Kristina Nungaray

Minority Literature: Becoming One with the Other

            Upon enrolling in Minority Literature, I did not know what to expect. This was my first semester as a graduate student, and moreover, this was my first graduate course in literature. Initially, I elected to take the course because I was interested in the assigned texts, but was still unsure what to expect from such a class. I found the class extremely rewarding in the sense that through each text, and each section, I found that my pre-existing conceptions of minority populations and literature were consistently challenged, deconstructed, and reconstructed.

            Early in the semester, we discussed identity and how individual members of minority populations may be identified as the “other” in comparison to the self. I briefly brought this up in in my research presentation of the article, “Americans Have No Idea How Few Gay People There Are” in which I related this notion to social psychology suggesting that for minority populations the dominant culture holds an in-group bias viewing the minority population as a homogenous group. Meanwhile, the dominate culture views its members as a heterogeneous mélange of individuals. This is a dangerous line because the grouping of minority individuals into a homogenous population yields significance consequences, such as stereotyping and unequal treatment.

            The representation and the consequences of the other in comparison to the dominant culture’s self were present in a variety of texts that we read this semester. For example, in Frederick Douglass’ slave narrative, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an America Slave, Douglass is witness to an argument between Mr. and Mrs. Auld in which Mr. Auld scolds her for teaching Douglass how to read. He is talked about like he is not present and incapable of understanding what they are saying. Mr. Auld says, “Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world” (6.4). This can be contrasted to Douglass’ sobering portrayal of the slave’s sense of individuality as he describes the songs that they would sing, “words which to many would seem unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves” (2.9). Likewise, the representation of minority cultures as the other is apparent in Sandra Cisneros Women Hollering Creek, specifically the story “Mericans” in which an overly enthusiastic tourist confronts one of three Mexican children and bribes them with chicle for a photograph. Eventually the woman is shocked to learn that the children speak English because her preconceived notion was that the children were others and she therefore treated them in a stereotypical manner. Poets like Maya Angelou, illustrate that empowerment can come from transition from other to self. For example, in her poem “Still I Rise” Maya Angelou linguistically plays with all of the things that make her different from her oppressors and uses it to give her and others a sense of empowerment.

             Throughout the semester it became apparent that this sense of otherness was not exclusive to the dominant-minority dichotomy. Rather, while it was apparent at the population level, like the stereotyping incident from the story “Mericans” or the assumption that Native Americans were heathen-like and should be converted to organized religion in Black Elk Speaks, it was illustrated in this course how a member of a minority group could feel like the other at an individual, personal level in reference to their family or community. Course Objective Six emphasizes the representation of the individual, family, and alternative families in minority writings and experience. Across the course, the selected texts illustrated the significance of community and family in the life of the minority. For example, both Douglass’ and Jacobs’ slave narratives demonstrated the impact of their community and alternative slave families. An example of this can be seen in Douglass’ narrative through the character of Sandy Jenkins who took Douglass into his home and provided him with an auspicious root the night he ran away from Covey’s. Likewise, in Jacob’s narrative, her grandmother went to great lengths to hide Harriet and helped her granddaughter earn her freedom. The slave narratives, read early in the semester, reflect the integral role of community and family in the life of the minority in which it serves as a vehicle for improving the life of the individual as well as the group as a whole. However, texts such as Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Erdrich’s Love Medicine, and Cisneros’ Women Hollering Creek prove that the minority community – individual relationship is complex, and provide instances in which the role of the community or family can make a minority individual feel like they are other.

