I kind of found the story of “A Lily’s Mission” disturbing. The story is about two slum children who bring flower from school to their dingy apartment.. “The mother has failed to keep the house clean; the father is out drinking. Overjoyed at seeing the flower, the mother places it on a windowsill, only to discover that dirt prevents any sunlight from shining through the window to the flower. With the window clean, the sunlight reveals the filth of the apartment, which is then quickly cleaned. The mother washes and dresses, and the father, overcome by his new environment upon his return home, vows to give up the bottle.” Being of Central/Eastern European decent, this story offends me. It basically says that the normal European immigrant family is dirty, uneducated, lazy and drunk and they need to be “blessed” (a lily in the Bible is a symbol for purity but I don’t know if it’s used in the same context in this story) by Americans and saved from their filth. Was anyone else offended by this?
In one of the sections of this chapter it is mentioned that immigrants were forced to Americanize their names and go by names that were easier to pronounce. This reminded me of something that happened in the 4th grade. One of my close friends at the time, Zbigniew (a common Polish name), was called for attendance. Our teacher didn’t know how to pronounce it so she nicknamed him “Ziggy”. He went by the weekend all the way through college and actually from the 4th grade on, resented his name. It was almost like he was embarrassed by his name and culture. I also remember that during elementary school, a lot of the students were Hispanic and often spoke Spanish amongst each other. At some point during lunchtime, a teacher walked by their table and overheard them speaking Spanish and scolded them for speaking Spanish in America. It’s things like this, especially at a young age, that teaches children that being different or foreign is not okay. It’s also sad that this section of the book reflects back to the early 20th century and when I was in school it was the 90’s yet the same ideals were present. However, how do you teach a children how to assimilate to American culture without having them totally dismiss their foreign identities?
