Having lived in the quagmire that is living as an undocumented immigrant, Jose Antonio Vargas has first hand knowledge of his subject matter. He can not only espouse his expertise but use his life to make his points. For instance, Vargas tried, best he could, to loose his accent. he was paranoid and stressed about his place in the country. He validated his life in the US by speaking and writing the language. These fears were not so out of step as he tells us how at the time Gov. Pete Wilson was re-elected partly for his support for a bill that would have prohibited undocumented immigrants from attending public school.
Shereen El Feki rebukes the Clash of Civilisations model propelled by the NYT's Thomas Freidman and Samual P Huntington, author of the book of the same name. Tariq Ali's Clash of Fundamentalisms provided a sound framework for where the conflict that no doubt exists, likely comes from, while El Feki through her description of "cross-cultural hybridization," demonstrates the ways in which the Arab and Western world overlap. For centuries the two worlds have intermingled and influenced one another. The two fundamentalist religious populations have not only been at odds with each other; they have created conflict within their respective cultures. The myopic boxes Huntington forces the Arab and Western worlds into discounts years of history and in some way lacks cultural nuance. Poverty, injustice, lack of education, and dark-ages-patriarchal-constructs seem to fuel radical fundamentalism in both cultures. Examining how our similar radical fundamentalist mindsets come in to popularity is a far more helpful tack. To view our cultures as a whole as at odds with each other leaves us with no where to go but down. El Feki does us a service by turning our attention towards our similarities and our common hopes for a better future.
We have of course seen fashion and popular culture travel around the globe since the beginning of the spice trade. The western business suit has become the de facto attire among most of the world's male business and political class. 19th century's empires left behind their customs and cuisines after their overreach has subsided, with the Bahn Mi sandwich being one of my favorite examples. The Tango is danced all over the world. Michael Jackson, end of story. Not all of these influences are so benign. The western construct of modern warfare has delved many a nation into unrest and suffering. Technologies through out history, such as the gun, as they develop are not sanitized of their cultural origins. Any bit of technology that gains popularity around the world no doubt carries with it on its underbelly the barnacles of the society from whence it came. Here in the US, one could assert, we are the supreme benefactors of this "cross-cultural hybridization." With our history of immigration, the melting pot of America has the benefit of simmering all our peoples differences till our distinct flavors come together to a savory aroma. The hegemonic stature the US has held for so many years has not only enabled the country to steer the world, good or bad, toward a western dominated culture, but also to usurp attributes that enrich it along the way. When you have recent immigrants contributing to the American Literature, the more intrenched culture gains new insights into themselves through their fresh dialogues. Maxine Hong Kingston, Jose Antonio Vargas, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Geeta Kothari pieces all in subtle and not so subtle ways give us insights into our own lives while bringing the insights of their origins into our subconscious. Whether we see it or not in he hybridization The short film "All You Need is Love?" is a smart reversal of the dominant position heterosexuals play in our world. Ashley is a young girl realizing she is a heterosexual in a dominantly homosexual world. The film is a great little switch for folks, especially young people, not able to see the insanity required in disparaging, not accepting, and bullying folks who don't align with their values or help them see that their values are skewed.
The film highlights the need kids have for at least one place where they can find support, love, and refuge. When there is no support at home, then it has to be found in someone at school, or somewhere else. Growing up as any kind of bullied outcast, one is likely doomed if love is conditional everywhere they look for it. Even though she had it extremely rough during her high school years, a friend of mine really saved her own life by running away from home. She stayed out all night with us and got in to trouble; she robbed a bank at one point. But the only way she was able to leave her growingly-abusive-pastor father, was with the support of her friends and her much older girlfriend, who's apartment provided refuge. Getting in trouble the way she did got her help and mental health services her parents never would have let her find. The title "All You Need is Love?" strikes at the many religious institutions around the world that purport to perpetuate the love of their savior or god or what have you. I am no theologian and have not read a great deal of religious texts. Whether the conditions for this love are in there or not, I don't know, but it is clear that there are followers who see them and those who don't (or at least pay them less attention.) I think, the people who see these conditions on love, and acceptance are, more likely than not, struggling with the conditions that were put on the love they received growing up. The elders pain gets passed on to our kids and will continue to be a cancer, until it is honestly reflected on, felt in earnest and accepted. I have to return to the idea of the American Dream. "The Discovery of What it Means to be an American" by James Baldwin is perfectly pertinent to the current day American. I suppose this is the mark of a quintessential American work. Though he doesn't address it outright to a large degree he comments on what we still refer to as the American Dream. Here we view ourselves as infinitely mobile. There is no glass ceiling in America. One's hard work and ingenuity can unlock any door as far as it will Take him. Baldwin writes:
We must, however, consider a rather serious paradox: though American society is more mobile than Europe's, it is easier to cut across social and occupational lines there than it is here. This has something to do, I think, with the problem of status in American life. Where everyone has status, it is also perfectly possible, after all, that no one has. It seems inevitable, in any case, that a man may become uneasy as to just what his status is. The myth of the American Dream you see turns social divisions into a false meritocracy. Th unequal distribution of wealth is due to the hard work of some and the extreme laziness of others. The gap salaries between women and men is explainable in some rationale. Levels of incarceration of the nations minorities are just. Status in America holds, therefore, a far more weighty definition as it is directly related to our willingness to put in a hard days work and our innate talents. Status in Europe being a notion so long entrenched and outwardly accepted loses much of its gravity. Furthermore when status is supposedly such a fluid notion as it is thought of by Americans it creates a "social paranoia" that puts at odds with everyone around us with whom we are in competition with in our quest for upward mobility. Any difference between us is is easily disparaged. Yet paradoxically we are supposed to be on equal footing. The perpetuation of the Dream hinders our ability for national introspection. Writers, artists, academics, all those critical thinkers doing the heavy lifting come up against "a very deep-seated distrust of real intellectual effort (probably because we suspect that it will destroy, as I hope it does, that myth of America to which we cling so desperately.)" Living in Paris for Baldwin let him free from all his constraints. He allowed himself to relish his otherness as a Negro in America and intern realize his otherness of that of an American in Paris. Often it is only by way of changing our local can we gain insight into our many otherness' intricacies. Here Baldwin elevates our understanding of what it means to live in America as one of any othernesses |