The immigrant experience is one of separation, assimilation and re-discovery of culture, no matter what cultural background, economic class, or part of the world that one comes from. These themes appear in both Bread Givers, written by Anzia Yezierska and All I Asking for is my Body, written by Milton Murayama, despite the radical difference in their settings and characters. In Bread Givers, Sara Smolinsky, a Polish Jew with a domineering religious father, Reb, struggles for much of the novel to “become a person” (159). That is, she struggles to find her own identity while balancing both her responsibility and connection to her family and her attempt to assimilate to a new and strange world in America. She is hampered by her family’s lack of money and is never able to go out and attempt to earn her own money because whatever she earns must be given right back to her father. She only truly “becomes a person” and gains her own sense of self when she breaks off from her father and pursues an education, which makes her finally feel American. However, at the end of the novel, she returns to help her ailing father and fulfill her duty to him, taking care of him in his old age. Similarly, in All I Asking for is my Body, Kiyo Oyama grows up in a poor family where he is divided between two cultures: Japanese and American. He struggles to identify full-heartedly with either one and watches as his brother rebels against his Japanese identity and the idea of filial piety that is keeping him from pursuing his dream of being a professional boxer. Kiyo is unsure of whether to stay faithful to his Japanese traditions or to fully commit to trying to adapt to American ideals and customs. In the end, he decides to become “American” by joining the U.S. Army, but still goes back to his Japanese culture after he wins money gambling, using that money to fulfill his filial duties to pay his father’s debt. As demonstrated by these two protagonists, to truly “become American,” and appreciate their heritage, immigrants must first forsake their family and culture. This appreciation of heritage can be achieved in many ways, but in the cases of the two immigrant stories described above, the appreciation of culture is shown through the return to family obligation and the fulfillment of filial duty.

            Sara’s journey of becoming a person and becoming American happened as attitudes of and toward women in the United States began to change, and coincided perfectly with the development and popularization of major technological advances. New household appliances made housework easier and less time consuming as the typewriter and telephone created new fields and jobs that were predominantly filled by women. Women also became much more important to the success of the American economy after World War I, when the jobs of men who went to serve in the military were replaced by women. All of these factors can be attributed to Sara’s success in both being becoming a teacher and finding her own identity. With women becoming more respected and important within American society, Sara’s path to assimilation became much easier, although it was much to the chagrin of her father, who clung to the Old World ideas of gender discrimination and familial responsibility. Although Reb devoted his entire life to the study of the Torah and did not work, he expected and demanded that his daughters and wife earn a living, take care of the home, and raise his children. He would often show aggression and actively hold his daughters and wife back from achieving more, saying “‘Woman hold your place! You’re smart enough to bargain with the fish-peddler, But I’m the head of this family’” (13). Despite depending completely on the rest of his family financially and making poor decision after poor decision, Reb is still considered the “head of th[e] family” and with a sense of admiration for his service to God. Sara’s mother knew that Reb’s views on the roles of women were wrong, yet “Father’s eyes blinded her eyes with light” and she could not break away from him (16). She was proud of Sara for doing what she never was able to do, leaving Reb and his domineering ideas about women’s roles in society. She shows this pride when Sara storms out of her father’s failed grocery store gamble, giving Sara a handkerchief containing all of her saved up rent money. This event coincides with Sara’s leap of independence and first step in becoming a person. To rebel against a figure seemingly as holy and important as Reb can be took extreme bravery and officially signaled her escape from the Old World, remarking to her father “‘Thank God, I’m living in America! You made the lives of the other children! I’m going to make my own life!” (138). In pointing out the failure of her father to set up his older daughters with successful husbands and how unhappy he made them with his poor decisions, she is renouncing the Old World familial hierarchy and the idea that women can’t provide for themselves, can’t make their own lives, and become a person independent of a father’s guidance.

