Literary Explication of “Queens, 1963” 
Abstract
“Queens, 1963” poetry of Julia Alvarez is a story of one street in Queens. The image of a street represents American society and condemns its negatives. The story is told from the position of an immigrant, the native Dominican girl. The key problems that Julia Alvarez draws attention to are the specificity of immigration’s conscious and self-identification, the difficulty of feeling American, stereotyped way of thinking in the segment of American population. The difficulties that an average immigrant faces are treating strangers as potential troubles without empirical experience, but in case they are just different. The key issue for an emigrant is the inability to feel at home as well as fear of being used.
Explication
The poem “Queens, 1963” written by Julia Alvarez is a story of a street in Queens. It is populated by whites, colored, Jewish, Germans, and Dominicans. The story is told by the person who does not belong to the native population. It is the story described from the position of an immigrant. This paper describes the specificity of immigration’s conscious and self-identification, the difficulty of American, and the stereotyped way of thinking in the segment of American population.
Firstly, the street’s features details are introduced to a reader. He becomes familiar with the social-demographic composition of the street. It should be noted that such a concretization helps the reader to understand the whole picture of the particular street main hero lives on. In addition, division of neighbors by the ethnic principle shows thinking framework in which the protagonist contains the world.
In fact, the description of the street does not mean just the street in the literary meaning. It symbolizes the vision of American society of the protagonist, the Dominican girl. This particular part of Queens is the reduced version of social interactions and chains in the immigrant’s interpretation. Belonging to an immigrant category is a key feature of judging the social stratification in this particular way.
The first feature of immigrant consciousness is the contrast between their and others’. The street and accordingly its society are constructed based on being loyal to each other. Correspondingly, the described Queens’ street consists of “everyone more American” than the Dominican girl family. After the protagonist’s family moves to this street, the reader becomes acquainted with the following events. Furthermore, the street is expanded with the appearance of a new neighbor: “Then the house across the street sold to a black family” (Alvarez, 1963, p. 897). That is why suddenly the police car appears on this street as if “people” are scared of “rumors of bomb threats”.
Of course, any group-united social scare has its source of conception. In “Queens, 1963”, Haralambides family is a panic pusher: “Haralambides, our left-side neighbors, didn’t want trouble” (Alvarez, 1963, p. 897). The formulation “didn’t want trouble” is neither an euphemism nor an unconscious random choice. Julia Alvarez deliberately puts this formulation into the Dominican girl’s lips. It means that it is not the wish to avoid the specific threat that has caused by the situation of neighborhood with the thief, for example. It also means that is not the wish to avoid the specifics empirically has proved unpleasant situation. Unfortunately, it means the primitive stereotyped mindset. The Haralambides are worried about having new black neighbors only because they do not want to have troubles. Julia Alvarez describes their priorities ironically. Firstly, the Haralambides have right to be worried about troubles as if “They’d come a long way to be free!” (Alvarez, 1963, 897). As if the Haralambides’ ancestors made this land free, they have the right to defend it. Ironically, the way they pretend to protect their freedom conversely violates the principles of equity and humanity. People are not treated for their natural features or present actions but for being associated with particular social cell. Moreover, Julia Alvarez manages to use irony in relation to the concept of freedom twice.
The second remark is used in the end of the poem. This freedom accent actually is used as circled cycle method. The first appellation is written as origin mind while it is the irony. The second appellation is used as summary of the poem.
However, the real implication of last lines is the irony on the claim of Americans who consider themselves as origin population compared to the immigrants. Nevertheless, the fact is that the ancestors of “origin population” have replaced the native population of the continent. Additionally, the society is built on the principles of mass’ domination. In fact, individuals’ choices depend on the widespread view. In the light of this fact, Julia Alvarez puts into the poem generalized image of supportive mass with the tacit approval of which moral injustice take place. In “Queens, 1963” this image is presented with “Mr. Scott, the retired plumber” (Alvarez, 1963, p.897). The “problem” of the new neighborhood he solves as follows: “Mr. Scott, the retired plumber, and his plump midwestern wife, considered moving back home where white and black got along by staying where they belonged” (Alvarez, 1963, p. 897).
Julia Alvarez uses the images of lawn and garden as summarized feature that characterizes the typical stereotyped psychology on a Queens’ street. The answer on “bomb threats” was hidden in the simplest answer: “We heard rumors of bomb threats, a burning cross on their lawn. (It turned out to be a sprinkler)” . The Scotts also “had cultivated our street like the garden she’d given up on account of her ailing back, bad knees, poor eyes, arthritic hands” . A lawn and garden personify stereotyped oriented segment of analytically poor population.
The key problem of “Queens, 1963” is the difficulty of being an immigrant. Stereotyped way of thinking and acting according to the tradition of social stratification is a general framing of the focus immigrant topic. The problem in the Alvarez’s poem (1963) is concentrated between perception of self-identification as Dominican, Jewish, or German and attempts to be included into American identity.
Julia Alvarez challenges the reader to face social opposite sectors. The author’s appellations to distinguishes between being a Dominican and an American have influenced country’s heterogeneous cultural legacy. “Queens, 1963” shows the competition between heterogeneous elements of the country (Vizcaya Echano, 2004).
Conclusions
To conclude, “Queens, 1963” written by Julia Alvarez as the example of street settled with origins, black and immigrants, represent the small version of real society. The difficulty of being an immigrant consists in the need of being accepted by itself as a member of external society and, at the same time, being aware of origin identity whether it is Dominican or Jewish. The problem of American society is described as stereotype-orientation judging by the features the person does not choose but is born with.