Ethnic Identity in Croatian-American Literature Diplomarbeit Zur Erlangung Des Akademischen Grades Einer Magistra Der Philosophi
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Generated by Foxit PDF Creator © Foxit Software http://www.foxitsoftware.com For evaluation only. Ethnic Identity in Croatian-American Literature Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades einer Magistra der Philosophie an der Geisteswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz vorgelegt von Ksenija ŠPIONJAK am Institut für Amerikanistik Begutachter: ao.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr.phil. Klaus Rieser Graz, 2008 Generated by Foxit PDF Creator © Foxit Software http://www.foxitsoftware.com For evaluation only. I am grateful to my parents, Marko & Manda Špionjak, and to my sister, Katarina Špionjak, for their support, encouragement, motivation, patience and above all their belief they kept in me throughout my studies. That is why I would like to dedicate this thesis to them: Mama, Tata, Katarina, Hvala vam na svemu. Generated by Foxit PDF Creator © Foxit Software http://www.foxitsoftware.com For evaluation only. Josip Turkalj (1924-2007), “The Immigrant Mother” Generated by Foxit PDF Creator © Foxit Software http://www.foxitsoftware.com For evaluation only. TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION........................................................................................ 1 II. THEORIES OF ETHNICITY ..................................................................... 5 II. 1. ETHNIC AMERICA................................................................................... 7 II.1.1. Assimilation versus Pluralism ....................................................... 7 II.1.2. Race and Ethnicity......................................................................... 11 II.1.3. Religion and Ethnicity................................................................... 12 III. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND................................................................. 14 III.1. OLD AND NEW IMMIGRATION............................................................. 15 III.1.1. The First Croatian Immigrants ................................................... 18 III.1.2. The Experience of Croats on Ellis Island .................................... 20 III.1.3. The Causes and Effects of Emigration from Croatia.................. 24 III. 1.4. Immigration after World War I up to the early 1990s ............... 26 III.1.5. The Structure of Emigration ....................................................... 28 III.2. CROATIAN AMERICAN HISTORY........................................................ 30 III.2.1. Social Associations ....................................................................... 33 III.2.2. Cultural Life and Religion ........................................................... 36 III.2.3. Politics........................................................................................... 37 III.2.4. The Press ...................................................................................... 39 IV. LITERARY APPROACH ........................................................................... 42 VI.1. ETHNIC AND MINORITY LITERATURE.............................................. 42 IV.1.1. New Ethnicity versus Symbolic Ethnicity..................................... 44 IV.1.2. Croatian-American Authors in American Literature.................. 46 IV.1.3. Ethnic writers, Exiles and Globalists............................................ 48 IV.2. EDWARD IFKOVIC IN SEARCH FOR HIS ROOTS .............................. 49 IV.2.1. Anna Marinkovich ........................................................................ 51 IV.2.2. Anna Marinkovich as Ethnic Prose.............................................. 53 Generated by Foxit PDF Creator © Foxit Software http://www.foxitsoftware.com For evaluation only. IV.3. VLADIMIR PETER GOSS.......................................................................... 56 IV.3.1. From Both Sides of the Ocean ...................................................... 57 IV.3.2. Dayton........................................................................................... 63 IV.4. JOSIP NOVAKOVICH................................................................................ 66 IV. 4.1. Salvation and Other Disasters ..................................................... 66 V. CONCLUSION............................................................................................... 73 THESIS SUMMARY............................................................................................... 76 BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................................................................................... 79 Generated by Foxit PDF Creator © Foxit Software http://www.foxitsoftware.com For evaluation only. I INTRODUCTION “The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations.” Walt Whitman, “Leaves of Grass”, preface (1855) ‘Ellis Island’, the port of New York, stands as one of the most important symbols of American history. It was the place where million of immigrants and forefathers of future Americans were confronted with American reality for the first time. Some of these immigrants meant to make their home in the new and strange land, but most of them just wanted to make some money to buy a piece of land in their homeland, to which they planned to return. However, just a minority managed to return home. The image these migrants had in their heads of America as the country of great opportunities, often faded when they passed through the gates of the ‘island of tears’. This was especially the case when they belonged to an unwanted group, like for example the South Slavs. Among the immigrants of Slavic descent entering the United States at the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century, was a little nation, which at the time lived in Europe under Habsburg rule. A nation which did not gain its independence till the early 1990s and were therefore often in history forced to leave their home and escape into distant parts of the world. Their little country nowadays is called Croatia and they were certainly among the groups who were most discriminated against at Ellis Island in New York. These people were recruited primarily to do hard labor, such as work in factories, steel mills and mines. Most of their lives were spent in hard work and mere adjustment to the new culture. In addition, they suffered immensely under the suspicion from Americans. Their lives and the lives of their descendants were enormously affected by the fact that they were different from the longer settled Americans. They, together with the other immigrant groups, completely changed the complexion of the already established population and culture of the US into a wide spectrum of diversity that it had never known before. The Americans were suddenly forced to deal with the practice of American democracy and not only with its theory, that is, they were forced to re-examine their concept of equality to which the nation had been dedicated at birth (Matulich 1971: 5). Loretta Matulich mentions in her dissertation A Cross-Disciplinary Study of the European Immigrants of 1870-1925 that the Americans whose ancestors settled in the United Stated before 1870 wrote texts in which they referred to the new immigrants as ‘hordes’ and ‘swarms’ and that although some credit was given to their contributions as laborers, artists 1 Generated by Foxit PDF Creator © Foxit Software http://www.foxitsoftware.com For evaluation only. and scientists, they were still often considered as ‘foreign stock’, as if most other Americans were of ‘native stock’ (ibid: 6). Immigration officials found many excuses for discrimination against and persecution of all Slavs in general on Ellis Island. Immigration laws, which were very vaguely written, banned immigrants from entering America, who were believed not to be fit to make good US citizens. But the American immigration officials applying these laws were often corrupt and exploited these regulations for personal profit. After an extensive examination of ethnicity and its correlation with various concepts like assimilation, pluralism, race and religion in the first part of my thesis, Chapter III will provide a short, but comprehensive summary of the most important socio-historical events that are linked with Croatian immigration, e.g. their motivations for emigration, the way immigrants have been perceived and how they have viewed the American people and how they have adjusted to and assimilated into American life. I want to give an insight into the background and circumstances that made these people leave their homeland for a distant place they had only vaguely heard about. This should not be the main focus of my thesis, but it is necessary as an introduction and a better understanding of the following chapter. After these two predominantly theory-oriented chapters, in Chapter IV I move on by defining Croatian-American literature and ethnic writing in general. Ethnic literature is a powerful force in the creation of images of ethnic identities and the ‘ethnics’ search for one’s own ethnic identity. Ethnic writing resurged after World War II when Americans deprived from their basic civil rights stood up against the ruling Anglo-Saxon standards. European American ethnicity experienced a revival after the black protest movement of the 1960s, when Afro-Americans began to refer to themselves in ethnic rather than in racial terms. Prominent Jewish-American scholars supported this kind of ethnic revival and gradually the American attitude towards ethnic writing changed and ethnic and minority literature became an important