Outsiders- Emily Capra and Stacey Braaten

Outsiders

In Maus, Vladek experienced ostracism and discrimination as a result of his heritage. This caused him, as well as the rest of the Jewish population to feel like an outsider. This feeling of not belonging can manifest as racism from others or as an internalized sense of being out of place. Both of these perspectives are demonstrated in the stories of our relatives when they immigrated to the United States.

Stacey Braaten: My mom was born in Thailand and moved to a small town in Minnesota when she was two years old because my grandma wanted that she have a better life with more opportunities to succeed. Back then, being half Thai and half American was frowned upon; there was no value in being of mixed race and there was not a great future for that being.  

                  

In this picture you can see that my mom (the woman in the upper left) is different than a full Thai person (the boy in the bottom right) and a full American (my dad in the upper right) and to someone who is one-fourth Thai (my sisters and myself in the middle)

My mom and grandma were one of the first Asians/people of different race in the town they moved to. My mom was embarrassed when my grandma brought her out in public. People would stare at them, not because the color of their skin or the shape of their eyes signified them to be Asian/different than the norm (as you can see in the picture above), but because my grandma would speak to my mom only in Thai or with polite English. By polite English I mean that they don’t talk about sexual things, cuss, or have attitudes or sarcasm with their speech. Their culture values respect. My mom would sometimes yell at her mom to speak English. She would say, “We live in America; we speak English here.” As the years passed, my mom had learned to speak fluent English and to forget about the Thai language. She now wishes that she would be able to speak more Thai than she actually can.

       

My mom had to prove herself to her peers. The students in her grade were kind to her; however, the older and younger ones discriminated her. They would call her names such as “chink” and “gook”, pick on her for when she wore Buddhist accessories, and they would even pick fights with her. Things got better when she joined sports such as cheerleading, track, and basketball; she was even a starter on varsity for basketball!

I think my mom relates to Vladek in Maus because they both experience prejudice and have changed their views and value specific things such speech. They both cannot talk about sexual things, cuss, or be sarcastic; they give speech habitus. She told me that she loves living in this time period because people have more mixed culture and are aware and understanding of different races. Yeah, my mom does experience racism still but it isn’t as dominant as it has been. She really only experiences the general stereotype of an Asian person; this can be from people pointing out her slightly pointed eyes to thinking that she is a genius at math because she has Asian blood. This is sort of an essentialism; these racial comments are beliefs about a general ethnicity,  which applies to my mom. My mom preaches to my sisters and I to not be racist; she doesn’t want anybody else to go through what she did and she wants us growing up valuing race. When my mom was growing up, all she wanted to be was American. Now she is glad that she is of mixed culture. My mom values having a mixed race; it has habitus. She is able to experience much more than the average American because she can relate to both races. She is able to connect to people more because of this.

Emily Capra:

Like Stacey, I come from a family of mixed-nationality. I am Italian and Ukrainian, but it is difficult to be raised with influences from both cultures. The Italian side has always been dominant over the Ukrainian. My family and I go to Festa Italiana, which is a festival celebrating all things Italian, every year and have Sunday dinners of traditional Italian food, like penne rigate and pizzelles, with the family almost every weekend. My Ukrainian heritage from my Grandmother’s side always seems to take a back seat to my Italian side. A couple of years ago I asked my Grandma about her family since I had heard so many stories about my Grandpa’s parents, but never about hers. My Grandma was so thrilled. She told me no one had ever shown interest in her background and that she felt left out since she isn’t Italian. She immediately pulled out all of her mother’s documents and keepsakes from when she came to America.

Since this document is in Polish, we’ve never been able to figure out what it  really is. The purple stamp  at the bottom says “Podhajce.” This is a city currently in Poland but at one time was within Ukrainian borders. Podhajce was my Great-Grandmother’s hometown

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This is a document that my Great-Grandmother kept but it’s actually my Great-Grandmother’s father’s military documents.My Great-Great-Grandfather was a palace guard for Franz Joseph I. My Grandma loves showing me this item in particular. She’s very proud of her Grandpa.

“My mother was a D.P.,” she told me very seriously. “A  Displaced Person! She was so ashamed!” When my Grandma explained it to me, I learned that a Displaced Person is someone who is forced to flee their home country and seek refuge in another. They give up their citizenship and basically become a mere resident the country they’re staying in. As my Grandma says, they have “no home.” My Great-Grandmother was always very ashamed of not being a natural-born citizen. She felt like she wasn’t a part of America, the country she called home. She wanted more than anything to just be an American like all of her neighbors. My Grandma says she could tell every day that it bothered her mom that, legally, she was a foreigner. My Great-Grandmother did everything she could to change that fact.

My Great-Grandmother’s habitus completely changed as a result of coming to America. My Grandma always smiles and says very proudly that her mom was fluent in many languages. My Grandma always pulls out all of her mom’s old books that are in French and says, “She could actually read these! She spoke French and many other languages, too!” Though my Great-Grandmother could speak many languages, she only spoke English. She never said a word to my Grandma in Ukrainian. My Grandma showed me the house she grew up in and it is only a few blocks from a Ukrainian church. Even today the people who go to the church services are mostly Ukrainian immigrants. My Grandma and I drove by it one day and she said, “I wonder why my mom never took me there.” My Great-Grandmother did everything she could to disassociate herself from her heritage. She never told my Grandma stories about Ukraine or taught her how to make traditional Ukrainian dinners. Suddenly, my Great-Grandmother completely let go of her Ukrainian culture. “She just wanted to be an American,” My Grandma remembers. “She studied so hard for the citizenship test! She was so happy when she passed. She was an American.” My Great-Grandmother recognized the cultural hierarchy of the time and did everything she could to assimilate into American culture. My Great-Grandmother was ashamed she was not a natural-born citizen and changed her habitus and behavior in order to be a true American.

Though the ostracism both families experienced occurred in different forms, their response was very similar. The habitus of both Stacey’s mom and Emily’s Great-Grandmother changed when they came to America.   Even though both Stacey’s mom and Emily’s Great-Grandmother were discriminated against, they are not bitter towards the general group of people that did it. They go against what Pierre Bourdieu claims that bodies (people) have a kind of memory and if it has had a bad experience with something, it is more likely to act defensively and uncomfortable with something related to the bad experience. These women were not rude nor did they seek revenge against the racist people that discriminated. They were not defensive or uncomfortable with the people that were disrespectful towards them in the past. The people who discriminated against our relatives demonstrate Stuart Hall’s assertion that the problem begins when classification comes together with power. Our family members work to stop the ideology of the cultural hierarchy that both Stacey’s mom and Emily’s Great-Grandmother fell victim to.