Windmills in Brooklyn: a story of the Spanish immigrants in New York

Revista de fatudios Norteamericanos. n.'-' 5 ( 1997), pp. 119 -132 WINDMILLS IN BROOKLYN A STORY OF THE SPANISH IMMIGRANTS INNEWYORK CARMEN GONZÁLEZ LóPEZ-BRIONES Universidad de Alcalá de Henares American cities, and especially New York, grew spectacularly during the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. People from ali over the world - especially from Europepoured into the New York harbar looking for a better life_ These people contributed to the population, economy and culture of the city. The scholarly production on the immigrants' contribution to New Yo rk is quite abundant, both about general immigrant life and also specific studies dealing about the various ethnic groups. 1 The large ethnic groups such as the Irish, Jews, Germans, Italians, Potes, Russians, and others are well studied. Smaller groups are covered in monographs. The Spaniards, however, never havi ng arrived in New York in large numbers, had been far less studied than other national groups. 2 Yet, a significant number of Spaniards l. Among t he studies about immigrant life in New York see Thomas Kesssn er , The Golden Door: ltalian and Jewish lmmigranr Mobility in New York City, 1880-1915, New York: Oxford University Pr ess, 1977; James S. Lapham, «T he German-Americans of New York City, 1860- 1890,» Ph. D. dissertation, St. John's University, 1977. 2. The main study among the Spaniards in the United States is Germán Rueda, La Emigración Cont emporánea de Españoles a Estados Unidos, Co lección MAPFRE 1492, Editorial MAPFRE, Madrid, 1993. Other studies of interest are: M. Carbó Peiro, La emigración española hacia los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica: 1898-1936. Aproximación a su conocimiento co n especial atención a las fuentes de cuantificación y caracterización. Tesis de licenciatura inédita. Universidad de Barcelona; Miguel García de Saéz, «Panorama general de la emigración española a los Estados Unidos,» f nformación Comercial Española, nº 409, p. 141-144, Enrique Ruiz Fome lis , «Cultura y Emigración: el caso de España y los Estados Unidos»,Arbor, 45 1- 45 4, 1983; A. Ruiz 11 2 Marina Cacio ppo the t en ninology Sollors uses in setting up his anthropological mode l-«consent» is more fonnative of the expe ri cnce of immigration than «deseen!,» and the hi story of their adaptation ex plains more than an abstract, separated and in troflexed i dea of e ulture .2 The uprooting, the mi gration, the adaptation, and the constructi on of commun it y are experien ces that the i mm igrants have in common with the founders. Deconstructing th e opposi ti on betw ee n cthnicity and modernity, traditional and American, in Beyo nd Etl111icity Aollors has also maintain cd that «assimilation and mod emization takc pl ace in ethnic and even ethnocentric forms. »' In tb is essay, l will an empt to explore thcse ideas by examining two nove Is by women: Anzia Yezierska 's Br ead Givers and Fae Myenne N g's Bone.' In particular, I will focus on how ethnicity is fictionalized in the rcprcsentation of family relationships. Thcse works can be taken as examplcs of how novels by Ame ri ca n ethnic writers fictionalize the dialccti ca l relationship betw ee n consent and deseen! through thc rcprcsentation of tcnsions that characterize the immigrant family and th e dyna mic s of generational conflicts; of how the se novels function as laboratories wbere individual identity and sense of belonging to a community can be remodeled in ordcr to furthcr thc process of adaptation and up ward social mobilit y; h ow prescnt and past ca n be que stioncd and rein ve nted for thc sa me purpose, in s hort , as laborarorics where that process of alch em i ca l hybridizati on of cultures takes place. In spite of the enormous di stance that separates th e two text s' dates of publication and thc d iff er ent ethnic backgrounds of their authors and pr otago nists -not to men tion their diametrically opposed temporal structure, one strictly chronologi ca l and the other consta ntl y circling backward to revea! progressively deeper layers of historyth ei r plots, thcmes and the underlying ideology strike me as bearing similarities which can be interpreted in terms of Sollors' theory of ethnic it y. If we assume tb e attitude ofthose who focus on works by American ethnic writers for thcir cthnic