By Carlie McCall
The way immigrant women are portrayed in film almost always follows the typical stereotype of immigrant women. A young woman immigrates and tries to find work; most often ending up with a bottom tier job. We see conflicting examples of how these stereotypes and narratives are challenged in the films East Side Sushi and El Norte.
Despite working just as hard, if not harder to get to where they are, most immigrant women in real life are looked at and treated as if they are weak and unable to perform basic tasks, so they are degraded and belittled to filling roles that typically involve doing things most other people don’t want to do. This is a real life challenge for people every day, and the narrative is portrayed and challenged in film. This stereotype is portrayed in many films through the representation of Latina women.
In most films that have Latina women as the main characters, the portrayal of immigrant women is mostly negative and demeaning. Though, in East Side Sushi, we see main character Juana struggle, and eventually overcome her challenges.
In the film, Rosa is portrayed as quiet and timid, she follows her brother and does not make many decisions for herself. Once she reaches the US, she gets a job in a sewing factory. Another older immigrant woman named Nacha takes Rosa under her wing. When immigration comes and raids the factory leaving her jobless until she finds a new job as a maid, a common stereotypical job for a Latina woman. The actress that played Nacha in the film, Lupe Ontiveros, has also played many other roles as a Latina actress. In an interview with NPR, it is mentioned that, “Actress Lupe Ontiveros has built a career on playing immigrant characters. She may not have a household name, but she says that she's been a maid more than 150 times” (Bryce, Alison). In the interview, Ontiveros also mentions that, “when she goes to auditions, she knows what they want” (Bryce, Alison). She means that whenever she goes to audition for a role, she knows that because of her race and ethnic background, she will only ever be chosen to play the typical latina woman role.
In El Norte, Rosa’s character doesn't survive the harsh reality of being a Latina woman. Her brother, the male counterpart to her character, does survive and is given more opportunity than she was. El Norte and East Side Sushi follow completely different narratives of working Latina women. In East Side Sushi, Juana is able to take control of the narrative of most immigrant women characters in film, while El Norte encapsulates everything that is wrong with the portrayal of Latina women in film by showing that Rosa’s character cannot survive the harsh reality of being an immigrant woman.
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