A Companion to the American Short Story
Page 97
fi rst recounts how Ralph wants to run his pancake house like his “ kingdom, ” in which
he tries to trade benevolence for his employees ’ loyalty. The second describes how
Helen endeavors to gain admittance to the elitist town country club. However, the
Changs ’ application receives the same polite dismissal as the African Americans ’ . “ The
Water Faucet Vision ” focuses on Ralph and Helen ’ s marital confl ict. As their argu-
ment evolves into violence, Callie, who is attending a Catholic girls ’ school, starts to
practice ostentatious piety and prays for a miraculous reconciliation between her
parents. What charms her reader most is Jen ’ s talent in telling a heavy tale with
humor.
Asian American short fi ctions are so vast in number, themes, and styles that it is
impossible to map out the entire terrain in this brief chapter. Despite the diversity
within, Asian American writers are unifi ed in their struggle against stereotypes such
as the model minority, the passive oriental, and the unassimilable aliens. As prob-
lematic as the classifi cation of Asian American is, it has enabled this dynamic, growing
body of literature to gain the attention of the reading public and critics. Asian Ameri-
can writers through fi ction delineate and construct the specifi cities of Asian American
identities even as they endeavor to transcend ethnicity.
448
Wenying Xu
References and Further Reading
Bulosan , Carlos . The Laughter of My Father . New
— — — . “ Grandma ’ s Tales . ” Amerasia Journal 20 . 3
York : Harcourt, Brace , 1944 .
( 1994 ): 65 – 70 .
— — — . The Philippines Is in the Heart . Quezon
— — — . “ On the Perfume. ” Manoa 6.2 ( 1994 ):
City, Philippines : New Day , 1978 .
132 – 41 .
Chang ,
Lan
Samantha .
Hunger .
New
York :
— — — . “ Slingshot. ” ZYZZYVA (Winter 1998 ):
Penguin , 1998 .
151 – 63 .
Chin , Frank . The Chinaman Pacifi c & Frisco R.R. Co .
Lee , Don . Yellow . New York : W. W. Norton , 2001 .
Minneapolis, MN : Coffee House , 1988 .
Lim , Shirley Geok - lin , Mayumi Tsutakawa , and
Chin , Frank , Jeffery Chan , Lawson Inada , and
Margarita Donnelly , eds. The Forbidden Stitch:
Shawn Wong , eds. Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of
An Asian American Women ’ s Anthology . Corvallis,
Asian American Writers .
Washington,
DC :
OR : Calyx Books , 1989 .
Howard University Press , 1974 .
Louie , David Wong . Pangs of Love . New York :
Chiu , Cristina . Troublemaker and Other Stories . New
Knopf , 1991 .
York : Berkley Books , 2001 .
Lum , Darrell H. Y. Pass On, No Pass Back . Hono-
Divakaruni , Chitra . Arranged Marriage . New York :
lulu : Bamboo Ridge Press , 1990 .
Doubleday , 1995 .
— — — . Sun: Short Stories and Drama . Honolulu :
— — — . The Unknown Errors of Our Lives . New
Bamboo Ridge Press , 1980 .
York : Doubleday , 2001 .
Mori , Toshio . The Chauvinist and Other Stories . Los
Far , Sui Sin . Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Other Writ-
Angeles : Asian American Studies Center, Uni-
ings . Urbana : University of Illinois Press , 1995 .
versity of California at Los Angeles , 1979 .
Ha Jin . The Bridge Groom: Stories . New York :
— — — . Unfi nished Message: Selected Works of Toshio
Pantheon , 2000 .
Mori . Berkeley, CA : Heyday Books , 2000 .
— — — . A Good Fall: Stories . New York : Pantheon ,
— — — . Yokohama, California . Caldwell, OH :
2009 .
Caxton Printers , 1949 . 2nd edn . Seattle: Uni-
Hagedorn , Jessica , ed. Charlie Chan Is Dead . New
versity of Washington Press, 1985.
York : Penguin , 1993 .
Mukherjee , Bharati . Darkness . New York : Penguin ,
— — — . Charlie Chan Is Dead 2 . New York :
1985 .
Penguin , 2004 .
— — — . The Middleman and Other Stories . New
Huang , Guiyou , ed. Asian American Short Story
York : Fawcett Crest , 1988 .
Writers: An A - to - Z Guide . Westport, CT : Green-
Nunes , Susan . A Small Obligation and Other Stories
wood Press , 2003 .
of Hilo . Honolulu : Bamboo Ridge Press , 1982 .
Jen , Gish . “ Bellying Up . ” Iowa Review 12.4 (Fall
Phan , Aimee . We Should Never Meet: Stories . New
1981 ): 93 – 4 .
York : St. Martin ’ s Press , 2004 .
— — — . “ Eating Crazy. ” Yale Review 74 (Spring
Rachlin , Nahid . Veil: Short Stories . San Francisco :
1985 ): 425 – 33 .
City Lights , 1992 .
— — — . Who ’ s Irish? Stories . New York : Random
Rao , Raja. The Cow of the Barricades and Other
House , 1999 .
Stories . Madras : Oxford University Press , 1997 .
