"American" ???

On a lazy summer afternoon here in Chico, my mom and I sat with our feet in Little Chico Creek, watching the water ripple around our ankles. The air was thick, the wind, desert dry, and the heat, oppressing; and so we sat their, unmoving. My mother began to talk about Nicaragua, “On days like this we used to all hope in the back of someone's truck and head for the Poneloya, a large beach on the Pacific, near the city of Leon. It's a beautiful peninsula-like beach that culminates into a northern point where the ocean meet an inland fresh/saltwater marsh. She speaks fondly of the trips, the family time, the picnics, it all sounds so tropical and wonderful.

Hearing the recollection you'd think she was a natural swimmer, but my mom won't put her head underwater. She hates swimming, she's afraid of deep water, she loves the beach and it's been like that my whole life. You see, a traumatic childhood experience in the waters off Poneloya has permanently affected her mental view of being in the water. So why did she reminisce so fondly about it while we sat their on that safe river bank? My take on it, it's the same mental view that makes my mom; the little Nica women, the first of her family to immigrate to the United States, the divorcée, the single mother of two, the sensitive and strong fighter an American with an accent.

In Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine, we are swept into the world of an American woman with an accent. Jyoti, her birth name, is women of many names and few determinations. She wants to be an American woman, and so we are taken on a journey that begs the question, “What is it to be an American?” It's a question that has been asked often and raises as many answers as it does questions. Jasmine has her answer for it, her adopted Vietnamese son Du has an answer, each and every character met in the novel, whether “a native” or an “immigrant”, has an answer/ viewpoint to the question. Yet, in the end, the question is still there.

This country, “the greatest experiment, ever” as it was once described to me by my best friend in England, will always pose this question and the answer will always be elusive. By its nature, being an American will always be a hyphenated identity. You have your “Vietnamese-American”, your “Immigrant-American”, “Southern-American”, “Urban-American”, “real-American”, “Native-American”, even your “Anti-American.” On their own, each is a small perspective, a portion of “what is is to be an American” and can only be valid if viewed as a whole. Jasmine might envision a “...funny, generous... heartland” but it's also an “...illegal aliens, invalid, shot in the back on the eve of Christmas Eve.” (224) America too. The American Dream is just that, a dream, and all dreams are different but there is one commonality shared. Only the living dream, this is the freedom offered by America. This is the realization of Mukherjee's heroes, their dreams might be different, might conflict even, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that they dream.

We (Americans) are all hyphenated identities, each hyphenization equally valid and important to the self. Right or wrong, only history can decides, but what I can say is that we are all Americans with accents and hyphens so what gives us the privilege of saying our accent or our hyphen is better justified? The experiment will yield it's results one day, but for now the mixing put must continue to boil, and the only way to keep a boiling pot from burring is to stir it up. Fear, happiness, pain, sorrow, joy and hope are in all of our dreams. This is why America is global, this is why the hyphens must persist. “We've stowed away on boats..., we've hurtled through time tunnels. We've seen the worst and survived.” (240) We are all American's with accents.