content and fo r their «exotic» nature, we t end to overlook the dialectic between ethnicity and American identiry. lt then becomes vital that we investigate ho w na ti onal and ethnic ideologies are challenged and or perp et uated in such works. To 2. W emer So lt ors, in his in troduction to Be yond Ethnicity. Consent and Descent in Ame rica C11 /111re (Ncw York: Oxford University Press, 1986) 5-6 idemifies the ce mral drama in Amer ica n c ul ture in the conflict between co ntractual and hereditary, setf-ma <l e and ancestral: between cons ent and des cent. He explains: «Des een ! rela ti ons are those defined hy anth ro pologists as relations of 's ubstan ce' (by bl oo d or nature}; con sen l rel at ions describe those of 'taw ' or ·marriage.' Descent tanguage emphasizes our pos itions as he irs, our hereditary qualities, liabiliiíes and en ti tlements: consent tanguage s tr esses ou r abilities as mature fr ee agents ... to choose our spouses, our destinies and our poli ti cal systems.» 3. Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity 245. See also Werner Sollors, ed .• The ln ve nti on of Elhnicity (N ew Yor k: Oxford University Press, 1989). 4. Anzia Ye zierska, Bread Givers, A St rugg/e Berween a Father of the Old W or ld anda Daught er of the New (New York: Doubleday, 1925); Fa e Myenne Ng, Bone (New York: Harper Perennial, 1994). Further ref erences to these works will be made parenthetica ll y within the text. Bones a11</ Blood: Family Ties and the Experience of lmmigration 113 tackle the complex ínterplay of ethnicíty, national identity and gender, we can begín to explore how the ideologies re gulating ethnic «prov inc e» and American «national» territory interact with both patriarchy and class. Bo th Bon e and Bread Givers may be interpreted as transforming constructíons of literary reality by implying not only the amalgamation of ethnicity and mobility but the r emaki ng of mainstream culture itself. The cent ralit y of the experience of the enco unter wíth America and the appropriation of the typically Ameri ca n middle-class ideology of upward mob il ity are apparent even from a superficial, literal reading of the two text s. At the leve! of plot, both books include recurren! na rr ative patterns of middle-class ascent: each work emphasi ze s the cont ra st s in the father-daughter relationship that fict io nalizes the dialectic of consent and descent (community independence) th at plays out in both books with the youngest daughter rebelling against the family and ph ysically abandoning it to strike out on her own; in both boo ks there are failed attempts to enter the world of business which involve the whole fami ly and th at are set against the children's individual struggles for both independence and middle class status, to do better than their parents. The rhetoric of generations is a recurren! and insisten! theme in these texts. Bone is narrated by Lei la , the eldest of three daughters brought up in San Francis co 's Chinatown. They are lucky, not like the bondmaids growing up in service, or the new bom daughters whose mouths wcre stuffed with ashes ... the courtesans with their three-inch feet and the frightened child brides. Nina, Ona and 1, we 're the lucky generation. We know so little of the old countr y. We repeat the names of grandfathers an d uncles, but they have always been strangers to us. Family exists only because somebody has a story, and knowing thc story connccts us to a history. (35-36) What emerges h erc is a vague sense of ance str y. The connections to the «bondmaids.» The «new bom daughters ,» the «Courtesans,» and the «child brides» tha t the narrator seems to claim, are immediately undermined by the concrete reality ofher ignoran ce of the past. Th is is intertwined with a sense of it almost being a duty owed to the preceding generations to be successful in America. The history to which they are connected is more the history of the humiliation of their pa rents in America which th ey want to make up for than that of their ancestors in China whose names they barely know. The stori es about the ancestors are only second-hand stories received through their parents from a distant time and place; they lack the streng th of lived experience that connects children to parents and makes the parents' experiences more formative and more relevant to the ch ildren's lives than d is tant Ch