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2019 Midterm2 (assignment) Index to Sample Midterm2 Answers Part 3. Research Report Starts |
LITR 4340
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Kaytlynn Smith
9 April 2019
Cultural Preservation through
Maternal Legacies
Much of American literature has grown
to include an increasingly diverse arsenal of cultural texts, encompassing
aspects of immigrant, minority, and new world immigrant narratives. Despite
their differences, immigrants, minorities, and New World immigrant narratives
unite under these instances of historical and cultural preservation, in many
cases carried on by the teachings of maternal figures in an individual’s life.
As a daughter and mother who fights to learn all there is to know about my own
family history, texts like Amy Tan’s The
Bonesetter’s Daughter, and Simone Schwarz-Bart’s
The Bridge of Beyond, serve as
important reminders of how family and cultural history shape our individual
identities, much of which we learn from the oral tradition of our mothers and
grandmothers. The cultural significance behind these attempts to preserve the
little pieces of different cultures that make up my existence today is what
drives my interest in this topic to explore the similarities between these
traditions across different cultures and how the maternal figure, and even
maternal imagery, play a huge part in cultural preservation.
In Amy Tan’s novel,
The Bonesetter’s Daughter, the main
character, Ruth discovers her family history and the deeper meanings behind some
of the traditions upheld by her mother, reshaping her perspective on her own
identity, increasing her sense of purpose in the world and in her profession as
a writer. This narrative tackles themes and experiences that characterize
immigrant narratives and help provide a deeper context with which Chinese
immigrants uphold familial values to preserve their cultural history, while also
assimilating to American society to achieve economic success.
Similarly, Simone Schwarz Bart’s novel,
The Bridge of Beyond, grapples with
self-discovery by way of maternal guidance, exemplifying the cultural
significance to spoken word and oral history in ethnic cultures. While this text
does not necessarily exemplify the immigrant narrative, it focuses on
Afro-Caribbean culture, which helps contextualize the cultural messages embedded
in texts we have read this semester like Paule Marshall’s “The Making of a
Writer: From the Poets in the Kitchen” whose maternal figures assimilate to
American culture to provide for their children, but hold on to certain aspects
of the Barbadian upbringing, such as the use of speaking in proverbs to convey
culturally significant morals. Schwarz-Bart’s novel helps contextualize some of
the minority themes that permeate New-World immigrant narratives, often
developed from negative relations with colonial forces, like the U.S.
Like Schwarz-Bart’s, Martin Espada’s
poem, Coca-Cola and Coco Frio, the author relates maternal imagery of the
coconut trees in Puerto Rico to convey a sense of longing for a deeper
connection to his cultural origins. Initially appearing hesitant towards the
“island of family folklore,” Espada establishes a shift in the narrative by
juxtaposing a popular American beverage, Coca-Cola and a traditional Puerto
Rican beverage, Coco Frio, to demonstrate the differences between the two
cultures, one noticeably artificial against the natural milk that comes from
Puerto Rican coconut trees. Additionally, Espada uses maternal imagery,
describing how the coconuts “sagged” in the trees, “heavy with milk, swollen and
unsuckled”. This imagery not only implicates a sense of longing for cultural
origins, but it also identifies Puerto Rico as the motherland from which he and
his family descend. This clash between symbols, American and Puerto Rico, typify
the types of themes that characterize many New World immigrant narratives.
Picking out some of the main themes and
motifs that unite these narratives, both immigrant and New World immigrant,
readers can trace similarities that point towards the importance of maternal
figures and the traditions that they pass down generations of immigrants in a
lasting attempt to preserve their cultural beliefs and family history as a part
of their identity. Translating these themes in immigrant and New World immigrant
narratives into key words, I found several sources that explore aspects of
maternal influence in different cultures and how these influences help preserve
lasting traditions that could very well become lost in history. Naeimeh
Tabatabaei Lotfi, in her article, “A Unique Approach of Memory Narrative Therapy
in Diasporic Contexts,” examines the effects of narrative forms of writing to
relay trauma and stress in a diasporic context that follows the immigrant
narratives of Amy Tan. Lotfi suggests that migration literature uses innovative
narrative techniques that aim to share memories to “unite the immigrant
families, as well as helping parents to transmit their national identity to
their children” (1913).
Aside from figurative references,
literal maternal guidance varies culturally, giving insights towards how
immigrant families maintain their cultural identity with the American “melting
pot”. In a study conducted by Cecilia Cheung and Catherine McBride-Chang,
results show that Chinese mothers may appear “warm and controlling”
simultaneously, as shown through trends rating many mothers with high “stern”
ratings as having high supportive ratings as well. The study also reveals
cultural markers that set these children apart from their American counterparts
as early as kindergarten as indicated by the children’s awareness of intrinsic
(pleasing parents) and extrinsic (social respect and economic success) (16).
This marked difference in cultural awareness is suggestive of the need for
generational progression in terms of economic success that characterizes so many
immigrant narratives.
From this research, so far I’ve learned
just how deep these maternal images permeate immigrant narrative and cultures
and how these images influence the development of culturally diverse identities.
Not only do these maternal teachings seem to stamp these cultures as foreign or
ethnic, but the idea of a matriarch itself can represent a foreign ideal in
American society, most often associated with patriarchal ideals. For future
research, I would like to consider looking at the patriarchal importance that
characterizes so much of American values and contrast this idea with the
research found that suggests maternal influence as the glue that holds ethnic
groups and their cultures together despite assimilation into American society.
