American Immigrant Literature Essay

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Immigrant Literature and the American Cultural Identity
The rich cultural diversity that characterizes America today stems from the successive wave of immigrants that landed on its shores in search of the "American Dream": the promise of freedom, equality, and economic success. However, for those leaving their homes behind for opportunities turns out to be "very unlikely to be realized" as a change requires unique struggles for the search of an identity, cultural conflicts, and challenges of integration. This identity, relationship, and experiences forms the core of American immigrant literature expressed in their unique poetic styles by Claude McKay in “America” and Shirley Geok-Lin Lim in “Riding into California.” The feeling of confusion in an alien society is natural in the very structure of the poem as “Riding into California” .It is related in a non-rhyming free verse move from one thought to another as Lim relates of fears of moving into an unknown land. McKay’s “America,” on the other hand, follows the structure of the traditional English sonnet with three quatrains followed by a couplet. It has an iambic pentameter with an ABAB rhyme scheme.
McKay, using metaphorical diction and personifying America as a woman, expresses his complicated relationship with the American Dream. He explains his hate for her as she sinks into his throat “her tiger’s tooth,” …show more content…
While Shirley Lim, a Chinese background, settled in the U.S and her concern over the loss of identity and marginalization in mostly “white” America. McKay’s “America” highlights the contradiction between the ideals of liberty and equality that America prided itself in and the continuing of racial discrimination that marred American society in the 1920s. Lim’s “Riding into California,” in 1998, explores the theme of how physical division changes our concept of who we are and after alienation in a challenging social
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