Write a migration report for an imaginary student in class with you, who is of a completely different ethnic and racial background from you. That is, this imaginary student should not be from any ethnic or racial group with its origins in the same continent from which the majority of your ancestors came.

For your essay, please create a plausible narrative. Collect information on your chosen group so you can invent a believable fictional character and family. In order to pull this off, be able to answer the following questions:

• When did "your" family first migrate to California? What relation are the original migrants to "you"? If "you" are a Native American from California, these two aspects of the question are unnecessary for obvious reasons.

• To which culture(s) did they belong? Where, exactly, did they come from?

• Why did they decide to leave their area(s) of origin?

• How did "your" family hear of California? What had they learned about California that made them want to move here?

• Where did they first settle in California? How did they support themselves there? What kind of housing did they occupy there? How did other Californians react to them? Did they find what they were looking for in that first destination?

• Did "your" family move around in California after they arrived here? If so, what were the outcomes of such internal, secondary migrations, in terms of jobs, housing, and the attitudes of their neighbors?

• How do "you" feel that "your" family has contributed to the State of California?

• In which ways have different generations of your family tried to maintain and preserve their ethnic heritage or, conversely, to assimilate into another culture here, such as the dominant modern Anglo culture (perhaps in language, dress, cuisine, religion, gender rôles)? For those immigrants of some Anglo background, assimilation pressures also may occur between traditional values and modernist values (very common in intergenerational conflict). No matter their degree of assimilation or resistance to assimilation, why do "you" think they have chosen to adopt certain specific modern American culture traits and not others?

• If any members of "your" family were born elsewhere (including "you," if relevant), what do they (or "you") miss about their homeland? Do they (or "you") still maintain ties back home? Would they (or "you") ever like to go back?

• Where were "you" born, and where in California have "you" lived? What made "you" decide to go to college? How did "you" learn about Long Beach State? Why did "you" decide to come here to this particular campus? How has it been for "you," getting used to Beach and the other students here? How do "you" deal with the conflicting pressures for assimilation and for maintenance of "your" cultural heritage?

After reviewing all your research, select an appropriate theme to organize "your" narrative ("yourself," "your" immediate family, a particular lineage or generation if "your" family goes back a long time in California). Then, write up your narrative, creating "yourself" as a complex fictional character and situating "yourself" in a believable family saga.

In from three to five pages of double-spaced text with about 1 inch or 2.5 cm margins all around, write up your fictional masterpiece and very carefully proofread and edit it. As ever, writing mechanics are an important part of your grade on this report, accounting for about a third of your points. Please review the writing guidelines for my classes. For this paper, it is important to list the sources you used to develop the background to your story. It is not necessary to footnote, however: Just provide your bibliography.

Appropriate visual aids would include a map of California and a map of the areas "your" family (or "you") came from, showing places lived and the paths taken to and within California. "You" could show different generations or lineages in different colors, if that would make the maps clearer.

Now, the tough part: To do your report properly, you must learn enough about your chosen group to construct a plausible history and geography of their move(s) here. To get the requisite feel for your imaginary family, you can start by consulting the resources below. Look up your group's homeland in a good encyclopædia, such as Brittanica or Encylopedia of the Third World, to see what might have encouraged your people to emigrate. Then, check out your group in an ethnic atlas, such as Allen's and Turner's We the People or the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, in order to learn the spatial concentrations of your group in California and elsewhere. Check out one of the textbooks or anthologies for relevant information (and help yourself to their bibliographies to point you to other sources). If at all possible, arrange to talk with someone from your chosen group and ask them to tell you about their group and their experiences here, sharing with them your assignment as a jumping-off point. At the end of your report, be sure to list your sources in a common and consistent citation system. I expect you to have consulted at least three sources of information.

Resources

Textbooks, Anthologies, and Monographs

Camarillo, Albert. 1984.

Chicanos in California: A History of Mexican Americans in California. San Francisco: Boyd and Fraser.

Chan, Sucheng. 1991.

Asian Californians. San Francisco: MTL/Boyd and Fraser.

Lapp, Rudolph. 1987.

Afro-Americans in California, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Boyd and Fraser.

Peters, Gary L.; Lantis, David W.; Steiner, Rodney; and Karinen, Arthur E. 1999.

California, 3rd ed. Dubuque, IO: Kendall/Hunt.

Phillips, George H. 1990.

The Enduring Struggle: Indians in California History. Sparks, NV: Materials for Today's Learning.

Waldinger, Roger and Bozorgmehr, Mehdi (eds.). 1996.

Ethnic Los Angeles. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Encyclopædias

Kurian, George T. (ed.). 1987.

Encyclopedia of the Third World. New York: Facts on File.

The New Encyclopædia Britannica, 15th ed.. 1990.

Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.

Thernstrom, Stepan; Orlov, Ann; and Handlin, Oscar. 1980.

Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Atlases

Allen, James and Turner, Eugene. 1988.

We, the People. New York: Macmillan.

Hornbeck, David. 1983.

California Patterns: A Geographical and Historical Atlas. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.

Fiction and Biography

The list of novels and biographical texts given in the novel report guidelines might help you get a more subjective feeling for your chosen group.

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