LITR 4332: American
Minority Literature
Copy of Final Exam 2004
LITR
4332: American Minority Literature, UHCL, spring 2004—final exam
Date:
13 May 2004
Time: 2 hours & 50 minutes
·
If you take the exam in-class,
you have from 1pm until 3:50pm.
· If you take the exam by email, you have between 12:45 and 5pm to complete the exam, but spend only 2 hours & 50 minutes total. Keep a log of when you start, stop, or pause.
· Write a complete essay in response to each question. Ideally, spend 45-60 minutes on each essay. (Ideally, but experience shows that students write about an hour each on the first two questions with #3 ending up as about a 30-minute essay.)
Required & optional questions & answers
- Each student must answer question 1 & question 2, but within each of these you have a “default option” (“a”) and a “creative option” (“b”)
- Each student must answer one of the options to question 3 (e. g., 3a, 3b, or 3c)
Other Instructions
· Open-book and open-notebook.
· Number and letter your answers so I know which question you’re answering.
· Abbreviated titles welcome; e. g., Bless Me, Ultima > Ultima
· No need to list page numbers for familiar quotations.
· Avoid copying long quotations. Summarize passages. Quote only powerful words or phrases. Comment on quotations.
· Since this is an open-book and open-notebook exam, essays should not just reproduce course themes but relate them to examples from the texts.
· Since this is a timed exercise, you won’t be penalized for careless mistakes. However, chronic problems like run-ons, fragments, failure to use apostrophes, and long, disorganized paragraphs will affect the overall grade.
Special
Instructions for in-class students
· Write in blue or black ink in a bluebook or on paper of your choice. No need to erase what you don’t want read—just draw a line through.
Special Instructions for email students. Do both of the following
·
Type
essays in a word processing file; attach the file to an email to whitec@uhcl.edu
·
Paste
contents of answers directly into an email message to whitec@uhcl.edu.
This option is especially preferable if you're writing in Microsoft Works. Or
save your file in a “text only” or “Rich Text” format and send it to me
in an attachment.
If
you work within designated time-lines, I should acknowledge receipt of your exam
through email by sometime in the evening of the 13th. If you haven't
heard from me by midnight, check the address on the email you sent me. If still
no response, leave me a phone message at 281 283 3380.
1. Native American Indian Literature & Culture
A. (default
option). Referring to at least one Amerind origin story, American Indian Stories, and The
Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, discuss how Native Americans
qualify as a minority culture and how their cultural narrative of “Loss and
Survival” responds to this situation. (Objective
3b)
B. (creative option). Apply another course objective besides 3b to at least one Amerind origin story, American Indian Stories, and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Explain the significance of your chosen objective. Describe how it appears in the texts and in Amerind culture generally. Conclude with what you have learned through this essay about the objective and Amerind literature and culture.
Additional texts: In either option you are welcome to refer briefly to a poem or poems presented in class, to texts beyond this course, or to previous student contributions to the course webpage.
********************************
2. Mexican American Literature & Culture
A. (default option). Describe “Latinos / Hispanics” as an ethnic group and locate Mexican Americans within it as an “ambivalent minority.” Why may this description be appropriate, given the history of Mexican America and the Southwest United States? How successfully does “ambivalence” characterize Mexican and Mexican American experience in our readings? Apply to “The Miraculous Apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe,” Bless Me, Ultima, and a Mexican American poem presented in class. (Objective 3c—mostly).
B. (creative option). Apply another course objective besides 3c to the subjects of Latinos / Hispanics, Mexican Americans, and the texts of “The Miraculous Apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe” Bless Me, Ultima, and one Mexican American poem presented in class. Explain the significance of your chosen objective and use it as a means of exploring the unique qualities of Hispanic / Latino and Mexican American identity. Describe the appearance of your objective in the texts and in Hispanic / Latino and / or Mexican American culture generally. Conclude with what you have learned through this essay about the objective and about Hispanic / Latino and Mexican American literature and culture.
Additional texts: In either option you are welcome to refer briefly to other poems presented in class, to texts beyond the course, or to previous student contributions to the course webpage.
