Mallory Rogers

The Other Side’s Story

Each semester I search the class roster for topics that grab my attention.  Having previously had the opportunity to take minority literature as an undergraduate and as a result of enjoying the class overall, I chose to re-take the class again as a graduate student for several reasons: to expand my knowledge in regards to minority literature, to learn about different authors’ endeavors in America and to read new worthwhile texts.

In my personal experience, I completed my secondary education, and even my first two years of college, reading texts surrounding the dominant and generally white culture with examples such as Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. African-American slave narratives, Indian survival stories and stories about Mexican-Americans struggles were routinely pushed to the side as Anglo-Saxon literature seemed to take unchallenged precedence.

Before taking the minority literature course the first time, I hadn’t put much thought into this issue nor had I ever questioned why this was the case. Taking the class the second time around has allowed me the opportunity to really hone in on this alarming issue and make more sense of why this seemingly quiet repression of minority literature continues in many of my current classes. Objective 5 addresses the issue of minority literature’s repression by concentrating on the influence of minority writers and speakers on literature, literacy and language. More specifically, Objective 5b focuses on the “canon” of what is read and taught in schools and brings attention to what is more importantly left out.

As stated previously, before taking minority literature I was ambivalent to this seemingly traditional routine of reading about the white, dominant culture.  Frederick Douglass’s narrative detailing the difficult struggles within the very real world of American slavery were ignored by practically all of my early English teachers as if they didn’t exist, Louis Erdrich’s Love Medicine wasn’t ever chosen to highlight the short story lessons and books dealing with racially charged discrimination, such as Bless Me Ultima were not even so much mentioned during American Seminar class discussions. Instead of multiple perceptions, I found myself routinely assigned weekly readings all about the dominant culture over and over, not ever thinking anything was wrong with it. But now, after this course, I find myself often pondering why this is the case and why does it seem so normal to leave so many authors and texts out of the equation when their stories are so powerful and moving.

I believe part of the issues in dealing with minority literature has to deal specifically with objective 2b: the detection of class as a repressed subject. In America, class is a sensitive subject and for many, it can be so sensitive a subject that it often ends up being ignored.  In our all too familiar plight to remain politically correct, it seems that many educators (and students alike) believe it’s just simply easier to ignore the subject of class rather than face it head on. As a result, minority literature, its subjects and its authors don’t get the attention they deserve and it isn’t until you take a class such as minority literature that you are really able to grasp the extent to which the genre is basically ignored.

Throughout the semester, I like many others, often found myself seeing situations I could easily relate to in the stories we read.  If it wasn’t myself in particular I was seeing it was a close friend friend, a family member or even someone I work with.  Through the course readings, I have learned a lot about myself, and more specifically how the dominant culture truly affects minority cultures especially in regards to literature. 

Minority Who?

To define the minority culture, we must first define the dominant culture. In America, the dominant culture generally consists of white, Anglo men of wealth and as a result, power.  If you aren’t part of the dominant culture or (trying desperately to become part of it) than you are one of two: an immigrant or a minority. The difference between the two outside groups stand as American immigrants wanted to come to America, minorities didn’t have a choice.  In fact, almost all immigrants purposefully and mindfully made the decision to pack up and leave their countries hoping to attain their piece of the American pie—a better home, the chance for more money, and for many, more freedom than ever thought possible. American minority cultures, on the other hand, did not join the dominant American culture purposefully, the way American immigrants did; instead the American dominant culture came knocking at their doors with an ultimatum: assimilate or become oppressed (Objective 1a. “Involuntary participation”).

