LITR 4332 American Minority Literature Model Assignments Final Exam Submissions 2013

Tom Higginbotham

What Kind of Thing is Minority Literature?

            It may sound a little trite, but I think the most important thing I came away with this semester was the fact that Minority Literature was...a thing. Don't misunderstand, I knew it existed. Logically there were minority persons who ran the same gamut of writing ability that I was on which stood to reason that at least a few of them wrote and therefore: Minority Literature. The concept, however, had never really been properly presented to me. Why, for instance, did it matter beyond the social justice aspect of it? What made it stand up and out from the "normal, white guy" canon of other literature? Especially concerning African American Literature, much of the same material had been put in front of me already and in no other case was the question of why something like Jacobs' Incidents was important, or even relevant. Part of it is, I think, tact. Nobody likes being told who they are, especially not from a teacher who might not share the same background. Mostly though, I think its safety. Everyone agrees that slavery was bad and Rev. Dr. King's speech was generally pretty good but trying to delve deeper into topics like Cholly Breedlove's chequered existence, up to and including his conflicting and conflicted rape of Pecola, and how this might relate to something as grand and hopeful as something called "The Dream" can get sticky in a hurry.

            There's a weird mechanic, I've learned, that a culture within a culture can communicate its psychology through its literature in a collective way. The Mexican poem, "You Men" for instance is technically kind of a culture within a culture within a culture being written by a woman in Mexico on the US/Mexican Border, while still occupied by Spain. Even though this poem is strictly about gender issues, the concept of ambivalence, being of two ways, is pretty thoroughly (and harshly) critiqued by the work. Particularly, how women are expected to be on either side of the harlot/heroine line, never truly winning out regardless of which side they tend towards. Even though this was centuries from the Mexican War of Independence the same cultural concern of being a border people can be extracted, even if its a little more buried.

            The best part about this newfound perspective is that it doesn't just apply to ethnic minorities. As I discovered in my research posts, this same concept can be applied to any group-within-a-group, particularly the LBGT sexual minority. Much in the same ways that Hispanic and African American minorities carry common themes among them, LBGT literature very frequently structures itself around the concept of "coming out" both internally and externally and that this structuring doesn't limit itself to written literature, but can also be applied to LBGT themes in video games, my chosen focus. All in all, this semester's studies has added another tool to my arsenal of critical analysis which I see getting a great deal of use, especially as LBGT representation and ethnic minorities get more meaningful representation in the video game medium.