This is my final project I produced for my Ethnic Literature class at Kean University. Dr. Mia Zamora asked the class to develop a digital story, which engages the question of what it means to be American.

Living Treasures  

In the touching documentary, “The Cats of Miriktani,” filmmaker Linda Hattendorf, follows the life of a homeless artist whose work caught her attention on the street of New York. Jimmy Miriktani was not your average begger on the street, he refused to take money from passersby unless it was a payment toward his beautiful paintings. His paintings consist mostly of playful Japanese cats and tigers. When Linda discovered more about Jimmy’s past, she devoted her time to teach him his rights, reconnect him with his family and provide him with security. Linda gave him a spot in her small apartment for him to work on his art pieces, which made him feel more at home. His transformation was not an easy one because he was already set in his ways, however, staying engaged with art aided his ability to develop a new identity.

His talent of painting provided him with relief from the anger he was experiencing of losing his identity. It turned out that Jimmy had a growing reputation as an artist in Sacramento, California where he was born as a US citizen, however after World War II he became imprisoned in a Japanese American concentration camp. This dreadful experience angered him so much, he refused to renounce allegiance to Japan and gave up his US citizenship. He was a man without a country and a man without an identity. For Jimmy, living homeless and avoiding any aid the government would be able to provide, was his way of taking control over his own life.

Jimmy's art saved his life. His beautiful paintings caught the eye of many people and he was able to stay alive with the profit he made off of his pieces. If it weren't for his drive and dedication with art, he probably wouldn't have been able to carry on with life after the camp as he did. His art was a story book, full of his childhood memories and tribulations of camp. Though Linda gave him a helping hand, his art is what helped him pulled through his challenging time of transformation.

"Smoke Signals": My Response 

Our fathers take the leadership role of the family as protectors and providers, but most importantly our fathers are suppose to be remain present in our lives to help our mothers shape us into well rounded individuals. In Smoke Signals, the major theme surrounding the relationships of father and child is what connected me most to this film. You don't hear of "dead-beat" mothers, which is often associated with fathers being the "dead-beat" ones. It is also very rare you find a mother leaving their children behind. The bond a mother has with their child is already whole and infinite before the child is even born, whereas the relationship a child has with their father is created later on after birth. A father has a huge responsibility to be a good role model to their children, especially to their sons who will one day grow up and mirror their fathers. There is so much expected from a father, not only do they have to provide but they have to be good educator to their children, which can cause great pressure on someone who isn't level-headed and for this reason I personally believe tragedy changes man.

Victor's father Arnold Joseph experienced guilt and tragedy when he burned Thomas' family down to a crisp. Victor lost his father in that burning house because the tragic incident lead him to drink and become abusive. Eventually, his father became a monster and his emotions lead him to retire and leave his family behind. I can personally connect my father to Arnold because he also abandoned his children after a tragedy. Soon after my mother passed away from cancer, my father disappeared. After some time I was able to link his actions to a broken heart, for the fact that my parents were childhood sweethearts. When I lost my mother, I lost my father as well. The loss of a parent, no matter the situation can greatly affect an individual in a negative way. Victor went throughout the rest of his upbringing with strong resentment and hate for his father, which made him a bitter individual. However, he was quiet young when his father acted out, with negative memories being the only thing he can recollect. What makes my situation ironic is that my father left when I was a teenager, yet he was a good role model to my siblings and I growing up, therefore I have countless intimate memories of him. Tragedies like these reveal what grief does to the individual who is in the position of power.

I have learned that each child has a different relationship with their parent and parents also have a different bond with each child. For instance, my eldest brother acted out terribly when my father left, holding in a lot of resentment like Victor. Not only was he the first born which makes him closer to my father, but he had a different relationship with him being that he is a boy. Father's have such an enormous impact on their sons and they often look up to their fathers. Fathers teach their sons how to be a "man", while they often are more affectionate toward their daughters by spoiling them. This movie has allowed me to reflect on my personal situation. After my father left I played the fire, my brother the ash. Like Victor, my brother always remembers the negative memories while I, like Thomas remember the good memories. It hurts differently for my brother in ways I may never understand, however the absence of our father still affects me greatly. I grieve in different ways where I often think of the future, as far as having him at my wedding or in my children's life. I am the rock to my siblings now and I feel that one day I will be able to go through a similar journey with my brothers, just as Thomas did with Victor.  Thomas: "Hey Victor, do you know why your dad really left? Victor: Yeah. He didn't mean to Thomas. One day I hope to show my brothers that our father didn't mean to leave us. Father's don't mean to abandon their children, they just have no other way to cope with their feelings and leaving is the only outlet sometimes.

As the movie ends with quotes, it leaves one full of wonder...

How do we forgive our fathers, maybe in a dream?

Do we forgive our fathers for leaving us to often, or forever, when we were little?

Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage, or making us nervous, because there never seemed to be any rage there at all. 

Do we forgive our fathers for marrying, or not marrying our mothers, for divorcing, or not divorcing our mothers? 

And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness? 

Shall we forgive them for pushing or leaning, for shutting doors, for speaking through walls, or never speaking, or never being silent?

Do we forgive our fathers in our age or in theirs?

Or in their deaths, saying it to them, or not saying it?

If we forgive our fathers what is left?

These are some of the questions that wander throughout the mind of an abandoned child. "Would I ever be able to forgive my father?" Throughout the years of my father's absence, I've found myself questioning my own strength of forgiveness, as it will be one of the most difficult situations i'll have to face in the years to come.  

