LITR 4332 American Minority Literature Model Assignments Final Exam Submissions 2013

Amanda Newell

Minority culture

            People belonging to a minority group are placed in a very difficult place in contrast to the majority population. They have to balance blending in or assimilating to the majority culture and keeping some of their traditions that make them a minority in the first place. Love Medicine and Bless Me, Ultima are full of examples of people trying to balance their past, future and present.  Should they assimilate? Is the American dream for them? There are many phases of assimilation: religion, language, and traditions.

            In Bless Me, Ultima Antonio is the central figure in the story. Antonio can be seen as the one who is trying to blend cultures the most out of his siblings. His brothers have become almost completely Americanized by joining the war and wanting to run off to the west. While this is similar to their father’s culture it is the complete opposite of their mother’s. Their mother’s brothers all live next to their father and work with him; they would never leave their father behind. Antonio’s sisters too have embraced the American culture. Deborah and Theresa speak almost exclusively English only speaking their parents traditional Spanish when talking to them or their uncles. Antonio is the only one interested in his culture. He is fascinated with Ultima and her “powers” and his uncles’ ability to work the land in the llano. His mother sees him as her last chance for either a priest or a farmer to follow her brother’s footsteps. He also wants to please his father who wants one of his boys to go to California with him and be a vaquero. But he also questions some of the parts of his Mexican-American traditions, such as the belief in Catholic faith.

At first he whole-heartily believes in the Catholic faith, especially the Virgin of Guadalupe. Then he is introduced to the legend of the carp and the golden carp and he starts to question his religion. Is the Catholic God or the golden carp a better god? While he loves the Virgin he fears God because he could be angry and vengeful, and only the Virgin can calm him. The golden carp on the other hand loved his people so much he gave up being a god so he could always be with them. The golden carp can be seen as a symbol that Tony has choices to make in his future. The sight of the carp is a turning point in his life. Things are not as black and white as he thought. Ultima’s powers also help him believe in the legend of the carp.

“I knew I had witnessed a miraculous thing, the appearance of a pagan god, a thing miraculous as the healing of my uncle Lucas. And I thought, the power of God failed where Ultima's worked; and then a sudden illumination of beauty and understanding flashed through my mind. This is what I expected God to do at my first Holy Communion! (Anaya, 114)"

If the golden carp could answer his questions did he or should he believe in God? And what about the Virgin? Tony has to struggle with choosing between the more accepted Catholicism and the old world religion of the golden carp that was looked down on by the majority culture.  To wholly accept Catholicism would be to deny the powers of Ultima but to deny God would make him an outcast in the community.

            Native Americans face a different assimilation compared to Mexican Americas. Native Americans are an unusual minority group because they did not come here and were not brought here. They were here before the Anglo-Americans came and called the land America and claimed the land for themselves. In Chrystos poem I Have Not Signed a Treaty with the United States Government, she make this fact a prominent point.  “I Have Not Signed a Treaty with the United States Government/ nor has my father not his father/nor any grandmothers (Chrystos, 1-3)”, she is stating that Native Americans did not want Anglos to come over and did not give them permission to take over their land and claim it. So they had to choose to assimilate into their own country with a now very different culture. Native Americans were forced into assimilation. In Love Medicine you can see many degrees in which Native Americans have assimilated.

            When missionaries came to “kill the Indian and save the man (White)”, they would collect Native American children to send to boarding schools to teach them English, eradicate their traditional culture and make them true and proper Americans. In the book Rushes Bear (Margaret Kashpaw) decides to send Nector to the English school and keep Eli hidden from them so she could have a son raised in her tradition and a son brought up the English ways.  Albertine mentions; “Now, these many years later, hard to tell why or how, my great-uncle Eli was still sharp, while Grandpa’s mind had left us, gone wary and wild (Erdrich p.19)” It seems that the brother who went to the English school and was “saved” was worse off than the one raised in the traditional way on the reservation.

            At these schools Native American students were stripped of their native identities. The girls were forced to wear tight fitting clothing, which was seen as immodest to them, and the boys also had to cut their hair which was a sign of cowardice (Dr. White). They also had to speak, read and write in English, which was a completely foreign language to them. The students were also forced to accept Christianity as their religion over their tribal traditions.  Even the families on the reservation were given “Indian Bibles” by missionaries (Dr. White). Once they graduated they were detached from their own families, tribes and reservations. They lost that family unit they once relied on and now had to go outside the Native American world to find acceptance and understanding.  In the book Albertine is a good example of the latest generation becoming Americanized with a twist. While Albertine does go off to nursing school she does come back and seemingly does not go back to school, instead she works at a truck weighing station with Gerry and Dot.

            Minorities have always had to bend to the will of the majority. The Native Americans and the Mexicans that were people in our texts had to face the difficulties that all minorities must face when they are forced to choose between the ways of their ancestors and the “new” ways that are being forced upon.  Antonio and Albertine are two examples of minorities that had multi-generational changes in their families. Their cultures were being diluted and changed and a rapid pace and the youngest of these minorities would bear the burden of the latest round of changes. Who would stand strong and remain true to their heritage and who would bend with the ever changing tides?

Cites:

1.    Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me, Ultima. New York: Grand Central, 1994. Print.

2.    Dr. White, LITR 4332: http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/hsh/whitec/texts/Amerind/ZitkalaSaAIS/ZitSaNDX.html

3.    Dr. White, LITR 4332: http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/hsh/whitec/texts/Amerind/ZitkalaSaAIS/ZitSaSchool.html

4.    Dr. White, LITR 4332: http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/hsh/whitec/texts/Amerind/indianpoems/chrystostrty.htm

5.    Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine. New York: Harper Perennial, 2009. Print.