Bonus Blog #3

     From Mary Antin’s story, “The Promised Land” and Sui Sin Far’s “In the Land of the Free”, there is a similar feel that, as immigrants, the characters in the story were not warmly welcomed by the Americans.  W.E.B. DuBois calls this the “double-consciousness”, where these immigrants see themselves as how the Americans see them.  It is almost as if they are the American, looking at an immigrant, or themselves.  In this time, it was an unfair depiction of immigrants.  Only one culture could be superior in this time period, and that was the Americans.  Far and Antin do a wonderful job illustrating what this prejudice was like for the characters in their stories.

     When Far’s characters arrived in America, the officers looked at the little boy like he was a criminal.  Lae Choo and Hom Hing could see the unfairness in the officer’s eyes when he stated, “Seeing that the boy has no certificate entitiling him to admission to this country you will have to leave him with us” (299).  The parents knew that they had done nothing wrong.  Their child was not a criminal.  He had just lived only about a year!  Unfortunately, Far’s description of the officer correctly portrayed the view many American’s had about Asian immigrants.

     In Antin’s story, we see a young girl recall her first memories of coming to America.  She was so excited about starting this new life, but little did she know that she would face a huge amount of discrimination.  She writes a wonderful paragraph about this “double-consciousness”.  She might not have seen it clearly as a child, but looking back, she can see it fully now.  She writes, “Dozens of these men pass under your eyes every day...too absorbed in their honest affairs to notice the looks of suspicion which you cast at them, the repugnance...” (488).  This statement is almost a slap in the face to any American who ever thought a bad thing about an immigrant.  The narrator is simply saying that immigrants just wanted a new life.  They meant no harm when they arrived to this new country.  They were struggling just like many others and they wished, as did everyone else, to succeed in embarking on the American Dream.