Unappealing Ethnicity Meets Unwelcoming America: Immigrant Self-Fashioning in Mary Gordon’s Temporary Shelter

Many academics nowadays tend to assume the redemptive power of asserting one's ethnic identity in the United States. But the issue is a complex one: all ethnicities are not equally benign, and there are a number of different relationships one may have both to one's ethnicity and to the country's dominant group. For example, there is a huge difference between a third generation Japanese-American student who acquaints herself with her ethnic heritage by majoring in Asian studies, and her Japanese-speaking grandfather who was interned in a "relocation center" for two years during World War II. Hers is, in the words of Berndt Ostendorf, "ethnicity by memory ... more symbolic than existential," while his ethnicity is "real" (584). The young woman has undoubtedly been subject to anti-Asian prejudice--some of it pretty nasty--and she can therefore relate to the more virulent prejudice suffered by her grandfather. But she is also worlds away from him: she speaks perfect English, has a higher class status, and enjoys the endorsement of her actions by a good part of the American intelligensia. She possesses what Jules Chametzky refers to as a "composite self" (14) and has been able to integrate, or at least hold in creative tension, both her American and her Japanese sides. I'm conflating two ideas here. One is Chametzky's and William Boelhower's notion that all American immigrants must come to terms with "two worlds and two selves [to achieve] a new birth," but that this process is "a doubling, not an erasing" (Boelhower, qtd. in Chametzky 14). Chametzky sees this concept of a composite self as "a liberating, not a debilitating or disabling possibility" (14).(1) The other idea is Ostendorf's more jaded suggestion that as this process continues through the generations, it becomes more self-conscious and sentimental. "Symbolic" ethnicity is only possible in the U.S. "after a certain measure of participation in the larger market and a mutual cultural accommodation are assured" (580).(2) Both ideas, nevertheless, lead us to believe that the end product will be positive, that neither the "composite" nor the "symbolic" ethnic will be a monster, but rather an evolved, complex individual. As we grapple with this notion of immigrant self-fashioning, I think it is very important that we also consider how many different ways the process of becoming a multifaceted American can go awry. Whether the immigrant be first, second, or even third generation, his or her evolution is not always a happy one. Almost everyone is willing to concede that the resistance and condescension of the dominant culture toward immigrants limit their options. However, another huge limitation--one that is not cited as often--is the nature of an immigrant's ethnicity. As I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, not all ethnicities that make up the U.S. populace are equally benign. What happens, for instance, if the culture from which an immigrant hails contains elements that are not particularly admirable to the dominant culture? What if the immigrant culture is perceived to be clannish, repressive of women, steeped in inferiority from hundreds of years of colonial oppression, and prudish about human sexuality? In short, what if an immigrant is Irish?(3) Three stories in Mary Gordon's Temporary Shelter--"Delia," "Agnes," and "Eileen"--chronicle the difficulties of Irish-Americans who try to buy into the promise and the freedom of the dominant culture. Two of the three title characters end up dead and the third returns to Ireland. Because the mainstream society of America is not particularly welcoming the survivors either retreat further into their Irish ethnicity or become hardened, conservative first and second generation Americans. In other words, their self-fashioning is reactive and defensive, rather than a free choice. Gordon's subtext in these stories disabuses readers of two mistaken assumptions. The first is that clinging to one's ethnicity is always a positive way of coping with the difficulties of a new life in America. …