By Ashley Rusch
Swati Rana, a professor of English at UC Santa Barbara, discussed her “race character critique” method in literature of immigration, at a recent virtual event sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
A hard-working immigrant defies the odds, climbing the social ladder and achieving economic prosperity. This narrative, often referred to as the “American Dream,” is commonly interwoven into literary works, says UC Santa Barbara English professor Swati Rana.
Rana and Stephanie Batiste, an English department faculty colleague who is also a UCSB Black Studies professor, recently met for an online discussion about Rana’s new book, Race Characters: Ethnic Literature and the Figure of the American Dream.
Race Characters, which examines literary works from 1900 to 1960, explores the key differences in how Eastern European immigrants and non-European immigrants navigated the pattern of immigration.
Stephanie Batiste teaches in both Black Studies and English at UC Santa Barbara. She discussed colleague Swati Rana’s new book and the notions of American identity, colonialism, and literary analysis.
During this period, Southern and Eastern European immigrants were able to assimilate and live the American Dream, while non-European immigrants were ostracized by race-based naturalization policies and Jim Crow segregation. As a result, these immigrants were compelled by the American Dream but never given access to it, Rana said – much as an asymptotic line approaches a curve but never touches it.
“That’s where I found a lot of these characters having this kind of asymptotic relationship to the American Dream – like drawn to a template, its figuration, its plot – but also unable, as racialized subjects, to actually realize that trajectory,” Rana explained.
The event was part of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center (IHC) Humanities Decanted series, which highlights faculty members’ new works. This discussion was sponsored by the IHC Harry Girvetz Memorial Endowment.
Rana examined how framing a character creates complicated attachments to the American Dream. She pointed to texts that feature characters who “abandon minority identity” in exchange for American ideals of individuality and upward mobility. Race Characters includes writings by Paule Marshall, Ameen Rihani, José Garcia Villa, José Antonio Villarreal, and more.
Rana’s “race character critique” looks at the social context and history surrounding each character. This allows her to view individual personalities as multiple “heterogenous personas” that reveal the double standard of the American Dream, she explained.
“I fashion a method that links literary representations of character to the biographical context and diasporic histories that shape them,” she said.
A portrait shared by Rana via Zoom of Dalip Singh Saund, the first Asian-American member of Congress, which hangs in the U.S. Capitol.
Rana showed a historic portrait that hangs in the U.S. Capitol of Dalip Singh Saund, the first Asian-American member of Congress. The portrait’s neoclassical architecture and Saund’s Western suit invite us to perceive him through the lens of the “American national character.” Yet Saund is overpowered by symbols that represent a history of colonialism, racism, and nativism, she said.
Within ethnic literature, the American Dream provides a “template or outline of character” that conveys underlying messages of upward mobility, Rana said. She pointed to Saund’s own autobiography, Congressman From India, as one that engages with this template.
“He’s telling what appears to be a highly individualized story of success. But at the same time, the point of that is the propaganda function, its role within his campaigns, and his role as an American representative. That text is there to give that story to his constituency,” she said.
Rana says literary critique allows us to understand our social world in a more complex way. Through close, rigorous readings that are also historically situated, scholars can find lessons within the literature that aren’t apparent on a surface level.
“The ways in which these writers are making our social world, retelling a different story of the American Dream – that’s the sort of agency I want to draw out through their formal innovations and through their craft,” she said.
For her part, Batiste suggested that the tendency to emphasize individual stories in autobiographies may serve as a “gesture toward individuality,” a main ideological component of the American Dream. Today’s readers and scholars, she added, are beginning to take a more nuanced approach.
“We've come to a new era in the 21st century, where even though the American story is one of progress, the public realizes more clearly that this racial story – these immigrant stories – are complicated, vexed, overlapping, and entangled,” said Batiste, whose research areas include race and racism in American history and African American literature and culture.
Ashley Rusch is a third-year Communication major at UC Santa Barbara. She wrote this piece for her Writing Program class, Journalism for Web and Social Media.