Immigrant Autobiography Analysis

The United States has been a place of hopes and dreams for many people trapped by poverty, famine, and political instability in their homelands. They have migrated to the New World to find equality, freedom, and opportunity which could not be found in their home countries. From the arrival of the earliest settlers to colonize America in the seventeenth century, the land has been receiving people from all over the world, looking for a decent life for themselves and their families. They believed that America would grant them a comfortable life and a certain future. Immigrants entered the United States through several ports. At the beginning, they originated from England, France, Spain, and other European countries. Not only they journeyed physically

“America is rich in autobiography” (Holte 29). Furthermore, “autobiographies of immigrants provide a chance to assess how political, cultural, and social forces actually shaped economic decision making of emigrants” (Blewett 90). In this thesis, three contemporary immigrant autobiographers were selected, all are distinct in cultures, languages, and races, and their literary works: Aleksandar Hemon’s The Book of My Lives, Anchee Min’s The Cooked Seed, and Esmeralda Santiago’s When I Was Puerto Rico are discussed to better understand the benefits that immigrants expect to gain in the USA, and how they integrate into American culture. The reason why three different ethnicities was selected is that they saw the New World differently. Hemon escaped civil war in his homeland to America, and applied for an asylum. Influenced by communism ideology, the United States was seen as an enemy for Min. Born in Puerto Rico, Santiago was technically American by birth, but she was seen as a foreigner by the Americans. Not only immigrant autobiography theory will be analyzed in the thesis, but historical contexts of each ethnic immigrant will be presented in order better understand the reason why they migrate to the New World. Their American immigrant autobiographies are an important element in order to learn immigrant experiences in the late twentieth