Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing [Hardcover]

Ilan Stavans (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 2009

Immigration is the essential American story. From London or Lvov, Bombay or Beijing, Dublin or Dusseldorf, people have come to America to remake themselves, their lives, and their identities. Despite political obstacles, popular indifference, or hostility, they put down roots here, and their social, cultural, and entrepreneurial energies helped forge the open and diverse society we live in.
The history of American immigration has often been told by those already here. Becoming Americans tells this epic story from the inside, gathering for the first time over 400 years of writing-from 17th-century Jamestown to contemporary Brooklyn and Los Angeles-by first-generation immigrants about the immigrant experience. In sum, over 80 writers create a vivid, passionate, and revealing firsthand account of the challenges and aspirations that define our dynamic, multicultural democracy.
In nearly a hundred entries-poems, stories, novel excerpts, travel pieces, diary entries, memoirs, and letters-Becoming Americans presents the full range of the experience of coming to America: the reasons for departure, the journey itself, the shock and spectacle of first arrival, the passionate ambivalence toward the old country and the old life, and above all the struggle with the complexities of America. Arranged in chronological order by date of arrival, this unprecedented collection presents a collective history of the United States that is both familiar and surprisingly new, as seen through the fresh eyes and words of newcomers from more than forty different countries.

Features:Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, Gottlieb Mittelberger, St. John de Crèvecoeur, Phillis Wheatley, Lorenzo Da Ponte, John James Audubon, Fanny Kemble, Jacob Riis, Abraham Cahan, O. E. Rølvaag, Henry Roth, Claude McKay, Charles Chaplin, Felipe Alfau, Carlos Bulosan, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Vladimir Nabokov, W. H. Auden, Frank McCourt, Edward Said, Charles Simic, Julia Alvarez, Czeslaw Milosz, Luc Sante, Eva Hoffman, Jamaica Kincaid, Chang-rae Lee, Jhumpa Lahiri, Joseph Brodsky, Junot Díaz, Gary Shteyngart, Dinaw Mengestu, Edwidge Danticat, Norman Manea, Anita Desai, Lara Vapnyar, Richard Rodriguez, and many more...

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The writers in Becoming Americans have the miraculous gift of fresh eyes, able to see America for the first time, and to describe the new world they see. Their stories are our treasured legacy." - Maxine Hong Kingston

About the Author

Ilan Stavans, editor, is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books include The Hispanic Condition and On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language. He edited Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories, volumes #149, #150, and #151 of The Library of America.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 850 pages
• Publisher: Library of America; First Edition edition (October 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1598530518
• ISBN-13: 978-1598530513
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #589,582 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Love Letter to the United States, December 11, 2009

By 

Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing (Hardcover)

In the most iconic of American poems, "The New Colossus", Emma Lazarus wrote about the meaning of the then-new Statue of Liberty:

"'Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'"

Lazarus's poem frames "Becoming Americans", a new anthology from the Library of America which manages both to examine and to celebrate the American immigrant experience. The volume is edited by Ilan Stavans, professor of Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. Stavans is himself an immigrant of unusual background. Born in Mexico City in 1961 to a Jewish family of immigrants from East Europe, Stavans immigrated to the United States in 1961. He thus is able to write of his own American experience from a unique Jewish-Latino perspective. Stavans wrote the introduction to this volume and also contributed a selection from his autobiography which describes his experiences as a Mexican Jew. In a revealing interview he gave to the Library of America upon the publication of this volume, Stavans described "Becoming Americans" as "my love letter to the United States, a tolerant, warm-hearted country that has been extraordinarily generous to me as an immigrant. Among other things, the country has allowed me to explore my talents to the limit."

The book consists of nearly 700 pages of text together with a chronology of immigration to America beginning with the settlement at Jamestown in 1607. The anthology includes selections from 85 writers describing their varied experiences in coming to the United States from 45 countries. The selection begins in 1623 with a letter from one Richard Frethorne to his parents setting forth the hardships of life at Jamestown. It concludes with a 2003 selection by Richard Rodriguez, the child of immigrants from Mexico, from his novel "Hunger of Memory", describing his childhood difficulties with the English language. Rodriguez is the only contributor to the volume who was born in the United States.

