Immigration and Migration and the Making of a Modern American City

Rites of Passage

The theme

In addition to our exploration of immigration/migration history and narrative, the other shaping force of this unit is thematic; we'll look at rites of passage of these youth, tracing them from some historical and literary documents of the past to a selection of current fiction and non-fiction accounts, including those of my students. Also called coming of age ceremonies or rituals of initiation among other things, I felt instinctively that the universal theme of rites of passage would be an interesting one to my students. From The Hunger Games and The Lion King to stories by Walter Dean Myers, it saturates their media, whether they realize it or not. More common rites of passage are attributed our social and cultural institutions, such as schools, churches, families and social organizations. Graduations, weddings, baptisms, and other religious rituals are relatively standard. Other rites are more specific to particular social and cultural contexts, including quinceaneras, gang rituals, and pow wows.

Many of these are evident and can be traced back to the experience of immigrants and outsiders in our country's previous two centuries. For example, in readings about the 19 ^th century immigrants in New York, a most obvious and recurring practice was fighting among urban youth. Fights appear again in the more modern accounts of Richard Wright and Piri Thomas and again in a contemporary news story about a black teenager in Bronx tenements. Fights have a complex role in my students' lives, as well. They are entertainment; every morning my students pass their phones around to share the new set of videos of fights among their acquaintances from the previous afternoon or night and, permitted, they would watch them over and over. Fights determine status in formal and informal social groups, from gangs to girls' cliques. They determine reputation and prowess; one's fighting style and win/loss record are requisite knowledge among peers and are a source of frequent discussion. The fights in this unit's readings, spanning time and geography, also held prominent social place, serving to establish social hierarchy, to reinforce norms and values, and even to provide amusement to youth in the streets with little else to do.

When we look at history, it is the adults we tend to listen to and give out focus to. We learn about a society by studying its children, as well. Their daily lives and rituals expose just as well the challenges of Five Points, Bronzeville in Chicago, or the barrio in Spanish Harlem. With both parents working away from home, barely making enough to feed their families, and unable to guide their children as they navigate the streets, children likely are left alone to survive and necessarily create their own rites to establish hierarchy and acceptance. Like many of ours today, they create their own in an effort to assimilate into the new adult world and culture around them.

The dance halls of early 20 ^th century New York became the setting for rich coming-of-age experiences of immigrant young men and women, who couldn't get enough of dancing—but probably also the rich and newly liberated social life that went with it. ¹ Initially held in family and home-culture environments and often with chaperones, eventually, the commercialized halls that had arisen in great demand allowed young women room for promiscuity and liberal interactions with young men. The dance culture exposed "the ways in which working-class youth culturally managed sexuality, intimacy, and respectability." ² At the start, dances served to sustain culture of origin, but over time, they also were a way of breaking into a new American cultural scene.

The practice

The common scholarship on rites of passage is interesting as an aid to understanding a framework that propels a young person towards adulthood and its responsibilities in a relatively expedient manner, providing several benefits to the youth. Rituals and traditions, such as holiday meals, within a family provide structure and a safe sense of predictability and maybe welcome celebration. More singular rituals can do the same and go further; they are anticipated, prepared for, and often celebrated. To young people they can seem especially magical and significant. Girls may long for the romance of a wedding, for example. Fed by romantic movies, magazines, and images, this mysterious union is imbued with life-changing importance in their minds. Untold hours go into searching for dresses, flowers, and other trappings. There are preliminary rituals like showers and bachelorette parties, and perhaps a honeymoon will follow. While the life that follows is likely similar to what came before, traditionally (in our society, at least) this new stage of adulthood has come with prescribed gender roles, new kinds of physical intimacy, and societal expectations. The community participated, endorsed, and celebrated along with the bride, providing a comforting context for this transition into womanhood. The same ritual may have been executed differently in another place and time. In several slave narratives, women talked of jumping over a broom—an African wedding custom.

