The Other Americans

“I didn’t either after my mom died. Not for a while, anyway.” 

Jeremy and Nora share their difficulties in dealing with the death of a parent. Nora admits that she cannot allow herself to cry and Jeremy admits that he felt the same. The inability to cry is not due to their grief. Both Jeremy and Nora are overcome with sadness. But the shock of the sudden loss means that the refuse to allow people to see them cry. Neither Jeremy nor Nora allow themselves to surrender to grief as it would be a sign of weakness. They want to remain strong, to make their departed parent proud, and they do not believe that crying will help. 

“Abruptly it sped up and struck two teenage boys who were running away from the boulevard.” 

Driss stands on the roof of a building in Morocco and sees a military Jeep run down two young boys in the street. The sight is a foreshadowing of his own death. In several decades’ time, Driss will be the one struck by the moving vehicle. The incidents occur a long time and a long distance apart, but the similarity suggests that violence is an innate human problem. There is no way to escape violence, whether it is in America or North Africa. 

“He had to have been an immigrant like me.” 

Driss and Efraín are from very different backgrounds but both have found their way to America. Even though they are from different continents, have different levels of education, and only have a smattering of English in common, their shared status as immigrants binds them together. Efraín sympathizes with the dead man because he knows that they have a struggle in common. Their differences are pronounced but both of them know the difficulties faced by immigrants in America. Their journeys are very difficult but also very similar. 

“This was an illusion, of course, because the cafeteria hadn’t changed: I had.” 

Nora returns to her high school cafeteria and finds that it does not match her memories. The discrepancy between memories and the real world is a notable theme in the text. Nora’s memories of her father are sometimes misshapen and incorrect. The idea of her father is not quite the same as the man as he existed in real life. Nora’s memories of Driss are like her memories of the cafeteria. She has grown and developed as a person, but those memories are preserved in nostalgia and may not stand up to scrutiny. Part of the grieving process is coming to terms with the reality of these memories. 

“We were like a thrift store tea set, there was always one piece missing.” 

Maryam compares her family’s existence to a tea set with a missing piece. The metaphor suggests that she views her two daughters and husband as delicate objects which are liable to break. They are improved by being together in a set by their thrift store nature (which speaks to the demands placed on them by their immigrant status and lack of money) means that they are rarely together. The tea set is designed to be kept together and loses value when it is not complete. Maryam has the same view of her family and the absence of one family member means that the unit itself loses some value. 

“She asked what books I read, what shows I watched, and she really listened when I answered.” 

Nora and Jeremy do not have much in common as teenagers. They sit and chat while on a field trip but quickly discover that their tastes are worlds apart. The differences are irrelevant to Jeremy. He begins to fall for Nora not because she shares his tastes but because she actually cares enough to listen. Neither his alcoholic father nor his younger sister can provide him with any kind of social sustenance, and he does not have enough time for friends. The conversation between Nora and Jeremy is one of the only times when someone takes a genuine interest in Jeremy’s life. He mistakes this interest for affection and begins to fall in love. 

“But now I wondered if it was something deeper: my father cheated, and I loved men who cheated.” 

Nora begins to analyze herself and begins to wonder whether her growing obsession with her father’s affair has impacted her on a subconscious level. Her dating history is littered with infidelity. She is cheated on and helps men cheat on other women. This perpetual issue with Nora’s love life no longer seems to be unexplainable or strange. The question of her father’s affair begins to make Nora wonder whether her own romantic life has combined with her overbearing grief to make her hyper focused on the need to explain her father’s infidelity. If she explains Driss’ actions, she hopes, then she might be able to find an explanation for her own behavior. 

“The two of us weren’t fighting about the war, we were fighting about something else, something that had lain unspoken between us for many years.” 

The argument between Jeremy and his father is a proxy conflict. Ostensibly they disagree over the war in Iraq. Jeremy’s views are informed by his experiences in that conflict while his father’s are informed by the right-wing news networks he watches. Their talking points are borrowed from the political sphere, but they mask a deeper conflict between the two men. They argue because they have never addressed the loathing and resentment which stems from the period after the death of Jeremy’s mother. The failure to resolve this conflict has developed into a poisonous relationship and an inability to be honest. The argument about Iraq is a way to vent these feelings without ever really addressing them. 