inese ancestry. The tie t ha t binds these generations tums out to be more the common effort toward the att ai nment of middle-class status than sorne vague sense of cultural inheritance. The attempt to construct a sense of natural family cohesion in th e new world is enacted here through the rhetoric of generations th at functions as a naturalizing code. 114 Marina Caci op po We also get the scnse that the genera ti ons are divided by conflicting, ethnicized versions ofth e «American Dream,» the expectations ofthc parents we igh on the second ge ner ation and compete with th eir desires for independcnce. At the opening of the novel, Leila 's youngest sister, Nina, te lls her that their parents «have no idea what our lives are about . They don 't want to come into our worlds. We kecp on havi ng to live in their world . Th ey won 't move one bit.» (33) Unable to put up with their bickering, she has moved to New York. When On a, the «middle girl» throws her self from the thirteenth !l oor of a housing project, Nina bla me s the «St ifling atmospherc of the family and their insular neighborhood of Salman Alley» (153) for her d ea th . Generational conflict is also at the co rc of Yezierska 's Br ead Givers, with the book being subti tl ed «A Struggle Be tw een a Father of thc Old World and a Da ug hter of the New.» To gain independence and full fi llment as a new American woman, Sara Smo lin sky must rebel ag ainst her se lf-righteous and authoritari an father and t he patriarchal culture he rcpresents. In the first part of the novel, s he can only watch as thi s «tyrant from thc ol d country» bargains off her threc sisters to men they abhor. Her fa ther, Reb Smolinsky, is portrayed as an inept parasite, immersed in the study of the Torah, who fai ls to provide for h is starving family. «In America they got no use for Torah leaming. In Amcrica everybody go l to earn his li ving first,» commcnts Be rel Bemstein, the rejected suit or of Sara 's eldest sis ter, Bessie. Reb Smo linsky's «old world» way of li fe is here in clear conflict with the Ameri can capitalist injunction to work, the rcquiremcnt of making money, in order to survive, and he is portrayed he re as unadapted, linked to the «O ld world» and ignorant of or unwilling to fulfill the demands of thc New. Inh er iting her fathcr 's Blood and Iron ( Bl11nt - 1111d Eisen) personality, Sara alone challenges him: Wi ld with ali that was choked in me since I was bom, my eyes bumed into my father 's eyes. «My will is as strong as yours. l 'm going to live my own lif e. Nobody can stop me. I'm not from the old cou nt ry. I' m Ame rican !» (138). This father-daughter conflict is coded in terms of an «old world» versus «new world» struggle; despite their similar posscssion of strong will, Reb 's gets him nowhere ea rly in the sto1y bccause of his failure to chan ge his ways. Sara, on the other hand, becomes more success fu l in the pursuit of her own will becau se she knows the demands of her cu lture and works with in th em rathcr than working against or restraining them. Fe minist critics, including Caro! Schoen and Alice Kessler-Harris, have limit ed their investigations into the ethnic drama ofYezierska 's fi ction to the scr ipt summarized on the novel 's title page: «the Struggle Bctween a Fa ther of the Old World an da Daughter of the New.»5 Such critica) co mm entary focuses on the daughter's st ru gg le to carve out 5. Caro! Scho en. « Anz ia Y ez ierska: New Ligh t on the Sweats hop Cinder ella, «Melus 7.3 ( 1980):3-1 l; Al ice Kessler-Harris, «lnt rod uction» to A nzia Yeúerska's Bread Givers (New York; Bones and Blood: Family Ties and the E1perience of lm migr ation 115 a space for herself in the patriarchal domains in which she travels. In a more recent and more nuanced reading that focuscs on the economic aspects of Bread Givers, Thomas Ferrara has pointed out that the opposition between the Old World (supposedly embodied by the Father) and the New World/American Drearn (embodied by Sara) is notas cl ear cut as the narrator portrays it: the figures of Sara and Reb Smolinsky, instead, stand for two competing pathways through which Jews were «ma king themselves at home» and working themselves up in America. Throughout «The Old World,» Sara «part ic ipa tes in her father's profoundly ethnic version of the American dream,» in which Orthodox traditions and patriarchy are