            To at once assimilate to American culture and separate from the Old World, Sara adapts her style and appearance according to her new surroundings. She is first exposed to the idea of changing one’s appearance to create a sense of belonging when she sees how her sister Mashah puts so much time and effort into looking beautiful. Sara commented that “her clothes were always so new and fresh, without the least little wrinkle, like the dressed-up doll lady from the show window of the grandest department store,” while noting that she looked “different” than the rest of her family despite wearing the same cheap cloth (4). Sara also notices that the effort that Mashah put into her appearance allowed her access to the lives of the rich and successful, where she would encounter luxuries such as “marble bathtubs in their own houses,” “silver knives and forks,” and “new-ironed tablecloths and napkins every time they ate on them” (5). In this way Mashah was able to elevate herself within American society while also separating herself from association with her poor family. Sara is able to take in first hand the power of appearance, but also realizes that “Mashah had no heart, no feelings, that millionaire things willed themselves in her empty head,” and instead chooses to use the power of appearance not to collect expensive possessions but to become an active member of mainstream American society (20). Sara also realizes how her family is blinded by the appearance of others when Reb marries his daughter Bessie off to Zalmon the fish peddler. The first time Zalmon is introduced in the novel he is described as being a dirty old man whose “black, greasy beard was spotted with scales from the fish” and “had a big wart on his nose,” yet when he visits the family for the second time looking like “a rich Grand Street millionaire,” the Smolinsky’s are blinded by his display of wealth and associate his refined appearance with success, and more importantly with being American (91, 99). She realizes that although it is important for her assimilation to American culture to improve her appearance, these improvements cannot penetrate her world-view, her attitude and her behavior. When Sara defiantly declares that “the Old World has struck its last on me” and immerses herself in American society, she notices that she stands out as different, noting that her outfit contained “not a breath of colour. Everything about me was gray, drab, dead” (138, 181). To escape this overwhelming feeling of darkness and being the other, Sara realizes that she has to look American to feel American. She buys “lipstick, rouge, powder” and new, bright clothes and accessories like “roses for [her] hat” and spends hours creating a new self (182). When she is finished she looks at herself and sees that she is “exactly like the others” yet feels “shamed and confused with [her] false face,” feeling as if she has lost who she is (182). She only finds the balance of personal expression and physical appearance when she goes to college, the last step in escaping the grasps of the Old World and her father who believed that women should not be educated. There, she discovers her true intellectual calling, writing, and creates strong bonds with teachers, “the older men [with whom she] could walk and talk as a person” (231). Finally having the ability to freely express herself as a student and explore the subjects that she loves gave Sara new life which allowed her to feel like a new “person.” Combine this discovery of personal expression with her shift in appearance, Sara is fully assimilated in America. Through her education and experiences as an independent woman, Sara is able to form her own set of morals and values. Through changing her appearance she is able to feel like an American. This new woman bears no similarities to the Old World set of ideals and sentiments that dominated her life as a child, and she is finally able to “change into a person” and become American (237).

            Having escaped the grips of the Old World and become an individual, Sara is able to fulfill her filial duty to her father. While her other sisters and her mother had been forced to take care and provide for Reb while he studied the Torah and made their decisions for them, Sara returns to care for her father on her own terms. As Judit Szilák stated in her article “Assujettissement and the Immigrant Experience in Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Giver’s”, “In this respect Sara can be viewed as the new, Americanized Jew: she kept the old traditions of her people, through her father teaching her Americanized Jew husband about the Torah, but altered them to fit the new society she lived in” (Szilák 10). Sara’s “americanized Jew husband” refers to Hugo Seelig, the school principal with whom Sara falls in love. An intelligent, well-respected man, Hugo is filled with the knowledge that Sara longs for and admires. As Sara describes, “He kept that living thing, that flame, that I used to worship as a child. And yet he had none of that aloof dignity of a superior. He was just plain human” (270). Sara wants to be “just a plain human” as Hugo is, and similarly to Sara, Hugo is assimilated but still feels a great bond with the old world and the customs he was raised with, and he holds Reb Smolinsky’s learning in awe. Yet, to come to terms with her father and her heritage, Sara first had to break away from her family and her culture. She recalls “I had broken away from him as a child only to be drawn to him now, in my great spiritual need, as a person is drawn to a person,” confirming the idea that to fulfill her filial duty to her father, Sara first had to become “a person,” which she did by breaking away from the Old World and her father to assimilate to American culture (202).

