I’m currently reading Girl In Translation by Jean Kwok. A beautifully written story that provides a window into the immigrant experience, particularly the Chinese Immigrant experience, for a mother and daughter in New York. It’s a heartwarming story about the journey into the life of a young girl who lives with her angelic single mother, subjected to indentured servitude at the hands of the mother’s older sister. The story hits pretty hard as someone who too grew up with a single immigrant mother who struggled in similar ways to the mother in the book. I’m only on Chapter 3 so I don’t know what will come of the rest of the story but as it appears the story is autobiographical, so I’m certain the girl will rise up and fulfill the classic American Dream.
I love to hear these kinds of stories, and don’t we all. But, although these stories important, they also distract away from the fact that there are thousands upon thousands who may not make it to an Ivy league school (I’m over the glorification of Ivy schools in the first place) and those people shouldn’t have a lower quality of life or be subject to poverty because of it. The daughter is thankfully exceptionally bright and has an amazing integrity — helping her mom after school in a sweatshop. It is a tear jerker that reveals the ways in which upward mobility can be achieved in the United States but only if you are lucky enough to have endless drive and some genetic luck.
I will finish the story before I go on my endless rant about how this story falls into the Disney complex, touting the rags to riches narrative, and how although the book gives visibility to endless halls filled with abused factory workers, the bootstrap element overshadows the hard reality that most of these background characters will never be freed from harsh working conditions and perpetuates the rose-colored lenses necessary for the American Dream fiction. I say fiction because although there are always instances where adapting the American ethos, or accidentally adopting it has happened, it is not available to everyone despite the suggestions that it is. Does it make me cynical to only focus on the fact the woman who inspired the main character Kimberly, is an outlier and the stories of those who aren’t will never be written or valued? Everyone wants to vicariously live through a success and not through a failure, and happy endings are actively sought after — I get it, I love Pixar and as someone who works in detention defense for Immigrants, mainly asylum seekers, sometimes you just need a fucking break from the never-ending devastation. But, here I am and here we all should be, still angry about the swaths of immigrants who today are treated with intense violence, attempting to unionize but cannot. Working day in and day out without protection, worn down spirits, no healthcare, and little pay STILL hanging on to the hope that their children will be a similar success story to that of Kimberly. The unfortunate truth is that most of the time, they are not because sometimes holding the responsibility and pain of poverty and constant scrutiny can be too much to bear.
Meanwhile, entranced affluent folks, leaders of top magazines, and handfuls of citizens find themselves absorbed in cultural junk food, indulging in the rawness of immigrant success stories, sponsored by “Ivy leagues” only to pat themselves on the back for directing their attention to these realities only to go straight back to business as usual. Kudos to Jean Kwok for being able to work 4 jobs and attend school full-time, getting accepted into one of the most historically racist and gatekeep-y schools of them all — you can’t deny the importance of that school on your resume — but seriously, WHAT THE F**K IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?! Why is working yourself endlessly in the most horribly unrealistic manner even acceptable, nonetheless celebrated?! Why?! How many students that got into Harvard that year was putting 80+hrs a week into their studies to survive? If it was most, where is the time for respect for rest, earth, and play? It is a painful reality we live and a cause for great distress.
To be continued…