“He wasn’t my blood, but he was mine all the same.”

Coleman had hoped that her relationship with Miles could transcend their lack of shared blood. She is his stepmother but she has counted on his affections for a young age. Coleman is a black woman in a story replete with people from ethnic minorities. Coleman and many of the other characters cannot help but be judged on the color of their skin and their innate ethnicity by a predominantly white society. Coleman experiences racism and the inherent biases that her blood brings upon her. She has learned to operate outside of the innate assumptions and expectations of a person of her blood. Miles is one of these attempts to move beyond expectations of blood but, like the society itself, there are moments when the society and its inhabitants cannot look past a person’s DNA. 

“It had started years ago, this experience, and it was unavoidable.” 

Nora cannot avoid the casual racism in America even on one of the most emotionally devastating days of her life. She attends court to see the charges formally filed against her father’s killer but cannot even enter the court without a random security check pulling her aside because of her ethnicity. The use of words such as “unavoidable” presses home how much of a common occurrence checks such as these are for a person of Nora’s skin color, race, religion, or background. She is so used to enduring the racism present in the post September 11 society that a combustive moment in the day of most people becomes a footnote which must be dealt with in Nora’s life. 

“Growing up in this place, all any of us ever wanted was to leave, and yet we both ended up coming back.” 

A.J. sees Nora’s presence at the courthouse as a moment of solidarity. Both of them have spent most of their lives trying to escape the small town where they grew up but both of them have been dragged back by family tragedies. A.J. cannot see why Nora might not view their situations as similar. A.J. was a racist bully to her many years ago and she has only returned to the town because A.J.’s father has killed her father. A.J.’s inability to empathize with Nora’s position reveals his emotionally stunted view of the world. The moment in the courthouse is a moment of unity for him while it is a moment of existential dread for Nora. 

“Humility had been drilled in me, as it was in most of the women I knew, and I found it hard to get rid of it, even though it was frequently mistaken for inability.” 

Coleman knows that she has internalized her society’s latent sexism and racism. Good work by women or racial minorities is dismissed as luck by others. Coleman is aware of her tendency to be overly modest lest she appear too arrogant or prideful and hopes that she can stop doing this. The moment of realization always comes just a second too late, however. She has already written off her good work as luck and now regrets it. Coleman recognizes her flaws but still struggles to correct them. 

“Her approval is a prison you do not wish to escape.” 

Salma has spent her life seeking out her mother’s approval. She has done everything correctly and has never gone against her parents’ wishes. She attended the right schools, pursued the right career, and married the right man. The thought of her mother telling Nora to be more like Salma thrills Salma. This maternal approval becomes a prison and when Salma develops a drug addiction, she cannot seek out her mother’s help. Salma is terrified that she will destroy her mother’s image of the perfect daughter. The way in which Salma has structured her life, the way in which she has done everything to seek out her parents’ approval, means that she cannot turn to her mother when she truly needs help. Her perfect life becomes a prison in Salma’s mind.

“She held nothing back, and it terrified me that someday she might expect the same from me.” 

Nora’s emotional frankness scares the withdrawn, introverted Jeremy. He has struggled to confront his feelings throughout his life. His father’s alcoholism, his mother’s death, his time in Iraq, and his traumatic childhood have all left emotional scars in his psyche. Jeremy does not confront these issues in his past but appreciates that Nora has allowed him into her life. He worries that the cost of them being together will be revealing his various traumas to another person for the first time.

“You get used to anything, I guess.” 

Jeremy’s throwaway comment is an unthinking remark about his time in Iraq but it can be equally applied to most of the characters in the novel. Nora is coming to terms with the grief caused by her father’s death in the same way that Jeremy had to come to terms with his life in the military. Her journey towards acceptance is different but follows a similar path. The throwaway comment is forgotten quickly but explains how characters come to terms with lifechanging events of every type. 

“I did anything I could to tie her to this town, and to me.”