3. Options: poetry or trans-minority
(Answer one of the following options.)
3a. Creation / Origin Stories. Andrew Wiget writes that Native American origin or creation stories are “complex symbolic tales that typically dramatize the tribal explanation of the origin of the earth and its people; establish the central relationships among people, the cosmos or universe, and the other creatures (flora and fauna) of the earth; distinguish gender roles and social organization for the tribe . . . . “
Briefly
discuss and evaluate the “origin stories” of our course’s three ethnic
groups in terms of Wiget’s description.
·
African American origin story
= the slave narratives
·
Native American origin stories
= stories mentioned or reproduced on handout
·
Mexican American origin story
= “The Virgin of Guadalupe”
Also
feel free to consider The Declaration of Independence, immigrant stories, and other texts
from the course. What do we learn about minorities’ “social contracts”
from reading “origin or creation stories?”
***************************************
3b:
Is American Minority Literature about Literature or Culture?
How do you resolve the question, Is a course like American Minority Literature primarily about literature, or is it about culture, history, sociology, etc.?
· You’re not expected to come down absolutely on one side or the other but to discuss the competing pressures for this course or the study of its texts.
· What kind of balance have we struck, and what are the upsides and downsides of this balance? (Option: How would you “rebalance?”)
· As an alternative or complement to the “balance” approach,” emphasize how and where literature and culture “meet and merge.”
· Be prepared to use course themes, such as the “alternative narratives to the American Dream,“ the minority concept, etc. (Objectives 1 & 3).
· Refer to at least one text from at least two different minority groups.
***********************************
3c. Analyze a Poem by a Minority Writer. Several sample poems are provided below. Analyze one, both thematically and stylistically.
· Thematically, how does the poem exhibit minority themes, particularly those of the minority group represented? (gender and class themes also possible)
· Stylistically, how do these themes benefit from being written as poetry rather than as simple prose?
Poems for question #3c
African American poetry
**************
“Harlem”
by Langston Hughes (1947)
What
happens to a dream deferred?
Does
it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe
it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or
does it explode?
*****************
Dream Variations
By
Langston Hughes
To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me--
That is my dream!
To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall, slim tree . . .
Night coming tenderly
Black like me. .
*****************
African American poetry (continued)
“in small town usa” by E. Ethelbert Miller (African American)
in small town usa
it doesn’t matter if you can count
all the black people on one hand
and have a finger for yourself
it’s 7 am and you look out the window
of your hotel and there’s an old black
woman coming to work to scrub and clean
and this woman reminds you of your mother
tired but getting to work early and on time
never late as you close the curtain
and climb back into bed knowing you are
not alone and this woman is nearby
getting things ready for you and when you
leave your room you make your bed
and fold your towels hoping in this
small way to make it easier for this
woman you now pass in the hall
and you both wonder who will speak first
during this moment when being black is
all there is.
*****************
Native American Indian poetry
November
By
Linda Hogan
For Meridel LeSueur
The sun climbs down
the dried out ladders of corn.
Its red fire walks down the rows.
Dry corn sings, Shh,
Shh.
The old sky woman has opened her cape
to show off the red inside
like burning hearts
holy people enter.
I will walk with her.
We are both burning.
We walk in the field of dry corn
where birds are busy gleaning.
The corn says, Shh.
I walk beside the pens holding animals.
The old woman sun rises,
red, on the backs of small pigs.
She rides the old sow
down on her knees in mud.
Her prayers do not save her.
Her many teats do not save her.
I won't think of the butcher walking away
with blood on his shoes,
red footprints of fire. In them
the sow walks away from her own death
The sun rides the old sow
like an orange bird on its back.
God save the queen.
Her castle rises in the sky and crumbles.
She has horses the color of wine.
The little burgundy one
burns and watches while I walk.
The rusty calves watch with dark eyes.
The corn says, Shh,
and birds beat the red air
like a dusty rug. They sing
God save the queen.
My hair bums down my shoulders.
I walk. I will not think we are blood sacrifices.
No, I will not watch the ring‑necked pheasant
running into the field of skeletal corn.
I will walk into the sun.
