Interviews with 137 immigrants representing - in a rough chronology
- every wave of immigration from 1900 to 1979, every new impetus,
and virtually every national origin: "the human side of
immigration," true, but a mosaic without a discernible design.
Rather, for all the surface diversity and reference to the "new
ethnicity," we have familiar themes: a familiar litany of
aspirations and stresses. We also have, among the earlier, pre-1960
immigrants, a very high incidence of success; most would readily
agree with Canadian-born painter Agnes Martin that "It's a breeze
in America." (Interviews with the likes of Alistair Cooke and
baseball player Rennie Sennett enforce this impression.) Still,
some of the famous and not-so-famous have interesting stories to
tell: Betty Chu, a Chinese teenager barely aware of the political
turmoil caused by the Maoist revolution that would in time drive
her family out ("I just lived in my own secret world of my records
- Frank Sinatra and Doris Day"); Michael Blumenthal, a onetime
refugee from Nazi Germany welcomed back by headlines reading, "A
Berliner Becomes America's Minister of Finance." Other interviews
gain significance through juxtaposition, especially the cluster
representing the wartime influx which included Hitler youth and
concentration camp survivors, a Scottish "blitz kid" and scientist
Edward Teller. And beside the totally recognizable types (Jewish
garment workers, an Irish housemaid), there are a few memorable
individuals - among them a biracial South African couple and poet
Denise Levertov ("Because I didn't really belong in the place I
grew up in . . . I have always felt like an air plant. I could
exist just about anywhere"). All, however, lack some thread to hold
their experiences together-making this a useful resource for school
assignments (complete to one of the "boat people"), but that's
about it. (Kirkus Reviews)
This extraordinary work of oral history captures the immense drama
and full dimensions of the American immigrant experience. The men
and women who tell their stories include such famous names as
Alistair Cooke, W. Michael Blumenthal, Edward Teller, and Lynn
Redgrave. But they share these pages with 136 other people whose
stories are equally compelling: a Jewish former sweatshop worker
and union organizer, a Scandanavian homesteader, a Polish coal
miner, an anti-Nazi refugee, a Japanese war bride, a Mexican
migrant worker, a Cuban exile, a South African interracial couple,
a Soviet dissident, and many more. They reveal the mingled joy and
pain, hardship and triumph that were and are part of the glowing
dream and fearful gamble of a new life in a new land. They offer
unique understanding not only of the makeup but of the meaning of
America.
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