Donny Leveston

What are Some Similarities among African American and
Mexican American Literatures?

            During my undergraduate career, and, even now, at the beginning of my graduate studies, I have focused my concentration on becoming well-versed in African American and Mexican American literatures, thanks to my brilliant instructors.  In addition, I have experienced African American literature all my life: firstly, I am African American with a vested interest in my culture.  Secondly, I compare African American literature to other culturally diverse literatures.  Moreover, in regards to Mexican American literature, I am vested in it as well.  First of all, my spouse is Latina or, and her parents are immigrants from Mexico.  We have been communized for a decade, but also dated for four years prior to our matrimony.  That being the case, my father-in-law has told me stories of Mexican Americans and Americans from the time of the Spanish/American War.  With this in mind, I will pose the following question: What are some similarities between African American and Mexican American narratives? 

            My research for the first part of my question led me to my African American and Mexican American literature classes.  These former classes yielded several secondary sources focusing on African American and Mexican American literature and the representation of their narratives; their experiences; slave narratives; and immigrant and migrant worker narratives and how these groups produced their work for “White America,” to be referred hereon as the dominant culture.  Each of these groups, as well as others, share a common concept by entering the “contact zone.”  Mary Louise Pratt describes the “contact zone” as follows, “I use this term to refer to social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in context of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today,” (2).  Therefore African Americans and Mexican Americans are likely to encounter the dominant culture within America.  So, it becomes clear that these groups are all related in some form or another and that they must intermingle within American society, albeit to a much lesser degree for African Americans than Mexican Americans, which I will address in Part II.  Nevertheless these groups do share a common denominator. 

            Another similarity that these two groups may share in their narratives is oppression.  Oppression has often been associated with African American minorities, and, it usually centers around the “color line.”  The scholars, Judith R. Blau and Eric S. Brown, describes W.E.B. Du Bois’s Axiomatic Concepts as follows: “...Du Bois’s term, Veil, as the color line that divides and separates and as an essential aspect of perceptions and communications between those divided,” (Blau & Brown 221).  This concept can be applied to Mexican Americans as well as African Americans based on our course’s Objective Three.  Mexican Americans face oppression in some form or another as it is often represented throughout their literature.  For example, the African American and Mexican American vernaculars are frequently looked down upon by the dominant group.  An added dilemma that these groups may share is economic death as oppose to economical growth within the dominant culture. 

            In lieu of my research, from which I build my argument, one can see that there are similarities among African Americans and Mexican American literatures,  However, there is no guarantee that these similarities will remain constant, or, in a juxtaposition, but, they will remain in supposition, this research has taught me that.  It has also taught me that we all have a story to tell that may be positive or negative.  Regardless of the tracks in which African Americans and Mexican American pursue, there still lies a commonality: they must clash with the dominant group, even if they concede to assimilation, acculturation, or as Pratt puts it, “tranculturation.”        

Works Cited

Blau, Judith R.  “Du Bois and Diasporic Identity: The Veil and the Unveiling Project.”  Sociological Theory, Vol. 19, No. 2. (Jul., 2001), pp. 219-33. JSTOR: W.I. Dykes Library: Houston, Texas. 11 June 2006. <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici>.

Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.”  Ways of Reading, 5^th Edition.  Ed.David Bartholomae and Anthony Petroksky.  New York: Bedford/St. Martin, 1999.  <http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/>. Pp. 1-12. 12 June 06.