Teaching Philosophy and Materials
Louis Adamic, Laughing in the Jungle
In our discussions of Louis Adamic's Laughing in the Jungle, we discussed the models Adamic offers of assimilation in America. When Adamic arrived to the U.S., immigration was significantly less fettered than it would become as a result of two central immigration acts, those of 1917 and 1924. The first of these acts effectively stopped immigration from Asian countries; the second, the Johnson Reed Act, significantly decreased immigration of people from southern and eastern Europe. I mentioned both of these acts in our class discussion as a way of developing your understanding of the political history of America in the years following Adamic's immigration. As we know, his political leanings, exhibited in Blato before he came to America, came to inform his writing and activism, as his dedication to workers' rights and individual empowerment through collective organization grew. Adamic himself reveals in his introduction that he writes his autobiography with the goals of helping to fill in the American story of immigrant life and experience. He feels that this is an especially valuable enterprise because such works function as history, because "Immigration now is ended," he writes. "The United States is pulling down the 'Welcome' sign" (ix). He also strives to address social, political, and labor problems that face both new immigrants and "older-stock" Americans. In particular, he laments that now "America is more a jungle than a civilization--a land of deep economic, social, spiritual, and intellectual chaos and distress" (ix).
Because of all of the "chaos" in this "jungle," Adamic recommends that people retain a robust sense of humor. In class, we also discussed his use of the ideas of "laughing" and "jungle," the key words of his book's title. He describes his own mother's strength, as a woman who was a "smiling, laughing fatalist" and one who laughed during childbirth (10). He also suggests that it is those who are strong, who can laugh despite the challenges and traumas that they face, who will lead. He signals that his book will showcase his own "laughing" approach to challenges that his book reveals and can thereby be instructive. And what does he offer regarding the idea of the "jungle"? How are American cities, and America in general, jungle-like? Think about actual jungles and think about his description, and Molek's, of American cities and the roles that immigrants play in them and in their growth. Molek makes some very strong remarks about immigrants' roles in American cities and towns (and rural places, such as mining regions) as workers. Why are the terms jungle" and "laughing" significant to the lives of American workers?
As you think about Adamic's narrative of his life pre- and post-immigration, what do you conclude about his attitude towards assimilation? What model does he endorse? I introduced the idea of essentialism to you, which is an idea that drove American nativism, a political attitude and social ideology that influenced immigration policy and broader cultural expectations regarding assimilation. Nativists often wanted ethnic and religious differences to be "melted away" in a hot cauldron of assimilationism; at least they wanted this theoretically. So what does Adamic want? Does he support erasure of difference or "pluralist" respect for "essential" difference? If one recognizes essential difference, is that somehow problematic? Can't essentialism lead to race-based discrimination? In this confusion of ideas, where does Adamic stand and what do we make of his attitude regarding the integration of all kinds of immigrants to America?
Once again, remind yourself of some of the central ideas of our course, regarding that factors that influence an individual or community's sense of "outsider-ness" or otherness. Which ones resonate in Adamic's tale?
Finally, if Adamic was influenced by Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, what is the influence of the ideas from that well known novel on Adamic's perspectives on workers' lives in America and on America in general as a society significantly influenced by the dynamics of capital? Do a little looking into Sinclair's novel; learn about it. This will help you to see the multi-valence of Adamic's idea of "jungle" given broader American ideas about urbanism, capitalism, workers' roles and rights, and the cohesion or disunification of Americans as "a people" across national original, race, political, and class lines.
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