The materials are arranged in chronological order from date of arrival in America and are drawn from a variety of sources, including letters, diaries, essays, poems, stories, and novels. Each entry includes a short biographical sketch by Stavans to put the text in perspective. While the volume as a whole merits Stavans's characterization as a "love letter", the individual entries show little trace of illusion or sentimentality. Immigrants have faced difficult journeys, hard choices, and long struggles in the United States, and they are amply documented here. The book documents the ambivalences many immigrants experienced in coming to terms with the New World, including the inevitable choice each person had to face about the degree to which he or she would assimilate to the new land or attempt to maintain the traditions and values of the old land. The theme of coming to a new land with a different and difficult language, English, runs through many of the entries in this collection.

The selections vary in length and in interest. Taken as a whole, they capture a great deal about the immigration experience and about the United States itself, from New York to the Midwest, to Texas, California, and points between. Blanket generalization would be foolhardy. But I would like to mention some of the entries that I particularly enjoyed.

In the small group of entries from Colonial America, I liked James Revel's poem describing the experience of a felon transported to Virginia as punishment for theft as well as Phylis Wheatley's short famous poem "On being brought from Africa to America."

Early 19th Century selections include excerpts from John James Audubon, from Mozart's librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, who came to the United States late in his life, and from Carl Schurz, a German immigrant who became a Civil War General and later the Secretary of the Interior.

Later selections include short poetry by unnamed Chinese immigrants arriving at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. A selection from a novelist, Anzia Yezierska, who was unfamiliar to me, describes the conflict between a young immigrant woman who has managed to secure a college education and her traditional, unlettered parents. I would like to read more of this author. Other East European Jewish immigrants presented include Abraham Cahan, from his Autobiography, Henry Roth, from his novel "Call it Sleep" and and Issac Bashevis Singer, in his outstanding short story "A Wedding in Brownsville."

The collection includes a letter from Thomas Mann, explaining his decision to stay in the United States rather than return to Germany after WW II, together with good selections from Palestinian Edward Said, and Czeslaw Milosz. Among contemporary writers, I enjoyed the contribution of Jhumpa Lahiri, "The Third and Final Continent" describing the experiences of an educated immigrant from India and his new wife. Gary Shteyngart's comic "The mother tongue between two slices of rye", Gary Delanty's poem about immigration from Ireland, "We will not play the Harp Backward Now, No", and Stavans's own autobiographical essay were other highlights.

Cristopher Isherwood (1904-1986) came to the United States in 1939 with the poet W.H. Auden, both of whom are represented in this volume. The selection from Isherwood's diaries includes the following reflection which I thought captured something of the tone of many of the selections regarding the many-faceted, ironic, and outsider character of American immigrant life. Isherwood writes (p. 335):

"Actually, in my sane moments, I love this country. I love it just because I don't belong. Because I'm not involved in its traditions, not born under the curse of its history. I feel free here. I'm on my own. My life will be what I make of it."

So should the American ideal be for both immigrants and for those born in the United States: to have life "be what I make of it." For both natives and immigrants, this anthology helps explore the never-ending process and promise of "becoming Americans" and of the American dream.

Robin Friedman

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting read, January 24, 2010

By 

Hazel L Jenkins "grndmaj11" - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing (Hardcover)

I'm still reading this book so cannot give a deep review but what I've read so far is very interesting. One thing I don't like is just when I'm getting into someone's story the excerpt ends and I am left wishing I could read more The book is a good illustration of what some of our forebears had to deal with when they came to America, the land of Golden Streets and their frustrations when they arrived without much money, not speaking the language and needing to get a job to support themselves. Will continue to read.

4.0 out of 5 stars holiday gift for reluctant reader, January 9, 2010

By 

Buna Laish - See all my reviews

This review is from: Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing (Hardcover)

This was a gift for my mother, who tends to gravitate towards the television these days rather than reading all that much. I heard about this book on NPR's website, and it sounded like something she would enjoy. She likes history but enjoys it more when it is illustrated by personal narrative (she completed the family genealogy, and thoroughly enjoyed finding personal links to the past). When I asked her about the book, she was already several chapters in after having it in hand for only 2 days! Of course, most (all?) of the early writings are by men, due to the educational practices of centuries past.