LITR 4332 American Minority Literature 2008 Syllabus

Course Objectives

• Course Objectives are ideas and terms developed in lectures, discussions, presentations, and examinations.

• Objectives also identify learning outcomes.

Cultural or Minority-Concept Objectives (1-4)

• Most minority or multicultural courses offer little theory or background on what makes a minority ethnic group.
• American Minority and Immigrant Literature define minority status in contrast to immigrant status:

Historical foundation:

• The dominant culture of the USA is formed by immigrants and their descendents
  who live or imagine the American Dream.
   
• Minorities are ethnic groups that do not fit the immigrant narrative or profile,
  for whom  the American Dream has typically been an American Nightmare.
   
• Our course traces how minority groups both express and transcend this negative definition.
   

• The ethnic groups that inarguably fit this minority definition are African Americans and American Indians.
   

• Mexican Americans mix immigrant and minority aspects—more below.

Instructor's attitude: Americans want simple answers to complex problems so they can veg, party, and get rich or righteous. But the history and premises of minority culture differ so fundamentally from those of the American dominant / immigrant culture that simple answers are only denials of our complicated history. In light of such challenges, I've developed the following attitudes:

• Keep talking and listening. America's an unfinished story. The answers are not written but being written.
   
• Question platitudes and discussion-stoppers like "All people are basically just the same" and "Why can't we all just be Americans?"
   
• Sometimes the only positive outcome is not to be right but to act right.

Objective 1: Minority Definitions

American minorities are defined not by numbers but by power relations modeled on ethnic groups’ problematic relation to the American dominant culture.  

1a. Involuntary participation and continuing oppression—the American Nightmare

Unlike the dominant immigrant culture, ethnic minorities did not choose to come to America or join its dominant culture. (African Americans were kidnapped, American Indians were invaded.)

Exploitation and oppression instead of opportunity—whereas immigrant cultures see America as a land of equality and opportunity, minorities may remember America as a place where their people have been dispossessed of property and power and deprived of basic human rights.

Thus the "social contract" of Native Americans and African Americans differs from that of European Americans, Asian Americans, and most Latin Americans.

The American dominant culture dismisses minority grievances: “That was a long time ago. . . . Get over it.” But consequences of "no choice" echo down the generations, particularly as minority difference versus  assimilation (see objective 3).

1b. “Voiceless and choiceless”; “Voice = Choice”

Contrast the dominant culture’s self-determination or choice through self-expression or voice, as in "The Declaration of Independence."

1c. To observe alternative identities and literary strategies developed by minority cultures and writers to gain voice and choice:

• “double language” (same words, different meanings to different audiences)

• using the dominant culture’s words against them

• conscience to dominant culture (which otherwise forgets the past).

1d. “The Color Code”

• Literature represents the extremely sensitive subject of skin color infrequently or indirectly.

• Western civilization transfers values associated with “light and dark”—e. g., good & evil, rational / irrational—to people of light or dark complexions, with huge implications for power, validity, sexuality, etc.

• This course mostly treats minorities as a historical phenomenon, but the biological or visual aspect of human identity may be more immediate and direct than history. People most comfortably interact with others who look like themselves or their family.

• Skin color matters, but how much varies by circumstances.

• See also Objective 3 on racial hybridity.
   

1e. Dominant Culture Attitudes

• Immigrants leave the past behind and think minorities should do the same.

• Thus the dominant American immigrant culture dismisses minority grievances with shrugs, platitudes, and exasperation: “That was a long time ago. . . . Get over it”

• Despite powerful evidence to the contrary, the dominant culture claims to be colorblind : “My parents raised me not to judge people by the color of their skin” (frequently articulated by those resentful of minority expression).

Objective 2: race > gender, class, etc.

To observe representations and narratives (images and stories) of ethnicity, gender, and class as a means of defining minority categories.

2a. Gender: Is the status of women, lesbians, and homosexuals analogous to that of ethnic minorities in terms of voice and choice? Do "women of color" become "double minorities?"

2b. To detect "class" as a repressed subject of American discourse.

• “You can tell you’re an American if you can’t talk about class.”

• American culture officially regards itself as "classless"; race and gender often replace class divisions of power, labor, ownership, or "place."

• Class may remain identifiable in signs or “markers” of power and prestige

• High-class status in the USA is often marked by plainness, simplicity, or lack of visibility.

2c. "Quick check" on minority status: What is the individual’s or group’s relation to the law or other dominant institutions? Does "the law" (e. g., the police) make things better or worse?

Objective 3: minority dilemma--assimilate or resist?

• Does the minority fight or join the dominant culture that exploited it?
• What balance do minorities strike between the economic benefits of assimilation and its personal or cultural sacrifices?
• In general, immigrants assimilate, while minorities remain separate (though connected in many ways).

3a. To contrast the dominant-culture ideology of racial separation from American practice, which frequently involves hybridity (mixing) and change.

