Amy Noblitt

A Look Back; a Look Forward: Multicultural Literature

I have tried to take any multi-cultural class possible in my academic career, but multiculturalism has often stopped at African American literature.  I do love African American literature and it was writers like Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker that gave me insight to a world other than my own.    I liked the passion of the stories.  They were real to me the way Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Conrad were not.  Do not misunderstand, I enjoy Vonnegut but I never felt that he sympathized with me.  I am sure that this was more due to sexual differences rather than class differences.  Toni Morrison gave me a better idea what it was to be a black woman.  I felt more than the typical “white guilt”; it was more along the lines of true empathy.  

On my own I came to Amy Tan and the Joy Luck Club.  This was another woman I was able to understand.  I understood the strong family ties and rebellion against your parents’ ideals but I got to see these everyday things to me through fresh eyes of a different culture.  It was by reading people like Amy Tan and Alice Walker I realized that to begin to know a culture you should start reading their stories.  I’ve said before in my mid-term that stories are the best way to know a culture and by the end of this class I still hold true to that idea.  I have learned more in this class about the Native Americans, Hispanics, Afro-Caribbeans, and South Asians than I have ever in any class.  Also I got a fresh look at Asians and African Americans.  The question of the differences between immigrants and minorities had never entered my mind before this class, and I am truly happy that I have begun to understand what it means to be one or the other. 

My research postings came from my own desire to know more about my ancestry.  Where did my family immigrate from?  When did they come to America?  I began to explore in my first research posting why people want to know about their past.  I came to the conclusion that American Culture was like a patchwork quilt and everyone wants to know which square belongs to them.  Today, though when writing my outline I realized that the reason I want to know more about my ancestral cultures was because I wanted to associate with more than the poor trailer dwelling girl I was when I was a child.  Like most poor families, ours depended on our extended family’s help.  We had a trailer on my grandparents’ property.  My grandmother watched me until she became too sick to do so in 1987.  It was my Maw-Maw who raised me and taught me to read and write before I started school.  Both of my parents had to work and daycare could be expensive so it was my grandparents who watched me.  After my grandmother died in1988 my Paw-Paw retired and watched after my brother and I until I was about ten years old and able to watch him myself, although Paw-Paw was never far away.  The story from Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez really reminded me of my upbringing and also my eventual separation from my family.  I was made fun of by my cousins because I loved to read and listened to my mom when she told me to do something.  I was made to feel like an outsider just like Rodriguez’s protagonist.  I forgot the language of my family and it was an endless source of jokes for my cousins.  It was then that I began an immigration of my own; a vertical immigration into the middle class through education. 

This class gave me a new look into the American culture and a new look into myself.  I came in knowing that literature could expand your knowledge of a people but I recently discovered that education is the backbone of the American Dream.  I guess I always knew that education was important and I have stressed it with my cousins’ children but I never thought how important it was for everyone.  In “The English Lesson” Lali was on her way to a better life.  We don’t know if things worked out for her.  If she left Rudi or if William found his way in the world, but we do know that there is hope for them because they are receiving an education.  In “Soap and Water” Anzia Yezierska tells a story of a girl who gets an education to get out of her position.  She almost does not make it because she looks like an immigrant, but through the help of a sympathetic ear she succeeds after all.  “Soap and Water” does show that an education does not guarantee success but it does make the road much smoother.  When I meet a poor child who has the desire to read I know that there is hope for them and that through literacy they will open their minds to new worlds and make them hope for more.  This was the road that I took and it is one of the reasons that I chose Literature as a major.  If I am able to show an unfortunate child through reading how to escape poverty then I have repaid my debt to literature for all it has done for me. 

Multicultural literature classes such as this should be required for all universities.  The reason I say this, is because during 9/11 I was an undergrad in the small town of Ruston, LA and a few South Asian students were attacked by some white students.  I was outraged when I heard this.  These people, through their own ignorance attacked innocent people for being the wrong skin color.  Again later that year I was working at a gas station in the same town and I had a white woman come up to me and ask if the station was owned by middle easterners.  I told her no and she proceeded to fill up her SUV.  I couldn’t believe the ignorance of some American people.  They didn’t know and Indian from a Pakistani and so they hurt anyone that “looked like a terrorist.”  Perhaps if these boys or this woman had taken a multicultural class then they wouldn’t have reacted so poorly.  I understand the hurt that Americans felt after 9/11, I was hurt myself but it does not make it right to hurt innocent people.   I know that I am a better person for having this class and the enlightenment it brought should be spread to others in America.  We have to stop being so insular that we forget that there is a whole world out there and it doesn’t revolve around us.