In Woman Hollering Creek’s My Friend Lucy Who Smells Like Corn, we are shown the ambivalence of the general Mexican American culture in regards to the dominant cultures ways through the piece titled “Mericans.”   In the story, ladies “not from here” approach the Mexican American children and in immediately in Spanish, request a photo and offer gum.  The children oblige and  when one asks his siblings if they’d like some gum in English, the woman, presumably from the dominant culture because she isn’t “from here” and speaks “Spanish too big for her mouth,” is surprised the children know English at all. The little boy replies nonchalantly, “Yeah…we’re Mericans.”  Both Objective 4 (registering the minority dilemma of assimilation and resistance) and objective 3c (Mexican Americans as an ambivalent minority) are brought up in this scene.  On one side, you see Mexican Americans assimilating to some degree as the children know and speak English, and on the other hand they also understand and speak Spanish.  The fact that many Mexican Americans keep their culture very much alive through the use of traditional language is one aspect of the anti-assimilation argument; but, on the other hand, the children speak English—a dominant culture trait. Mexican Americans ambivalence to assimilation, as seen here, causes a true minority dilemma and leaves Mexican Americans in a gray area where they seem resistant and accepting, simultaneously. The name “Mericans” only reinforces ambivalence as an acceptable way of life.

Much like Mexican Americans who found themselves without much of a say in becoming a minority, Native Americans also found themselves forced into America’s minority class to no fault of their own, struggling to find their place to fit in America’s dominant culture.  In Love Medicine’s The Island, we read about LuLu, a young girl trying to find her own way. Dressed like the dominant culture, she emerges from a common boat ride at the reservation “smooth[ing] down my skirt, fix[ing] my collar…my hair short, spring, glossy, and curled with a  lead stick…shoes slick and black from the waters…my rolled down anklets so white they glowed.”  She approaches Moses, a member of her family who refuses to speak to her, and tells him, “You’ve been with the cats too long,” referring to his reaction of her and the uselessness of the tribe’s ways.  The reader can tell from the description of her clothes that LuLu chose to assimilate within the dominant culture, leaving behind the traditional Native American garb, which left her with feeling better off than the rest of her family.  Her opposition to her relative’s resentfulness in her ways shows that LuLu approves of her place and her decisions to mimic the dominant culture’s ways.

While some Native Americans, like LuLu, abandoned their customary ways, there are many who chose to fight to “survive” by clinging to their cultural beliefs and their honorary customs.  Native Americans such as Black Elk in Black Elk Speaks, struggled to maintain their identity and their traditional ways regardless of the dominant cultures pressing tries to take it away.  In my research postings, I studied Native American’s culture and the impact the dominant culture had on specifically their diet. “After the dominant culture began to ‘kill and kill the bison just because they can do that’ as Black Elk says, Native Americans diets and lifestyles were impacted tremendously.  When the whites forced the Native Americans into solitude and took away their hunting weapons they left them with no options other than succumb to what they wanted—for Native Americans to rely on the dominant white culture for essentials.” In Love Medicine, this is described as the dominant culture “dangling government money before their tribe’s noses.” 

Although Native Americans and Mexican Americans are considered widely popular minority cultures in America, it’s also important to note that not all minority groups have to be from different countries or even different cultures to be excluded from the dominant group.  There are groups very much alive within the dominant culture still noted as minority groups:  one specifically being homosexuals (Objective 7: the shift in identities of American cultures).  In The Best Little Boy in the World, Andrew Tobias depicts a young male, striving to fit into the dominant culture’s mold of what a young male should be, the same way LuLu was portrayed in Love Medicine as trying to fit the dominant culture’s traditional female role. “The problem was…” he says, “I felt nearly as uncomfortable not doing anything to her as I would have felt doing something. I wanted to do something, the way the preppie did, but all I could do for four hours is wonder what made me different.”   Because he was a homosexual, the young boy did not feel a part of the dominant culture, even though he looked like the dominant culture on the outside. The protagonist here struggles between fitting in and being himself.  Because he is different though, he ultimately is a minority, regardless of what he wants to be.

Leah Guillory says in her final, “All the narratives reveal their protagonists’ improvising—making do the best way they can. They could [have chosen] to suppress their voices, but they [chose] to express them showing their readers through voice [they] rise.” Leah’s term “improvising” is the perfect way to describe the ways in which the Mexican American, the Native American, and the homosexual cultures fit into the dominant culture.  For those who want to assimilate, they can improvise with the cultural roles they are given.  For those who choose otherwise, they can improvise with what they have to go against the grain. In the end, no minority group entirely assimilates or is entirely oppressed, there are always those who will chose their own paths such as the characters in Woman Hollering Creek, Love Medicine, Black Elk Speaks and The Best Little Boy in the World.