• The dominant American white culture typically sees races and genders as pure and permanent categories, perhaps allotted by God or Nature as a result of Creation, climate, natural selection, etc.,

• But races always mix. What we call "pure" is only the latest change we're used to.

• Racial divisions & definitions constantly change or adapt; e. g., the Old South's quadroons, octaroons, "a single drop"; recent revisions of racial origins of Native America; Hispanic as "non-racial" classification; "bi-racial"

• Contrast “four races” (Aboriginal, Caucasian, Mongolian, & Negroid) with “only one race: the human race”

• Instead of “black & white” dynamics, America is increasingly  “brown” or "other"

• “post-racial” identity of urban American youth following school integration, in contrast to "pure" races surviving in suburbs and private religious schools

 3b. To identify the "new American" who crosses, combines, or confuses ethnic or gender identities
(e. g., Tiger Woods, Halle Berry, Lenny Kravitz, Mariah Carey, David Bowie, Boy George, Tila Tequila Nicole Scherzinger of Pussycat Dolls, Vin Diesel)

Objective 4: individual & collective identities

To observe images of the individual, the family, and alternative families in the writings and experience of minority groups.

4a. Generally speaking, minority groups place more emphasis on “traditional” or “community” aspects of human society, such as extended families or alternative families, and they mistrust “institutions.” The dominant culture celebrates individuals and nuclear families and identifies more with dominant-cultural institutions or its representatives, like law enforcement officers, teachers, bureaucrats, etc. (Much variation, though.)

4b. To question sacred modern concepts like "individuality" and "rights" and politically correct ideas like minorities as "victims"; to explore emerging postmodern identities, e. g. “biracial,” “global,” and “post-national.”

 Literary or Style Objectives (5 & 6) 

Objective 5: Minority Narratives

• “Narratives” are stories or plots, a sequence of events in which people act and speak in time.

• Narratives concern not only how a writer tells a story, but also how an audience receives, processes, and makes meaning of it.

• A cultural narrative is a collective story that unifies or directs a community--for example, The American Dream for the USA, or particular minority narratives that reflect an ethnic group's experience or range of expression.

• Following Minority-Culture Objective 1, Minority Narratives differ from the dominant “American Dream” narrative—which involves voluntary participation, forgetting the past, and individuals or nuclear families.

• Instead, minority narratives generally involve involuntary participation, reconnecting to a broken past, and traditional, extended, or alternative families.

Tabular summary of Objective 5:
contrasts between the dominant culture's "American Dream" narrative and minority narratives

5a. African American alternative narrative: “The Dream”

• "The Dream" resembles but is not identical to "The American Dream."

• Whereas the American Dream emphasizes immediate individual success, "the Dream" factors in setbacks, the need to rise again, and group dignity.

5b. Native American Indian alternative narrative: "Loss and Survival"

• Dominant / immigrant culture leaves its past behind to gain rights and opportunities--the American Dream.

•  For Indians, the American Dream of immigration is the American Nightmare, creating an undeniable narrative of loss: the native people were once “the Americans” but lost most of their people, land, rights, and opportunities.

• Despite these terrible losses, Native Americans defy the myth of "the vanishing Indian," choosing to "survive," sometimes in faith that the dominant culture will eventually destroy itself, and the forests and buffalo will return.

• The American dominant culture usually writes only half of the Indians' story, romanticizing their loss (e. g., The Last of the Mohicans) and ignoring the Indians who adapt and survive.

5c. Mexican American narrative: “The Ambivalent Minority” or Third Way

• "Ambivalent" means having "mixed feelings" or contradictory attitudes.

• Mexican Americans as a group may feel or exemplify mixed feelings about whether they are a minority group that will remain separate or an immigrant culture that will assimilate.

• As individuals or families who come to America for economic gain but suffer social dislocation, Mexican Americans resemble the dominant immigrant culture.

• On the other hand, much of Mexico's historic experience with the USA resembles the experience of the Native Americans: much of the United States, including Texas, was once Mexico.

• Does a Mexican who moves from Juarez to El Paso truly immigrate? In any case, it’s not just another immigrant story.

Objective 6: Minorities and Language

To study minority writers' and speakers' experiences with literacy & influence on literature and language.

6a. To regard literacy as the primary code of modern existence and a key or path to empowerment. (See obj. 3 on assimilation / resistance)

6b. To emphasize how all speakers and writers use literary devices such as narrative and figures of speech.

6c. To discover literature's power to express the minority voice and vicariously share minority experience.

6d. To assess minorities' status in the "canon" or curriculum of what is read and taught in schools

6e. To note variations of standard English by minority writers and speakers.

6f. To translate the "Dominant-Minority" relation to philosophical or syntactic categories of "Subject & Object," in which the "subject" is self-determining and active in terms of "voice and choice," while the "object" is acted upon, passive, or spoken for rather than acting and speaking.