Unsheltered

Both of Kingsolver’s storylines in Unsheltered involve immigration in America. Willa, whose story takes place during the early 21st century, is living through an era in which immigration and its effects on American identity are being debated. Some factions of the society she lives in, notably members of the previous generation (represented by her father-in-law Nick), feel threatened by the increasingly multi-cultural world in which they find themselves. Nick’s favored presidential candidate issues anti-immigration statements such as: “[…] we’re going to make this dream wake up for us, not the criminals and illegals that are taking over America right now […] You know something? We don’t want them. Disgusting! We’re not going to take the crap of the world anymore, we are getting this country back!’” (118-19). Meanwhile, the family lives alongside those of different cultural backgrounds in Vineland, such as Jorge’s family. Willa also observes two women walking by her house “conversing in a musical Asian language” (7), and her family spends Christmas in the part of Vineland known as Little Italy, which “housed working-class families of many derivations” (288). Iano and Nick, the latter of whom is a first-generation Greek immigrant, also retain ties to their heritage in the form of food, traditions, and language. (There is a sense of irony in Nick’s support of “the Bullhorn” given the politician’s anti-immigrant stance and Nick’s identity as a first-generation immigrant.)

Willa has a sense of despair about the culture she lives in, in which many of the recent immigrants to America do not enjoy the economic security of those in power. Growing economic inequality during the 20th and early 21st centuries helps the rich grow richer, Willa feels, while working-class people must settle for low-paid, poorly respected jobs that lack stability and workers’ benefits. The derision with which immigrants are treated by those who feel threatened by their presence in America is exemplified when Willa hears Nick call Jorge a racial slur even as Jorge helps the older man with personal hygiene (355).

While this dynamic of tension, derision, and debate over who belongs might seem unique to the modern day, similar issues face Thatcher in the 19th-century storyline. Vineland’s growth and industries, from brickworks to railroads to glass manufacturing, rely on immigrant labor. The immigrants agree to work for low wages, sometimes in combination with the chance to own land in Vineland, and are treated with derision by some of the town’s leaders. Thatcher himself observes the pressures exerted on young people, particularly boys, to work rather than finishing their schooling. With Landis publishing self-serving propaganda in the town’s only “official” newspaper about the well-being of the workers, Carruth’s commitment to describing the true destitution and challenges of the immigrant community draws attention to the injustices it faces—similar to the problems of the 21st century. Carruth comments that, according to Landis, “Every bushel spills over with harvest! Every farmer is solvent and all the bricklayers well paid. Half these men believe it themselves, and wonder why they’re still going hungry” (259). Carruth also points out that the workers are “paying for land that will go back to Landis the day they lose their first crop. They refuse to believe they’re getting tricked into building wealth for the masters of this town” (260). While the scale of immigration issues may have expanded during the present-day timeline, Kingsolver uses the Vineland community and Landis’s exploitation of the workers to make the point that such issues have been present in America for many decades, even centuries.