immigrants face formidable barriers: entry may be denied, the immigrant may be expelled; even if the immigrant can stay, assimilation may be unhappy due to economic stress, social isolation, un(or under)employment, discrimination, or emotional suffering. Immigrant stories reflect lived experience: difficulties with language acquisition and acculturation; inter-generational tension; patriarchal domination often associated with domestic violence; difficulties in assimilation.