            All I Asking For Is My Body deals with similar immigrant themes of filial piety, assimilation, and self-discovery, yet in a completely different part of the world, a different time period, and a different culture. The novel tells the story of a poor American Japanese family living in a mostly immigrant filled town in Hawaii at the cusp of World War Two. It is divided into three parts, all of which which follow the narrator Kiyo as he grows up in the sugar plantations of Hawaii. One of the major themes of the novel is filial piety, with the weight of a massive debt on the shoulders of Kiyo and his brother Tosh to pay to their parents, as is custom in Japanese society. The boys know that they will not be able to assimilate to American society and choose their own trajectory in life if they are saddled with this debt, yet still feel a responsibility to their parents.

            Kiyo grew up in a household with two very different perspectives. On one side were his parents, who strictly adhered to the customs of their Japanese culture and all of the traditions that came with it. They believed that “the noblest person was the man who suffered in silence, not protesting even when he was falsely accused,” or in this case burdened, with a filial duty (66). On the other side was his older brother Tosh, who disagreed with many of his parent’s policies, especially that he had to pay his father’s debt, his filial duty, which he felt was a “punishment” (48). Tosh compares the Old World traditions and rules to working on the plantations, where “hard work, patience, holding back, waiting your turn, all that crap, they all fit together to keep you down” (46). With these two uniquely different philosophies in his own household, Kiyo struggles to decide what he should do; he wants to help his parents but at the same time wants to make something of himself, knowing that to do so he must relinquish his connections to the Old World.

            Similarly to Sara in Bread Givers, Kiyo witnesses the failure of his older sibling to escape the Old World and vows to make sure that he does things differently. Tosh and then later Kiyo pick up boxing and become quite good at it, even to the point where Tosh is offered to box professionally. However, even after arguing that filial duty must be earned and that the parents haven't earned it, Tosh turns down his lucrative boxing offer in order to help his parents. The Old World had such a strong pull that it captured even those like Tosh who are completely against the very idea of filial piety, and he eventually hands over a combination of his and his wife's earnings to his parents. Kiyo, observing these problems, realizes he must resist being subservient, and to completely separate himself from the Old World and his Japanese culture, Kiyo joins the United States Army. Learning from his brother’s mistakes, Kiyo stays calm and doesn’t “blow up like Tosh” but also doesn’t “jump at [his mother’s] bait” (97). This shows a level of maturity and readiness to leave the Old World behind that demonstrates his true assimilation to American culture.

            Just like Sara when she deserted her parents to pursue a life of her own in the city, Kiyo leaves his family and his filial duties to develop his own identity and finally feel American after questioning his own identity for so long. Kiyo realized that he “would have to get out and be on [his] own,” just like Sara when she ventured out to live by herself in the big city (96). And just like Sara, after breaking away from the Old World identity and creating his own, Kiyo returns to fulfill his filial duty to his parents and pays his father’s debt after winning money in a gambling game among soldiers. In his letter back to his parents after winning the crap game, he references his heritage, saying “I think the Oyana luck has finally turned around,” demonstrating to his parents that he still respects his culture even after leaving (103). Although both protagonists craved so badly to rebel against their heritage that they felt was holding them back, in the end they realized that the preservation of their culture is just as important as becoming American. As Gay Wilentz argues in her essay Cultural Mediation and the Immigrant Daughter, “for many immigrants Americanization meant the loss of their culture, the loss of their traditions” (Wilentz 6). While initially prescribing to this belief, Sara and Kiyo realize that to be American they did not have to relinquish their culture. Both characters needed to desert their family and their heritage to realize how important it was to who they are as a person. To truly “become a person,” both characters had to realize the importance of their culture, which they could only do by forsaking it.