Phoebe Carrona
Professor Brod
English Composition; H5
Essay #3
April 12th, 2023
(Insert Title)
I think that what it means to be an American can vary depending on who you ask. Our country is so widely spread and separated historically through different immigrants and slavery. I find that Americans are currently separated through our political beliefs and this strong racial division, and biases. In my own opinion if you live here, work here, are born here, come to be here then you are American. Other people like Jack and Bev Hooker in “Eating Jack Hooker’s Cow” by Micheal Paterniti believe you have to white to be American which is simply not true. He and Bev hold lots of hatred for anyone who is from different countries and cultures. They have hatred directed at Bout Sinhpraseut (Donna) from Laos and her family who escaped their home country in the middle of a war, and came to the USA. She owns and runs the motels across, and down the street from Jack Hooker’s motel. Which I personally don’t understand the hatred he feels at all, why you won’t be kind to someone who is just trying to gain some footing especially in the USA. We are a country of people who left their homes to have a brighter future from whatever political regime, geologically, famine, and by force. Kindness is most certainly needed a lot more in our American society to breach the division that has been shoved on to my generation by older ones. As Danusha Lameris talks about kindness in her poem “Small Kindnesses‘ ‘ which I think embodies what our country needs more of in its day to day life. Kindness does spread if you show someone that it’s safe to be kind to someone who to them is different.
In the short story “Eating Jack Hooker’s Cow” by Micheal Paterniti; Dwayne Price is an example of someone who shows kindness to people who are different from him. He is an American man in his sixties and thinks his family doesn’t love no matter what he does but he still helps Bout whose American name is Donna. (Paterniti presents how he helps her by stating) This quote talks about how he helps her. “So, on sunbaked days, with the stench of cow poo pressing down on the grain elevators and wood framed houses of Dodge City, he cruises with Donna in his big Continental, a perpetual cigarette in his mouth, pricing out property. She has some money of her own for a down payment; he shows her how it all works. She buys the Thunderbird and then, with the first six months of income from that, buys the Holiday. Both of them are dumps, but they haven’t met Donna yet. She knows how to clean”(Paterniti). He helped her figure out what to do to help her family live and more of an income in the USA. If he hadn’t been kind to help them they would still be recovering from when they got robbed. To go out of his way to help a family he probably barely knows, and just explains how owning, and managing property all work. This reminds me of the point of being aware of others in “This is Water” by DFW in his commencement speech. “But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer ”(DFW). Dwayne had a choice to be like Jack Hooker and hate Donna just because of superficial and racist reasons, and not help them. He doesn’t view them as different simply because they aren’t “white”. He shows them kindness regardless and gives them his advice and help to survive in an American society. I think Dywane was the first person to spread kindness to Donna and her family, and I think it’s really important to her and it taught her to value what he did for them and that not all people are bad and are trying to destroy her life and her family’s life. You can see this when Dwayne dies of cancer.
Jack Hooker’s view is based of blind fear of his race and his familiarity becoming less because he is scared of change and probably because he isn’t adapting as well, but he isn’t becoming progressive because he is to blind and scared to change. But this quote in “Eating Jack Hookers’ Cow” shows the different racial separation and the fear that some uneducated and quite frankly scared, and selfish people have in the USA. “And Dodge City is losing its white majority—a quarter of the town is already Hispanic. And then you’ve got your Asiatics and blacks. Most all of them here for the slaughterhouse work, though they’re branching out, infiltrating everything. Especially the Asiatics. One day, they’ll have the country club, too, be up there playing eighteen like they were born to it. Scares you, scares Jack Hooker“ (Paterniti). He’s looking at it as an “us and them” or more accurately “us versus them”. This is a very nativist, and essentialist political, social viewpoint and racist. Which is so closed minded and very toxic. It also limits our society in all kinds of ways. It is like I don’t maybe go backwards to only having half the population being able to vote, not even half. In another quote from Micheal Paterntit about Jack Hooker’s thoughts on this he says. “There are gangs and killings and kids sniffing gold spray paint—what’s called spooking. There’s a rumor that a pregnant woman will be shot soon, and she will have blond hair…Different people, these Mexicans and Asiatics—crawling all over your world, closing you in. And the Cambodians—you can’t help but wonder why they wander in front of your place all day long, eyeing you as they go.”(Paterniti). He’s scared of those that aren’t like him. Racial nativism is like saying “we only want white americans” anything else isn’t allowed. I remember when I was little we were going to my cousin’s wedding in Florida, and we drove though Alabama. For some reason we stopped at this general store in the middle of nowhere. I remember my mother and dad talking with the woman at the front desk. Who was dropping racial slurs left and right. I have never heard anything like the amount of hate speech that came out of her mouth. She reminds me of Jack Hooker. ENDING NOTE
barclay