Kim , Elaine H. Asian American Literature: An Intro-
— — — . The Policeman and the Rose . Delhi : Oxford
duction to the Writings and Their Social Context .
University Press , 1978 .
Philadelphia : Temple University Press , 1982 .
Santos , Bienvenido N . Brother, My Brother: A
Kim , Elaine H. , and Lisa Lowe , eds. Position –
Collection of Short Stories . 1960 . Makati City,
Special Issue: New Formations, New Questions:
Philippines : Bookmark , 1991.
Asian American Studies 5.2 (Fall 1997 ).
— — — . The Day the Dancers Came . 1967 . Makati
Lahiri , Jhumpa . Interpreter of Maladies . Boston :
City, Philippines : Bookmark , 1991.
Houghton Miffl in , 1999 .
— — — . Dwell in the Wilderness: Selected Short Stories
Lam , Andrew . “ Dark Wood and Shadows. ” Trans-
(1931 – 1941) . Quezon City, Philippines : New
fer 57 (Fall 1989 ): 24 – 35 .
Day , 1985 .
The Asian American Story
449
— — — . Scent of Apples: A Collection of Stories .
— — — . Selected Stories of Jose Garcia Villa . Manila,
Seattle : University of Washington Press , 1997 .
Philippines : Alberto S. Florentino , 1962 .
— — — . You Lovely People . 1955 . Makati City,
Watanna , Onoto . “ A Half Caste ” and Other
Philippines : Bookmark , 1991.
Writings
.
Urbana
:
University of Illinois Press
,
Villa , Jos é Garcia . Footnote to Youth: Tales of the
2003 .
Philippines and Others . New York : Scribner , 1933 .
Yamamoto , Hisaye . Seventeen Syllables and Other
— — — . Mir - i - Nisa: A Tale of the South Sea . Manila,
Stories . Latham, NY : Kitchen Table: Women of
Philippines : Alberto S. Florentino , 1966 .
Color Press , 1988 .
29
The Jewish American Story
Andrew Furman
&nb
sp; I would like to begin by probing the curious ambiguity of this chapter ’ s title, the
title suggested to me by the editors of this volume. For it has become something of
a clich é to refer to the Jewish experience in America ( the Jewish American story) as
one of our country ’ s greatest immigrant success stories, to think of Jewish Americans
as the ethnic group that paved the way for a subsequent cohort of “ model minorities, ”
the Asian Americans. The true story of the Jews in America, of course (like the story
of the manifold Asian immigrant communities in the United States), has been some-
what more complicated. As Sarah Blair and Jonathan Freedman observed in their
Introduction to a special issue of the Michican Quarterly Review devoted to the Jewish
American experience, “ Jews have been insistently part of the American scene for more
than a century (and longer), but have in that time been described as subversive aliens
and true - blue patriots; outsiders to the cultural dominant and insiders to the national
narrative ” (509).
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the history of the Jewish American story – that is to
say, works of short fi ction crafted by Jewish Americans – has mirrored the vertigi-
nous trajectory of the Jewish American experience. For it is fair to say that the
Jewish American story suffered through an early stage as the nearly invisible out-
sider, enjoyed a middle period as the popular, even fetishized, cultural insider, and
currently vacillates between the thorny literary categories of
“
mainstream,
”
“ ethnic, ” and “ multicultural. ” The capriciousness of the literary marketplace,
however, tells us little about the actual words on the page and the writers who
have produced them. The canon of Jewish American stories is now vast, varied,
and impressive, and any attempt to defi ne this body of work through narrow cate-
gories runs the risk of excluding any number of noteworthy writers and works.
Still, in the pages ahead, I hope to limn the major writers and themes that have
left an indelible mark on the American short story of the twentieth century, and
identify emergent writers and themes that have already impacted the literature of
our new century.
The Jewish American Story
451
Immigrant Beginnings
The numbers are staggering. Between 1880 and 1920, nearly two million Jews, pre-
dominantly Eastern European (or Ashkenazi), immigrated to the United States.
Although there were Jews writing in America preceding these dates, our fi rst promi-
nent Jewish American writers would emerge from this great wave of immigration. The
literary establishment in the United States, to be sure, was reluctant to acknowledge
their bona fi des. Henry James rather famously objected to the infl uence that Jewish
immigrants wielded upon the American vernacular, and on the American character,
generally, in The American Scene (1907). Even as late as 1948, as Sanford Pinsker has
noted, the 1000 - plus - page anthology, The Literary History of the United States , declined
to include a single Jewish American fi ction writer ( Jewish - American ix).
Still, a select few Jewish American writers at the turn of the century burst through
the cultural barriers to secure a readership. Abraham Cahan and Anzia Yezierska are,
perhaps, the most prominent fi gures of this early cohort. Their stories (and novels)
typically pivot upon the tensions their protagonists feel between the Jewish values
and traditions of the old world and the “ American ” values of their adopted country.