adapted to «the structures of opportunity in twenticth century America.»6 The family businesses, first a boarding house and then a grocery store in Elizabeth, New Jersey, are run under strict patriarchal control. Reb moves his books from the front room to the kitchen to make room for the boarders, but continues to leave ali the work to his wife and daughters. «Long hours ofbrainless drudgery are only for grubby grinds who ha ve no high thoughts to think out,» ( 123) he says of the grocery business. Yet he continues to exercise his authority tyrannically and finally precipitates Sara 's flight by berating first a customer for requesting breakfast food bran and then Sara for extending a t wo-cent crcdit to a girl who lives just ne xt door. Sara's defiance is thus not so much a rebellion against Judaism or even patriarchy tout court but rather dissent from a particular strategy of adapting to America: for her, the strains of the patriarchal family en te rprise outwcigh the material gains of lower middle class status. By instead identifying with Emersonian self-detem1ination, Sara is not establishing but rcvising her American dream in the light of what family entcrprise has taught her. For Rcb Smolinsky, on the other hand, ethnic ties to his family and community and Orthodox tradition functi on as basic capital from which to make himself at home in America: he uses the patriarchal structure of his family a nd the Eastem European tradition of Ieaving the work of «bread giving» to his wife and daughters in order to run his small business. Ethnicity, ancestry, and patriarchy are all reshaped in the pursuit of wealth and succcss as he utilizes the traditional structures of relationships in arder to reformulate and consolidate his own position within the new con text of American capitalism. In Reb Smolinsky 's case, as Ferrara suggcsts, Orthodox tradition and social and cconomic ascent are mutually supporting: not only does he use the family and 'old world» tradition to run his business, but he spcnds the profits of his business to support his Talmudic studies, to keep the family together, and to help the Jewish poor in his community. Th e Doubleday, 1975). See also Rose Kamel, «Anzia Yezierska, «Get Out ofYour Own Way: Selfbood and Otherness in the Autobiographical Fiction of Anzia Yezierska,» Studies in Jewish Am er ican Lit er ature 3 ( 1983): 4-50. 6. Thomas J. Ferrara, «' Working Ourselves Up' in America: Anzia Ye zierska's Bread Givers.» The South Atlantic Quarterly 89 (1990):547 -5 8 l. 116 Marina Ca cioppo interplay between conscnt and descent is much more rn mplic ated than a merely co nflictual relationship between the « Old ways» and the n cw ones, with a very strong interrelationship of reinforcement as the old ways furth er R eb 's capitalist economic asce nt and. at the same time, his n cw capitalist success allows him to more fully pur sue hi s «old world» va lues of family, re l igion and cthnic com munit y. Similarly in Bone, Nina pursues her own version of thc American Dream which consists of economic independence and self-det erm ination and implies forgctting the sweatshop work and poverty that charactcrizes her memories of th e past life with her family. When Leila visits her in New York and proposes China t ow n as a place to cat «Nina said it was too depressing. « The food is good there,' she said, 'but the life 's hard down there. I always feel like 1 should rush through a rice plate and then rush home to s cw culott cs' ... » (26) However, her pursuit of independencc does not imply renounci ng her cultural h eritage; her original culture represents a path towards economic independence and self-deterrnination as she works using her know ledge of Chinese. Jusi as Nina only uses chopsticks in her hair, she redeploys her ethnic heritage not as a connection to her family and to Chinese community, but as a means of attaining economic and personal independence as a tour guide to China. In Bone, the bones can be seen as s ub suming and conn cc ting. ata sy mbolic leve!, th e idea oftradi tion, ancestry a nd family to the experience of the struggle to work oneself up in America. The bones of Grandpa Leong, that Leon fails to send back home, embody the tradi ti on that Leon fails to revcre. Lcon promises to scnd Grandpa Lcong 's bones back to China, «but in t he end th e bones remained here,» (84) as if almost to found a new