Social Stratification and Plantation Mentality: Reading Milton Murayama

Differing from the Marxists' idea of ”social class” which differentiates people on the basis of capital (money and land), social stratification divides people on the basis of other forms of symbolic capital as well, including family background, religious influence, language, ethnicity, gender, and educational achievement. The result of social stratification is not only differentiation of personalities but also the sharpening of inequality and discrimination. Japanese American writer Milton Murayama has planned a tetralogy for the Oyama saga, with three novels published so far. Each deals with a specific variation of the ”plantation mentality,” understood as the mental attitude of people who, subject to a contract-like agreement, maintain a self-deprecatory attitude and toil to the point of self-sacrifice, as they are caught up in the intricacy of social stratification under the colonial surroundings in Hawaii. The present essay will discuss how the protagonists in the novels struggle to fight stratification and climb out of their ”plantation mentality.”