A HUNGRY AND HURTING: EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL ABUSE (IMMIGRATION AND ACCULTURATION)

The stresses of acculturation may also lead to eating problems. Acculturation is the lengthy and complex process by which people modify their cultural practices as they adjust to a new culture. It is influenced by political, social, religious, economic, and historical forces. The extent to which acculturation is destructive is partly a function of the degree to which a distinct racial, cultural, or ethnic group is forced to take on the values of the more dominant group through assimilation. Adrienne Rich describes a range of characteristic attempts to assimilate:

Change your name, your accent, your nose; straighten or dye your -hair; stay in the closet; pretend the Pilgrims were your fathers; become baptized as a christian; wear dangerously high heels, and starve yourself to look young, thin, and feminine; don't gesture with your hands; value elite European culture above all others; laugh at jokes about your own people; don't make trouble; defer to white men; smile when they take your picture; be ashamed of who you are. To assimilate means to give up not only your history but your body, to try to adopt an alien appearance because your own is not good enough, to fear naming yourself lest name be twisted into label.

Some degree of assimilation is demanded of all people in the United States who are not members of the dominant group—which is white, Christian, able-bodied, heterosexual, wealthy, and male. This is true whether they immigrate to the United States or are born here. The assimilation required of immigrants whose cultures of origin are similar to the dominant culture, however, has been far less destructive than that of immigrants who come involuntarily, who speak languages other than English, and who enter the United States in poverty. For the latter groups, adopting Anglo cultural values has been not voluntary but, to some degree, necessary for survival. As psychologists Durhane Wong-Rieger and Diana Quintana explain:

In theory, the American "melting pot" implies acculturation by both new and host members; in reality, minorities, because of their small numbers, low status, lack of power and visibility, are expected to conform to the majority.

Maintaining cultural ties and traditions amid pressures to assimilate is an intricate effort that has remained the centerpiece of many immigrants' lives, often for several generations.

Gender also influences the social and psychological consequences of immigration. The psychological reactions to immigration are often analogous to those associated with other types of major loss. Oliva Espin writes:

Immigration or any other form of separation from cultural roots involves a process of grieving. Women seem to be affected by this process in a manner that is different from that of men. Successful adaptation after immigration involves resolution of feelings of loss, the development of decision making skills, ego strength, and the ability to tolerate ambiguities, including sex-role ambiguities.

Women may be denied power as mothers and wives that was afforded to them in their native countries. Isolation and new demands result from being separated from their extended families. They may lose confidence about being able to provide for their family's safety and be anxious about acceptance. Conflicts between spouses or between parents and daughters as a result of new gender expectations are a frequent stress for immigrant women. Latina, African-Caribbean, and Asian immigrant women endure job-related stresses —including sexual harassment, dead-end jobs, and poor or no benefits —familiar to many women in the labor market. As a result of racism, they also face higher unemployment and underemployment than white immigrant women do. These various stresses suggest why women may become bulimic or anorexic as methods of coping.

Three of the eighteen women I interviewed immigrated to the United States, but they came under very different circumstances. Julianna, the Dominican woman, and Gilda, who partially grew up in North Africa, came from families who were forced to leave their native countries as a result of political or religious persecution. Elsa, who is Argentinean, immigrated to the United States voluntarily when she was in her thirties. Immigrating enabled her to gain the control over her life that was denied her in Argentina, which helped her begin to deal with her eating problems. Gilda, who immigrated when she was five years old, identified her compulsive eating as a response to being raped. This trauma and her response to it interrupted her traditional cultural eating patterns. The process of acculturation deeply influenced her response to the rape and her process of turning to food for comfort (see chapter 3). The three women's experiences make clear that acculturation, unlike heterosexism, sexual abuse, and emotional abuse, is not uniformly detrimental to a woman's sense of her body and to her eating patterns. Awareness of the possible tensions of acculturation can, however, illuminate the meaning of eating problems for immigrant women.

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