These stories, written in the social realist style of William Dean Howells, offer a pre-
cious glimpse of the mores of a predominantly Orthodox Jewish community and their
material and spiritual struggles on the Lower East Side of New York. Interestingly,
the fi rst Jewish American stories celebrated by mainstream readers usually depict
Jewish heroes and heroines willing to assimilate to American (read: white) codes of
conduct. The loss of old world traditions is often poignantly rendered, but usually
assuaged by an immigrant gratitude for the heady material and romantic offerings of
the new world. In Cahan ’ s “ A Ghetto Wedding, ” collected in The Imported Bridegroom
and Other Stories of the New York Ghetto (1898), and more recently collected in Jewish
American Literature: A Norton Anthology (Chametzky et al. 2001 ), he documents in
gritty detail the poverty that defi nes the immigrant existence of his protagonists,
Nathan and Goldy. Though only sweatshop workers, they plan a lavish wedding,
renting out an enormous hall and sending “ [o]ver a hundred invitations, printed in
as luxurious a black and gold as ever came out of an Essex Street hand press ” (127).
The wedding, predictably, is a disaster, as only a very few guests attend: “ a greater
number of the invited friends were kept away by lack of employment: some having
their presentable clothes in the pawn shop; others avoiding the expense of a wedding
present, or simply being too cruelly borne down by their cares to have a mind for the
excitement of the wedding ” (129 – 30). Importantly, however, the story ends on a
buoyant note. Although drunken street toughs harass the newlyweds on their way
to their meager apartment, they feel a stream of happiness coursing through their
veins as they, and Cahan, take heart in “ the enchanted world in which they now
dwelt ” (134).
The stories in Anzia Yezierska ’ s Hungry Hearts (1920) , which earned Yezierska a
nice advance from Houghton Miffl in and a whopping $10,000 in fi lm rights from
452
Andrew Furman
Samuel Goldwyn, hew largely to the same formula. Yezierska, as Blanche Gelfant
aptly put it, “ hoped to present the abjected poor as desirable people who desired,
above all else, to become Americans ” (xxv). This isn ’ t to say that Yezierska ’ s work (or
Cahan ’ s) unequivocally lauds the America that greeted their community of Jewish
immigrants. Several of the stories in Hungry Hearts poignantly evoke the insuperable
cycle of poverty which faced most immigrants; others take deadly aim at the hypocrisy
and paternalism of those whites who would Americanize Jewish immigrants; and
Yezierska explores with considerable nuance the sacrifi ces that her Jewish immigrants
would make as they assimilated. Still, the story “ Soap and Water ” illustrates the
overwhelming force and appeal of new world values. In the story, the Dean of a
teacher ’ s college, evocatively named Miss Whiteside, withholds our Jewish heroine ’ s
diploma because of her unwashed appearance. “ ‘ Soap and water are cheap, ’ ” Whiteside
admonishes our heroine. “ ‘ Any one can be clean ’ ” (102). While Yezierska acidly
evokes the hypocrisy of the Whitesides of the world, these agents of clean society
( “ While they condemned me as unfi t to be a teacher, because of my appearance, ”
our heroine bemoans, “ I was slaving [in a laundry] to keep them clean ” ), our heroine
longs for beauty and cleanliness all the same, and achieves this American ideal by the
end of the story (102). She ultimately graduates from college, leaves the sweatshop
behind, and joins the ranks of the white a
nd clean. “ ‘ My past was the forgotten
night, ’ ” she ebulliently declares. “ ‘ Sunrise was all around me. … America! I found
America ’ ” (109).
The Golden Age
While the fi rst generation of Jewish immigrants from Europe contributed several
memorable stories to the canon of American literature, it would be their sons and
daughters – most notably Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, and Grace
Paley – who moved the Jewish American story from the margins to the center of the
American literary scene. The enormous individual talents of these writers most sig-
nifi cantly account for the hoopla over their work in the 1950s and 1960s. Still, their
collective sensibility – a wry skepticism of cultural conditions rooted in an ecumenical
ethical humanism – arose in a particular sociological moment, and under particular
cultural pressures. These writers were acutely aware of the great sacrifi ces their parents
made to ensure the more prosperous American identity of their offspring. Such pres-
sure often proved unbearable, as Delmore Schwartz dramatizes so poignantly in his
classic story, “ In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, ” a story which serves as something
of a bridge between the immigrant and post - immigrant generation of Jewish Ameri-
can writers. Conditions, social and material, certainly improved for the second genera-
tion of Jewish Americans as America gradually outgrew its anti - immigrant, nativist
ethos of the 1920s and 1930s. An old Jewish quip goes,
“
What
’
s the difference
between the International Ladies Garment Workers Association and the American
Physicians Association? One generation. ” Yet the children of immigrants coming of
The Jewish American Story
453
age in the 1940s and 1950s were still beset by anti - Semitism that persisted across
the American zeitgeist. Indeed, it was this lingering sense of alienation and marginal-
ity that provided the essential grist for the fi ctional mills of this dazzling post
-
immigrant generation of writers. The Jewish protagonists created by Bellow and his
cohorts typically struggle to affi rm a viable ethical identity in an America that has
yet to live up to the ideals of its conception. These characters, recognizably ethnic
Jews, yet usually not observant, resonated with both Jewish and gentile readers. “ All