The wedding illustrates the three stages of the process, attributed to Arnold van Gennep, whose work is present on nearly every bibliography that I encountered on the subject. The first stage is separation, then liminality and reintegration. ³ In the separation stage, one is physically or symbolically separated from their childhood for the purpose of undertaking the ritual. In the reintegration phase, he/she is returned to society—again physically or figuratively—as an adult. This often involves some kind of celebration or blessing Delaney includes other stages but includes these standard three. ⁴ The liminality stage is central to the process. This is where the risk-taking, challenge, or out-of-the-ordinary event takes place that symbolically alters one and propels him/her into reintegration as an adult. Liminality may involve guided risk-taking and the stretching of physical or emotional limits, like the Native American ritual of the vision quest, when young men are sent alone into nature for several days without food to seek spiritual direction and manhood. Any event properly executed (and healthfully executed) can serve to send one closer to adulthood. A first date, first make-up, a first road trip without parents could serve. ⁵ It's a logical and effective process apparent in small and large events throughout our lives. As a teacher of at-risk youth, I'm most interested in the key events that shape my students into adults through adolescence. Such rituals could empower and reassure them to face their challenges and responsibilities with equanimity and purpose.

The problem

And what happens in the absence of such provided rituals? Young people will inevitably seek out their own liminal experiences. Over and over it is suggested that our modern American culture is severely lacking in meaningful rites of passage with great cost to healthy personal development and community security. All of my students don't expect to have a high school graduation, a rite that our society takes for granted. Larson and Martin point out that "young people earned adult roles by observing, imitating, and interacting with adults around them." ⁶ A transition is incomplete without supportive adults as role models, without healthy, planned ritual, or with only regular exposure to unhealthy ones like adult-condoned drug use or fighting which still satisfy their needs for that mystical experience that they think adulthood holds. ⁷ Many sources, including the two I cite most here, discuss gang involvement and ritual as the only replacement for many young men (and I'd add women) without positive replacement. Problematically, these aberrations apply to many young people including my students. Additionally, teenagers lack the brain development to make sound decisions in all situations, especially those that are foreign or stimulating. Already deficient in this way, in efforts to be adults, they seek their own "firsts"—behaviors like smoking, sex, sometimes criminal acts away from adult wisdom and supervision. ⁸ These may not all seem like rites of passage to us, but in the absence of others, these are the rituals and practices through which they explore what are perceived to be adult behaviors and establish their roles in a more grown up society of peers. Students will have to explore this. The three stages are present, if reduced.

There are several things we—teachers, youth organizations, churches, communities—can do to address the problem. African American and other communities are rallying to provide structured and meaningful rituals to their youth in attempts to girder their growth and development in ways that benefit them and their communities. For example, in the 1960s, African American institutions began to organize Afrocentric rituals to supplement the lives of the young men in their communities who at statistically higher rates were doomed to live in prison and/or insecurity. One example is the MAAT Center program in Washington, D.C. It involves parents or close adults and has its own vocabulary and set of activities that are grounded in the teenaged boys' African roots; in fact, cultural competency is apparently essential to many such programs. ⁹ I stumbled upon another solution that is both intriguing and relevant to this unit: bibliotherapy as a replacement for actual ritual. Bibliotherapy is the use of literature to expose readers to situations like their own as a source of study or healing. From Great Expectation to Catcher in the Rye, each generation has its own selection of coming-of-age novels that bring to life a variety of experiences and values, tracing how they change as the protagonist moves towards adulthood. Its accessibility in high school curriculum is appealing. Well facilitated, a teacher may guide students through the three stages, encouraging discussion about the challenges, decision making, and outcomes of the protagonist. ¹⁰

This is a theme that lends itself to exploration that is at the same time personal, cultural, and historical. A seemingly endless list of rites of passage is shaped for us by the context of the American immigration and migration experiences as well as contemporary culture. The act of immigrating or migrating is itself a rite of passage.

Essential questions

From personal writings to critical readings of works by others, all of our work will address a first set of essential questions. They will guide discussion as we read, but they are also intended to guide imaginations as my students explore their own lives and settings for the rites of passage about which they will write. They may provide framework for introductions or conclusions. Finally, they have helped me to keep aligned what I've learned from my seminar and what I want my students to learn through the unit.

1. What and to whom do our rites of passage connect us?
2. Are these practices universal or local? Are they similar to those we'd find in the suburbs or rural communities?
3. What is the connection between where or when we live and our rituals?
4. Do our rituals change as our situations change? Do they change over time?
5. How am I changed by my rites of passage?
6. Are the rites of passage I'm thinking about healthy for me and my community?