Santiago Baca’s “Family Ties” to the concept of “America”:

This poem speaks volumes on the incapability immigrants have on obtaining freedom and represents a disconnection to the society they live in. The narrator of the poem is an outsider looking into his suffocating life, where there is a clear sense of yearning for change, a different life style. Santiago Baca being the Chicano spokesperson that he is, speaks for the less fortunate Mexican community who dream of living the American lifestyle they are deprived of. Baca opens the poem up talking about deprivation of youth, “I play with a new generation of children, my hands in streambed silt of their lives a scuba diver's hands, dusting surface sand for buried treasure.” This newer generation will never get to experience life outside of their community and the narrator states that he can see the their future. The narrator also speaks about his son who dreams in the backseat about opportunity, a new community outside of the country. Realistically, each generation after his will too be deprived from the American lifestyle, in a vicious cycle.

A good amount of imagery of nature is displayed, as aunts and uncles are compared to trees and barbeques to mountains at the beginning of the poem. The narrator is tied to a family and community he feels no connection with, hence the name of the poem. He finds comfort in nature and uses his imagination to alter the discomfort that surrounds him. He truly longs for space, solitude, or as many of us would call it, the “American Dream.” However, he knows the only way he would be able to obtain this “buried treasure” is in his mind. The narrator daydreams of his family escaping his barrio to a new place, as they pass by rich land, streams and mountains. The dream gets interrupted with the honest reality of being deprived of such freedom, “We cannot afford a place like this.” Here the narrator uses the word “we” in reference to the Mexican community as a whole and he exposes to readers that poverty is what’s hindering them in moving forward. So they remain in their small town where they feel comfort, which they ironically don’t have ownership over. There are many obstacles one must pass in order to live American, which is why there are so many illegal immigrants. The American dream has a price and unfortunately not everyone shares the same opportunity to obtain that lifestyle.

"Family Ties" by Santiago Baca

Mountain barbecue. 

They arrive, young cousins singly, 

older aunts and uncles in twos and threes, 

like trees. I play with a new generation 

of children, my hands in streambed silt 

of their lives, a scuba diver's hands, dusting 

surface sand for buried treasure. 

Freshly shaved and powdered faces 

of uncles and aunts surround taco 

and tamale tables. Mounted elk head on wall, 

brass rearing horse cowboy clock 

on fireplace mantle. Sons and daughters 

converse round beer and whiskey table. 

Tempers ignite on land grant issues. 

Children scurry round my legs. 

Old bow-legged men toss horseshoes on lawn, 

other farmhands from Mexico sit on a bench, 

broken lives repaired fro this occasion. 

I feel no love or family tie here. I rise 

to go hiking, to find abandoned rock cabins 

in the mountains. We come to a grass clearing, 

my wife rolls her jeans up past ankles, 

wades ice cold stream, and I barefooted, 

carry a son in each arm and follow. 

We cannot afford a place like this. 

At the party again, I eat bean and Chile 

burrito, and after my third glass of rum, 

we climb in the car and my wife drives 

us home. My sons sleep in the back, 

dream of the open clearing, 

they are chasing each other with cattails 

in the sunlit pasture, giggling, 

as I stare out the window 

at no trespassing signs white flashing past.

Bharati Mukherjee's "A Father" - Cultural Clash and Gendercide

Mr. Bhowmick is an Indian American middle class man who is unsettled in between two worlds. He tries hard to attain this new culture of the "American Dream", while still embracing his Indian cultural values. He wakes up checking "his Rolex against the alarm clock's digital readout, punched down the alarm..." and his wife wakes up to cook him a new version of French toast for breakfast. The new culture is present, however every morning he recites prayers to the patron goddess of his family, Kali-Mata. He struggled to be accepted by his wife and daughter Babli, who were more modern and agnostic. They often thought the father was out of his mind because his rituals interfered with the families’ domestic lifestyle. His wife even hid Kali in a suitcase and accused him of shutting her out of his life. 

A culture clash is what Mr. Bhowmick's family experienced as they were adapting to American society. Culture tends to change from generation to generation, especially once you are removed from your original birthplace, and his daughter is the pure example of this situation. Mr. Bhowmick didn't have a connection with his daughter and it was hard for him to love her.  She lacked something, "Babli was not the child he would have chosen as his only heir." She wasn't like the other Bengali girls in Detroit or the unmarried girls of his adolescent days. Mr. Bhowmick needed some sense of vulnerability to gain power, however Babli was a strong, successful and accomplished woman who had risen above the common stereotype. Her behavior was foreign to him and he was losing his masculine role. His escape was goddess Kali-Mata, where he tries to save himself through prayer. 

The story becomes extremely ironic when Babli becomes pregnant. Being influenced by the American culture that surrounds her, she decides to raise her child on her own but Mr. Bhowmick takes that dream away from her by rejecting her feminine independence and killing her child. Having a child independently out of wedlock was going against gender expectations and was not accepted by her parents. However, the father felt the need to gain his control back by taking something away. Naturally, Mr. Bhowmick depended on Babli because she was accomplished and financially stable. He couldn't control her because she was becoming an independent woman with her own dreams. Mr. Bhowmick didn't have control over his family and struggled with adapting to the new world, therefore killing the baby was his way at gaining something back from his old world. After reading these past couple of stories involving cultural gaps, it's evident that there is a certain cost factor in becoming an American. Cultural values is what imprisoned Mr. Bhowmick from the American Dream. 

1913-1956

"When you are in love you are brave. You are not afraid of death." 

Carlos Bulosan