            I learned in this course that the role of the family in the minority narrative is as a source of empowerment as well as a source of tension. In Morrison’s novel Song of Solomon, Milkman is juxtaposed to his father Macon Dead, a man who is both feared and unaccepted by his community. As Milkman comes of age with his best friend Guitar, he is exposed to the community at a different level than from the comfort of his own home and family. He begins to sense a feeling of otherness in relation to his community, but as he becomes more comfortable within his community and ostracized by his family members, such as Pilate, he begins to become an other at home in his father’s eyes, providing the novel with a continued source of tension. This illustrates the complex nature of the family and community, proving that they play a significant role in the minority identity. A. Ambrosius described it really well in her 2012 midterm essay entitled “It’s a Family Thang” when she reflected on Toni Morrison’s interview in which Morrison said that the death of her father “killed his vision of her” and thus she was free to become the person she wanted to be. Barbara Trevino makes an interesting observation in her 2011 final exam, Self/Other in Minority Literature, asserting that Louise Erdrich’s novel Love Medicine presents the family as the self and White people as the other. I think this observation is interesting, because upon reading Love Medicine I felt the same way. I felt that Erdrich used that as a mechanism to provide the reader with a cast of characters that grappled with the construction of their identity not solely in terms of their relationship with the dominant culture but with their family as well. For example, the reader is presented with the conflicted character of King Kaspaw, June’s son. During a family dinner King a member of the younger generation brags about his abilities to hunt and fish, while his uncle reverts to taking the World’s Greatest Fisherman Hat off of his head claiming that King’s claims are unfounded. This presents a picture of an individual who like Milkman from Song of Solomon is in a state of otherness within his own family and community, and he suffers because of it. Therefore, a minority is not just an individual that must navigate their way through the consequences of the dominant-minority hierarchy, but must also create an identity in accommodation to, or despite the traditional values and expectations of their family and community. In a lot of ways this provides minority individuals with a double burden.

            In class we discussed how female minorities carry the double burden of being an ethnic minority and by being female (Objective Two). This provides an extension of the argument in which females are not only the other in relationship to the dominant culture, but are a double-minority and therefore often the other in relationship to their community and families. This point was illustrated in several texts read throughout the semester in which female characters had prescribed duties or obligations that allotted them less freedom than their male counterparts. For example in Love Medicine, although wanting to be a nun, Albertine’s mother was forced to take care of her child because she had gotten pregnant at an early age. Likewise in Woman Hollering Creek, Sandra Cisneros presents the reader with several female characters that struggle with their identity in terms of their family. In her story “Small Miracles, Many Answered Prayers” the final prayer is that of a girl who is thanking La Virgen de Guadalupe for not letting her be pregnant, she discloses how she is afraid that she is predisposed to a life in which she must be like her mother and grandmother, always struggling and always sad when all she wants to do it become a painter. In her prayer she discloses reflects on her mother’s and neighbors ridicule her, mocking that she wants to be a painter and saying that things will change once she gets married. I learned that from texts like these, the family and community play a role that is very powerful. It is one of acceptance and tension in the construction of minority identity.

            I learned a lot during the course of the semester; however, the concept of self vs. other was one that kept running through my mind in the reading of all of our texts and poems. It seemed to be a common theme in almost all of the text and interacted with other course objectives such as Objective Six and Objective Two. In reading the texts I learned that the role of family is multifaceted. I came into the course with a preconceived notion that the struggle to create an autonomous identity within a tradition culture was exclusive to Mexican-American females, based on my own family history. However, through books like Song of Solomon, and even Love Medicine, and The Best Little Boy in the World it became apparent that it was a common theme in several minority writings across the course. It seemed that while new generations/first generations were struggling with assimilation and acculturation like in Black Elk Speaks. The younger generations struggled with creating identity while struggling about whether or not to adhere to their culturally prescribed roles. Becoming more interested in the self-other dichotomy inspired me to try and create a new and original piece of creative writing for my research project. I started writing a novel that compared two females one “skinny” and the other “fat” in order to apply my knowledge of how self and other help create and perpetuate minority status. I will say that I enjoyed the texts provided in the class, especially some of the research articles. Being able to, and being encouraged to challenge the concepts that I learned in this course by applying them to my own creative writing, was the most rewarding aspect of this course for me. I offer a small suggestion of incorporating other types of minorities as well. I loved that the semester ended with a quick look at GLBT literature as minority literature. I know it is debatable, but I would like the inclusion of a text that looks at body size as a minority category. I think it would be interesting to have a class discussion that critically examines the inclusion of such a category as a minority status, because it allows us to apply broader knowledge learned throughout the course. It was through the selection of texts, the class discussions, student presentations and my own research project that I am leaving this class with a new understanding of minority literature. I truly learned a lot in this course, especially that we are all in some way, self and other.