LITR 5731 Seminar in American
Multicultural Literature
Minority Literature
Lecture Notes
Bless Me, Ultima: first class meeting
3c. Mexican American narrative: “The Ambivalent Minority”
("Ambivalent" means having "mixed feelings" or contradictory attitudes. Mexican Americans as a group may feel or exemplify mixed feelings about whether they are a distinct, aggrieved minority group 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.)
minority patterns: mixed attitudes toward education vs. manual labor, dropout rates, early childbearing, alternative language community
immigrant patterns: hard working, respect for authority, first-generation family stability, bi-lingual
Open-ended question about Mexican American culture
Does it recombine familiar categories, or is it something new?
Question for text discussion: "Guadalupe" as creation story of Mexico? What's hybrid or recombinant from the start about Mexican-American identity?
Literary devices:
Roses: Why was it that Juan Diego and Bishop Zummarraga where the only ones in the story who could experience the roses in a corporal form?
White cloth (Juan Diego’s tilma/satchel): A poor Indian farmer just happens to have a white cloth to wrap these exotic roses in?
Comments in bold type are from Dr. White’s website/syllabus.
La Llorona
43 We all knew the story of how the Virgin had presented herself to the little Indian boy in Mexico and about the miracles she had wrought. My mother said the Virgin was the saint of our land . . . .
26 It is la llorona, my brothers cried in fear, the old witch who cries along the river banks and seeks the blood of boys and men to drink!
28 Perhaps he was doomed to wander the river bottom forever, a bloody mate to la Llorona
78 La Llorona
116 mermaid, deserted woman
Do Mexican Americans fit the immigrant profile or the minority profile?
Last week:
Unlike the dominant immigrant culture, ethnic minorities did not choose to come to America or join its dominant culture.
immigrant: standard Anglo attitude is that Mexicans are immigrants, and it's true that the numbers of people moving from Mexico to the United States has increased exponentially in recent decades
minority: remember that most of the Southwestern United States--Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and California--were part of Mexico until U.S.-Mexican War of 1846-48 -- Mexican-Americans suffered similar exploitation and dispossession as American Indians
Toni's father expresses "ambivalence" whether he and his family was exploited by the new Anglo culture--does he want to resist or join it?
2 father a vaquero, even after big rancheros and tejanos came and fenced in the beautiful llano [memory of resentment at involuntary contact]
125 stories of the old days in Las Pasturas
sheepherders > cattle > horsemen > railroad and barbed wire
corridos, meeting of the people from Texas with my forefathers . . . uprooted, became migrants
3 After the war (World War 2), Mr. Marez wants to leave home and move to California [Sounds a lot like immigrant-dominant culture]
14 father’s dream: move westward + sons
So which is it? Or is it both?
Back to Mexican Americans
alternative term: Chicano (many local & historical variations on meaning)
"Mexican American" an inclusive term, potentially including Mexicans as well as any American of Mexican descent.
Position:
In American Minority Literature, we study Mexican Americans as at least potentially a minority group comparable to African Americans and American Indians.
We do not study all Hispanic or Latino groups as minority groups. Each of these groups has their own story, but generally that story more closely resembles the "immigrant narrative" of the dominant culture than the "minority narrative" of African and Native America (definitely not immigrants).
But how?
Most Americans broadly regard Mexicans as immigrants, and statistics bear out the impression.
"In 1970, the Mexican immigrant population was less than 800,000, compared to nearly 8 million in 2000."
(http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/mexico/release.html)
Observation: the dominant culture of the United States, itself formed by immigration, interprets Mexican presence as immigration . . . .
This interpretation is altogether justifiable according to statistics and contemporary national boundaries, laws, and definitions.
But another angle on subject, a sub-text or alternative narrative that follows from the shared history of the United States and Mexico.
historical maps of American expansion in early 1800s
Other Hispanic groups besides Mexicans haven't had this historical experience of being "conquered" by the growth of U. S. population.
In this regard, Mexican Americans do not resemble immigrant groups but rather a minority group, esp. Native Americans, in that "they were here first" and didn't necessarily join
Another consensus difference: traditional immigrants cross water to reach USA, which may involve a different level of commitment--"cultural guillotine"
But Mexican Americans mostly cross on "land bridge," increasing possibility of return to home country and potentially decreasing commitment to assimilation to new country
Another way the question is sometimes framed: Will Mexican Americans experience "upward assimilation" or "downward assimilation"
"upward assimilation" associated with American Dream: economic independence, nuclear family, higher education, deferred gratification
"downward assimilation" often associated with minorities: cycle of poverty, extended / broken families, drop-outs, "babies having babies"
Are those the only choices?
In Bless Me, Ultima
7 town of Guadalupe (probably not the same town--New Mexico, not old Mexico)
43 My mother had a beautiful statue of la Virgen de Guadalupe.
p. 4, obj. 3 When a Mexican . . .
2 father a vaquero, even after big rancheros and tejanos came and fenced in the beautiful llano
3 effects of war, move to California [culture on move; cf. Dominant culture]
14 father’s dream: move westward + sons
fundamental facts of ambivalence
plus earlier historical fact:
Euro x Indian (or African)
6 He is a Marez, the vaqueros shouted. His forefathers were conquistadores
43 My mother had a beautiful statue of la Virgen de Guadalupe.
Spanish x English
Catholic x folk traditions
White x brown
Modern x traditional
what are terms of ambivalence in the two?
Tony's parents?
Ultima's identity? 104 curandera x bruja
Farm x town (bridge)
Modern x traditional
41 She understood that as I grew up I would have to choose to be my mother’s priest or my father’s son.
51 [ambivalence] first day of schooling, years and years of schooling, away from the protection of my mother. I was excited and sad about it.
104 curandera x bruja
What 3rd options?
Mestizo
Synchretism
Bridge
Modern x traditional
4 a curandera, a woman who knew the herbs and remedies of the ancients, a miracle-worker who could heal the sick
65 wasting their service money . . . They did not hear their father.
67 California or highway work. “Why does it have to be just those two choices?” move to Las Vegas, work there, rent
68 dreams of their father and mother haunting them
72 curse laid on a disobedient son or daughter was irrevocable
72 cursed children were never heard from again
Virgin of Guadalupe, La
Llorona, la Malinche
Mex Am culture as
patriarchal plus
all cultures patriarchal, but all complicated; increase cult of father, thus mother
Catholic—all-male leadership, female divinity; contrast Protestantism
+ ethnic component
male conquistadors, Indian wives; gender & race cross
6 He is a Marez, the vaqueros shouted. His forefathers were conquistadores
7 town of Guadalupe
13 La Virgen de Guadalupe was the patron saint of our town
23 Virgin’s horned moon, the moon of my mother’s people, the moon of the Lunas.
26 It is la llorona, my brothers cried in fear, the old witch who cries along the river banks and seeks the blood of boys and men to drink!
28 Perhaps he was doomed to wander the river bottom forever, a bloody mate to la Llorona
43 My mother had a beautiful statue of la Virgen de Guadalupe.
43 We all knew the story of how the Virgin had presented herself to the little Indian boy in Mexico and about the miracles she had wrought. My mother said the Virgin was the saint of our land . . . .
44 The virgin always forgave.
78 La Llorona
116 mermaid, deserted woman
120 Virgin of Guadalupe > mother!
187 Virgin and mother
187 Diego and Virgin of Guadalupe
187 I too would meet the Virgin; met Tenorio