Jeremy helps Nora with practical chores because he has become emotionally dependent on her. She is no longer just the girl he fantasized about in high school. She is the one person to whom he has opened up about his past. Now that he has stopped talking about the war, he does not find himself able to stop. He realizes that he needs to keep Nora around for his own emotional reasons which extend beyond the romantic. He cannot imagine his life without her so tries to tie her to town itself and make it impossible for her to leave.

“You don’t want to be living someone else’s dream, trust me.” 

Salma’s statement seems intended to convince Nora to give up the restaurant. On a superficial level, Salma is encouraging Nora to pursue her dreams of being a musician. There is a deeper meaning to the statement which is based on dramatic irony. Nora does not know about Salma’s growing addiction to pills. She does not know how Salma has begun to resent the ideal life that was designed to please her parents. Salma has been living her mother’s dream for many years. Everyone assumes her to have the perfect life and to be very happy, but she is not, as evidenced by her dependency on narcotics. Salma is warning Nora not to follow in her own footsteps. The audience is aware of the hidden meaning behind Salma’s words but Nora is left to puzzle over what her sister meant. 

“I didn’t realize I’d grabbed you so hard.” 

Jeremy notices the bruise on Nora’s wrist and does not realize that his grip has left a mark on her skin. But he has not only left a mark on her skin, he has also left an emotional impression. Jeremy’s fight with Fierro has bruised Nora and caused her harm. The bruise is still fresh, and she can no longer convince herself that there is a future for the two of them. The bruise left by Jeremy is a metaphorical manifestation of the impact he has had on Nora’s life at a time when she was most vulnerable. 

“My poor, gullible daughter.” 

The emotional distance between Maryam and Nora is revealed by their inability to talk to one another about Driss’ infidelity. Maryam provided oblique and ignored hints to her daughter while Nora resolved to keep the information from her mother. The dramatic irony derives from the audience’s knowledge that both women believed the other did not know about Beatrice. Each woman believes the other could not handle the truth and, in this respect, they are more alike than they realize. The similarity between mother and daughter lays in the secret they keep from one another rather than the secret they share.

“Maybe he borrowed your husband’s car, too. Back in April.” 

Coleman has pieced together the disparate parts of the case and has realized that A.J. rather than his father killed Driss. Added to this, A.J.’s evident racism provides the motivation for the murder of an ethnic minority which makes more sense to her than a dispute over parking spaces between two businessmen. Coleman does not accuse A.J.’s mother of anything because she knows the case will be circumstantial, but she suddenly understands that A.J.’s parents have taken the fall for their son’s crime. She wonders whether she might do the same to protect her son. 

“That Chin-Chong lady started pestering me.” 

A.J.’s racism creeps into the way he talks about his past. Race becomes the main lens through which he examines the events of his life. The customer whose dog died is not just viewed as an aggrieved customer but as an Asian woman who “came into my country, could barely speak my language” (202). When he remembers her, he turns her name into a racial slur. A.J. never admits to deliberately murdering Driss but the way in which he views racial minorities indicates that he harbors many grievances and prejudices against non-white people. 

“Jiggling my keys in my hand, I walked to my car.” 

Driss’ final moments are rife with juxtaposition. He exits the restaurant in a happy mood and jiggles his car keys. His life feels as though it is reaching a culmination. He plans to ask for a divorce, marry his mistress, and then restore his restaurant to its former glory. This positive ambition contrasts with the nearby negative emotion of A.J. Baker. The son of the bowling alley owner runs down Driss in a pique of racist rage and sets in motion the narrative of the novel. The novel is an exploration of the contrasting life of people and the complicated emotions they experience. The plot is set in motion by a scene in which complicated emotions juxtapose across contrasting lives. 

“The few weeks I’d had with her were the barometer against which the rest of my life was measured.” 

A barometer is an instrument that measures air pressures and makes predictions about the weather based on the results. Nora and the time Jeremy spent with her is the instrument which he uses to measure the pressures of his life. His whole existence to this point has been marked by trauma and tragedy. The time he spent with her was calmer, serene, and he felt lower pressure for the first time in his life. The weeks Jeremy and Nora were together become the way in which he will measure happiness for the rest of his life.