Her red mesas are burning
in the distance. I will enter them.
I will walk into that stone,
walk into the sun
away from night rising up the other side of earth.
There are sounds in the cornfield,
Shh. Shh.
*****************
Native American Indian poetry (continued)
“Fooling God” by Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Chippewa)
(excerpts)
I must become small and hide where he cannot reach.
I must become dull and heavy as an iron pot.
I must be tireless as rust and bold as roots
growing through the locks on doors
and crumbling the cinderblocks
of the foundations of his everlasting throne. . . .
Perhaps if I invoke Clare, the patron saint of television. Perhaps if I become the images
passing through the cells of a woman’s brain.
I must become very large and block his sight.
I must be sharp and impetuous as knives.
I must insert myself into the bark of his apple trees,
and cleave the bones of his cows. I must be the marrow
that he drinks into this cloud-wet body.
I must be careful and laugh when he laughs.
I must turn down the covers and guide him in.
I must fashion his children out of Playdough, blue, pink, green,
I must pull them from between my legs
and set them before the television.
I must hide my memory in a mustard grain
so that he’ll search for it over time until time is gone.
I must lose myself in the world’s regard and disparagement.
I must remain this person and be no trouble.
None at all. So he’ll forget.
I’ll collect dust out of reach,
a single dish from a set, a flower made of felt,
a tablet the wrong shape to choke on.
I must become essential and file everything
under my own system,
so we can lose him and his proofs and adherents.
I must be a doubter in a city of belief . . . .
**********
*****************
Mexican American poetry
“Elena”
by Pat Mora
(Mexican American)
My Spanish isn't enough.
I remember how I'd smile
listening to my little ones,
understanding every word they'd say,
their jokes, their songs, their plots.
Vamos a pedirle
dulces a mama. Vamos.
But that was in Mexico.
Now my children go to American high schools.
They speak English. At night they sit around
the kitchen table, laugh with one another.
I stand by the stove and feel dumb, alone.
I bought a book to learn English.
My husband frowned, drank more beer.
My oldest said, "Mama, he doesn't want you
to be smarter than he is." I'm forty,
embarrassed at mispronouncing words,
embarrassed at the laughter of my children,
the grocer, the mailman. Sometimes I take
my English book and lock myself in the bathroom,
say the thick words softly,
for if I stop trying, I will be deaf
when my children need my help.
***********
“As Life Was Five”
by Jimmy Santiago Baca (Mexican American)
(excerpts)
Portate bien,
behave yourself you always said to me.
I behaved myself
when others were warm in winter
and I stood out in the cold.
I behaved myself when others had full plates
and I stared at them hungrily,
never speaking out of turn,
existing in a shell of good white behavior
with my heart a wet-feathered
bird growing but never able to crack out of the shell.
Behaving like a good boy,
my behavior shattered
by outsiders who came
to my village one day
insulting my grandpa because he couldn't speak
English
English—
the invader's sword
the oppressor's language—
that hurled me into profound despair
that day Grandpa and I walked into the farm office
for a loan and this man didn't give my grandpa
an application because he was stupid, he said,
because he was ignorant and inferior,
and that moment
cut me in two torturous pieces
screaming my grandpa was a lovely man
that this government farm office clerk was a rude beast-
and I saw my grandpa's eyes go dark
with wound-hurts, regret, remorse
that his grandchild would witness
him humiliated
and the apricot tree in his soul
was buried
was cut down
using English language as an ax,
and he hung from that dead tree
like a noosed-up Mexican
racist vigilante strung up ten years earlier
for no other reason than that he was different,
than that they didn't understand
his sacred soul, his loving heart,
his prayers and his songs,
Your words, Portate bien,
resonate in me,
and I obey in my integrity, my kindness, my courage,
as I am born again in the suffering of my people,
in our freedom, our beauty, our dual-faced,
dual-cultured, two-songed soul
and two-hearted
ancient culture,
me porto bien, Grandpa,
your memory
leafing my heart
like sweetly fragrant sage.
But the scene of my grandpa in that room,
what came out of his soul
and what soared from his veins,
tidal-waving in my heart,
helped make me into a poet . . . .