Russian Immigration

Yiwen Luo

Ms. Kelsey Davis-Felder

University Writing Seminar

28 September 2017

Dear readers,

The immigrants’ life and experiences in the United States have already been a hot topic which created a storm of debates in the past decades of years. In my essay, I closed reading the movie Odessa…Odessa! and regard the life of several main characters in the film as the representation of most immigrants’ life in America. In my thesis, I tried to reveal a deeper nostalgia rather than the superficial homesickness they talk about and complain every day. The immigrants’ homesickness can be seen as a chronic disease that has corrupted their soul and ingrained in their mind for the second half of their life since they stepped on this new land.  

One of the biggest writing-related problem for me right now is lack of the knowledge that’s related to American history and Russian immigration. I didn’t know the terms “melting pot” and “salad bowl” until I started to watch this film. Another problem is the use of language in this essay. As an international student, I am not sure whether my expressions and the analogy I used in this essay are native or not. They probably will lead to misunderstanding if I didn’t describe my thoughts in a coherent and logical way.

In this essay, I am most proud of the ways I portrayed detailed actions of several characters and inconspicuous background in the settings. For instance, I depicted an old lady’s facial expression and improvised gesture, as well as an ironic background patterns\ the filmmakers intentionally put in.

I would like my respondents to focus on the thesis and structure of my essay. The thesis might be more sophisticated and deeper than what they seem to be in the first sight. I want more comments on the structure since my five body paragraphs are not purely parallel with each other. They point out different aspects of my topic.

I intend to focus on the diction of this essay, but I might use dictionary too many times and choose so many big words when writing it. That’s why my essay may give readers a sense of redundancy. I will make my essay more concise by delating the phrases or part of sentences that express the same meaning repeatedly.

Sincerely,

Yiwen Luo (Eva)

The United States became the well-deserved refuge for everyone suffering from persecution and bitterness in every corner of the world, even before Israel Zangwill's stage play "The Melting Pot" entered people's view. America portrays an ideal "melting pot" that accepts the everlasting influx of cultural diversity, and has experienced countless moments of rise and fall when it comes to the assimilation of different values. This invisible crux between true inclusion and superficial mixing has become more and more tangible with each passing decade. Behind the glimmer of inclusion and acceptance in the United States, the old singing lady in the documentary Odessa . . . Odessa is a typical representation of immigrant life in the United States, as she encounters many obstacles when she tries to truly blend into a new culture and an unfamiliar living environment. Her experience reflects that different from their expectation before arriving in the United States, contemporary immigrants suffered from aching loneliness and untold mental struggles for all these decades in America. These hardships resulted in their deep and ingrained nostalgia that cannot be eliminated by temporary actions or momentary distractions.

The film reveals that being misunderstood for decades inflicts pain on immigrants and inevitably creates a sense of spiritual emptiness in their hearts. In the movie, after singing with Russian immigrants in a social, the old singing lady sang to a native New York man in the barbershop, and complained to him how bitter she felt all these years. With pride and homesickness for Odessa, the old lady repeated the patriotic lyrics of the song, "Brighton, you are My Odessa": "I love you so much that I never hate you. This is how much I feel for you."^[1] She also emphasized that the woman who composed the song,^[2] Mary, is her close Russian friend. Her passionate and deliberately mystifying gestures and facial expressions, which include nodding her head along with the beat of the music, swinging her right foot, and moving her left hand up and down while enumerating specific Odessan terms, all reveal the extent to which she loved Odessa and the degree to which her new home, America, isolated her. Later, she explicitly told the man that she in fact did not find herself or even do anything real since she came to America.^[3] Even though her tone of voice reflected her strength and persistence, she revealed her true fragility when she asserted that she failed to get a positive response from American audiences. This external and internal contrasts show the immigrants' hardship in blending in to a new culture. While sitting next to and conversing with the native New Yorker about Odessa, the old lady swung her leg in time to music, indicating that she was completely relaxed and enjoying the mood. This moment seems like one of a few contented and comfortable moments she had ever experienced in the past few decades. Though she felt relaxed while finding an American to confide in, this relief was only temporary due to the ingrained nostalgia that cannot be erased in her heart.  

Additionally, conversations in the film expose that many immigrants are lack of a sense of belonging and comfort in that they live far away from their motherland and have to wander from place to place to make a living. Trying to stop her unstable life, the old singing lady went to photo studio to take identification photos and then completed a questionnaire for civil registration. She looked forward to a brighter life and therefore visited a fortune-teller in a shop called "Past·Present·Future."^[4] The old lady agreed with almost everything the psychic predicted. The psychic told her: "in your hand, I see a very very long life, a long future. It shows you are smiling in the face but not in your heart. You are very troubled, very confused. You have somebody you miss very much."^[5] The old lady confirmed the psychic's predictions without hesitation, responding: "Yes! Absolutely."^[6] This conversation directly demonstrates her hard life that is filled with difficulties and tough transitions. The "very very long life"5 connotes the countless sweetness and bitterness the old singing lady had tasted. Though she pretended to be strong in appearance, her answer exposed her weakness, as well as her strong desire to be cared for and accompanied by the loved one far away. Immigrants’ daily occurrences are filled by the feelings of nostalgia and helplessness that will not pass away easily.