Thursday, May 3, 2007
Accordian Crimes depresses me...
I started reading Accordian Crimes and am partly through the third segment/story. And as beautifully written as it is, it depresses me about American nationalism, history, immigration, and cultural assimilation. Each story has a character that ends up hating or denouncing their cultural heritage, which I think really has potential for rich analysis. Though I can see the similarities with Melville's Moby Dick "book of everythingness," I find Accordian Crimes much more interesting in its wholeness of people and places.
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I completely agree. I nearly cried after Felida pushed her old, wop husband away at the end of that story. I think it's so much more depressing because so many of the characters have to cope with a great deal of shame, for being poor or "ethnic" or speaking a diff. language, etc. This book hits a sore spot for me in many ways, considering my family history and the recent May day marches (...and the LAPD incident that happened that day), as well as the local barrage of anti-immigrant sentiment from many...but especially disgruntled white working class, middle-aged men...
[A woman and her toddler were doused with a cup of hot coffee while marching in front of Starbux on pacific last tues]
So, yeah, I suppose it's just shocking and upsetting to note that many ppl simply don't know much about history to understand current immigration issues...or simply don't care b/c they're so disconnected from the similar and not too distant immigrant experience of their great/grandparents.
On that note, an interesting quote in "Spider, bite me"...(on p.156, 2nd paragraph of the chp) I thought it was great how Proulx exposed all the different levels of assimilation that immigrants experiece, across diverse regions, and generations. While Chris and Baby are intent on asserting their American identities and the evolution/fusion of their accordion music in the U.S., the first generation Italians, Greeks, Hungarians, etc are nostalgic for "something ethnic" and Felida enjoys "faking it."
Oh, and I think it's funny how they all claim to make the best accordion in their respective countries of origin, reminds me of the necessity to claim possesions, imperialism, authorship and all that good stuff...
Disclaimer: my posting is completely irrelevant to the previous ones, but I cant figure out how to start a new strand. So, sorry.
After Turesday's class, I left unsatisfied with why Proulx left the Accordian Maker unnamed. As I continued reading, however, I remembered the passage in the German section talking about how the Germans drop their last names as they become more American. The Accordian Maker, although an immigrant, has chosen to never assimilate into the new country. Mentally, he never left SIcily. It could be said that Proulx has not even given him a name becasue he was really never in the United States; to those Americans who would have cared enough about his Sicilian name, the Accordian Maker did not exist.
I thought you might want to check out this music, nortena/electronica fusion...has a lot of accordion in it. i especially like "tijuana makes me happy."
http://www.myspace.com/nortec
So, I just found out that it was a white woman that doused the Latina mother and baby with coffee. She was arrested and it appears that the Brown Berets are now planning on suing her.
Whoa, the Starbucks-coffee-mauler is an amazing story for this "liberal" town. Why isn't the Sentinel covering this?
(Oh, gee, I forgot: it's a local paper owned by a far-off conglomerate.)
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