lineage, a new tradition. In Leila's memory, the bones are those of the pigeons that the thr ee yo ung Leong sisters pick while watching I Love L11cy. They evoke the memory of the poverty from which the Leong family started out and which they mythologize particularly when they are set in contrast with the squab dinners served by a smiling waiter in the restaurant where Nina and Leila mcct. In Leon 's mind, the get-rich schemes with which he is constantly busy, the appeal of middle-class comparative prosperity, certainly have a stronger influence than the far removed tradition of sending the bones back «home.» Significantly, after Ona 's death, Leon blames it on his failure to send the bones back to China. Thc «restless bones» bccome the object on which he displaces his sense of guilt for hi s failures as a father, as a hu sband, as a busine ss man, as a son, albeit a paper son. The whole idea of dcscent as a natural and fixed ca tegory is questioned in Bone. Leon, Leila 's stepfather, literally invents his ancestry. To pass the interrogation on Angel Island, he pays Grandpa Leong five thousand dollars lo claim him as his own son. After finding in Leon 's suite ase full of paper the fa lse documcnt attesting Leon 's ancestry, Leila comments: «l am the stepdaughter of a paper son a nd I have inherited this whole suitcase of Jies. All of it is mine. Ali 1 have are tho se memories and I want to remember them ali» (61). Family thus is defined not only by blood and histories, but also by Bones and B/ood: Family Ties and thc E\perience of fmmigration 11 7 money ami papcr. Leon, the «paper son,» asser ts that «I n t hi s country, paper is more precious than blood.» Th is process of invention, of the falsification of the past an d traditions, can also be found in Bread Givers. Significan! to th is purposc is the w ay in wh ich Reb Smolinsky modifies the tradition of the dowry, turning it into a source of profit. In the Old World, fathcrs could excrcise thc authority of arranging rnarri age s for their daughte rs , but they also had to provide as rich a dowry as possiblc. Smolinsky reinterprets this tradition as an opportunity to fu nd the social and economic mobility of the family: as they can cam thcir own wages, h is daughters represen! the ini ti al capital that Smolinsky in ves ts on the American ma rriage ma rket to takc advantage of its intcrsection with t he larger capitalist economy. This capitalistic logic can explain why Smolinsky dcmands cash in exchangc for Bessie 's income-producing labor: in h is view , Berr e! Bcrnstein should co mpensatc him for the loss ofhis bcst «br ea d give r. » When he wi ll finally manage to maITy two of his daugh te rs (Fania and Masha) off to two men who are initially believcd to be a diamond trad cr and a clothier, he can finally es tab lish hi mself in the Hester Strcct J ew ish community as a busincssman, a profes sio na l matchmaker, and broker for the marriagc of Bcssie and Zalmon claimíng a five hundred dollar commission. What Rcb is doing herc is trying Lo t um his fatherhood and the tradition of dowry into a source of pro fil. 7 In both books, ethníc it y and tradition are invented and used to fu rther the process of a da plati on to America: in Bread Givers it functions as a way fo r Reb Smolinsky to obtain a position of respect and prcstige in the com munit y and cntcr the business world, and in Bo11e it works asan cxpcdicnt that carns Leon admission toAmcrica. The objective is success, middle-class ascent, and ethnicity is us ed as a support, to justi fy and fu rt hcr it. l hop e to have shown through this analysis how th cse two novels by American cthnic writers prcscnt similar ways of fictionalizing the interplay of consent and deseen! in thc rcpresentation of thc cncountcr of immigrant families with thc Amer ican rcality. Categorics such as t ra di tions, ancestry, cthnicit y. and patriarchy, typically imagined as if they were natural, real, eternal, stable and static entities, are instead manipulated in order to facilitate the adaptation and inse1tion into a new reality through processcs of falsification and invention that are similar across ethnic groups, not because of anything inhcrcnt to that group, but in the com mon ex peri ence of encountering America as immigrants. 7. Mary Y. Dearbon, «Anzia Yez iersk aan d the Ethnic Am erican Se lf ,» in The lnrention of Ethnicity 10 5-123.