Stanford University annually assigns three books to be read by their incoming freshman class. Last year the topics included poverty, race and climate change. This years single topic is immigration. Wanting to be as well read as these eighteen and nineteen year olds I decided to read them as well. Here are my thoughts regarding these three books, all of which were superb.
The three books this year are: Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat, Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee and Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera (translated from Spanish by Lisa Dillman).
Signs Preceding the End of the World is interesting on several fronts. It is a very short novel translated from its original Spanish. This book paints a memorable picture of an illegal border crossing. This is the story of Makina, a young Mexican woman sent across the border by her mother to deliver a message to her brother. First, she must find her brother. The author describes the border crossing in terse, descriptive writing:
"Rucksacks. What do people whose life stops here take with them? Makina could see their rucksacks crammed with time. Amulets, letters, sometimes a huapango violin, sometimes a jaranera harp. Jackets. People who left took jackets because they'd been told that if there was one thing they could be sure of over there, it was the freezing cold, even if it was desert all the way. They hid what little money they had in their underwear and stuck a knife in their back pocket. Photos, photos, photos. They carried photos like promises but by the time they came back they were in tatters."
Once Makina crosses the border the quest to find her brother reminded me of Paulo Cueho's The Alchemist. It becomes an epic journey of growth and understanding aided by gangsters and fellow illegals. There is an interesting addendum by the translator describing her difficulty in maintaining the author's intent. She notes the research she did to make sure the idioms and inflections of speech written by the author in Spanish are preserved in the translation. This is a very valuable book for helping to understand the view from the other side of the border.
Chang-Rae Lee is a Korean-American and teaches creative writing at Stanford. Native Speaker, published in 1995, was his first novel. The novel tells the story of Henry Park, a son of Korean immigrants who works as an industrial spy. The whole theme of this book centers on Henry's constant attempt at assimilation - the social process of absorbing one cultural group into harmony with another. Henry reflects back on his upbringing by immigrant parents trying to preserve their native culture and constantly compares that to his current life. Henry is married to a white woman and their marital struggles mirror his larger cultural dilemmas. As part of his job, Henry infiltrates the campaign of a Korean-American politician in New York. This politician's success is due in large part to his ability to bridge the divides between the ethnic and cultural groups who must coexist in his city. It is hard to believe that this book is over twenty years old. The culture clashes described are very contemporary and one scene was reminiscent of the violence in Charlottesville last August. Native Speaker is important because it redefines the old "Melting Pot" analogy of America we all learned in grade school. There is no one "American" culture to which all immigrants must eventually be part of. Instead, we are a cauldron of differences, all of which need to be celebrated, but the parts of which need to learn to peacefully coexist. Henry Park notes the problems with this "assimilation" thinking when describing his wishes for his own son:
"And despite Lelia's insistence that he go to Korean school on the weekends, I knew our son would never learn the old language, this was never in question, and my hope was that he would grow up with a singular sense of his world, a life univocal, which might have offered him the authority and confidence that his broad half-yellow face could not. Of course, this is assimilist sentiment, part of my own ugly and half-blind romance with the land."
Later, he describes the scene outside of a crowded Chinese take-out in Brooklyn:
"I know I'm American because I order too much when I eat Chinese. We stand outside with everyone else, the crowd mixed, Jews and Hispanics, Asians and blacks. Everyone gets along. There's cross-talking and joking. Easy laughs. It's something enough, I suppose, when you know you will soon eat the same food."
Edwidge Danticat is a very talented author and native of Haiti. She has written numerous outstanding novels including Breath, Eyes, Memory which was an Oprah book club selection. She has been a National Book Award Finalist and Brother, I'm Dying won a National Book Critics Circle Award Winner for autobiography. She has been quoted as saying: “Writing has been the primary way I have tried to make sense of my losses.” In this book she tells the stories of her father who successfully emigrated to New York and her uncle Joseph who cared for her in Haiti when first her father and then her mother left.
The author is master of description, both of her native Haiti and her adopted home in New York:
"After my parents were married, they moved into a small house in an increasingly packed section of Bel Air. The cement floor of their two-room rental was the same drab color as the walls. There were no windows or jalousies, just some diamond-shaped openings in the concrete, which let in some air and also plenty of water when it rained. My mother decorated the best she could, draping the walls with wide ruffled curtains she made herself."
She also has the ability to convey the deep emotions of a situation without being maudlin. Her depiction of her years separated from her parents and siblings is particularly relevant to today's immigration headlines. She very adeptly explains the political struggles in Haiti, both before and after her emigration. Her uncles role in the continued upheaval defines the difficulty this family had balancing life in its new country versus concern for events and loved ones in its former country.
Each of these books is valuable in its own way to help the reader understand some of the issues surrounding the current immigration debate. Signs Preceding the End of the World very vividly depicts the danger and anxiety of an illegal border crossing. Native Speaker illustrates the difficulties even legal immigrants face when trying to adjust to and blend into a completely alien culture and society. Brother, I'm Dying shows how difficult it is to completely extricate oneself from one's native country, especially when loved ones are left behind in a tumultuous situation.
These books as a group also have an enormous importance. You can take any hot button social issue (think gay marriage, capital punishment, gun control, etc...) and debate it in the abstract. When you add a human dimension to the debate, people become more empathetic and often the thinking becomes a bit softened. These three outstanding books add that human dimension to the immigration debate and hopefully would soften the harsh rhetoric we are currently hearing. I enjoyed reading all three and would recommend them all.
