Jason Kimbrell

Hierarchies of Literacy in American Minority Literature

            While I was researching my journal, I came across an article that I was able to reference, but not explore at length. That article, “Black Message/White Envelope: Genre, Authenticity, and Authority in Antebellum Slave Narrative” by John Sekora, asserts that white editors, transcribers, and/or intellectuals would preface slave narratives in order to validate their contents. In this way, the language of white, dominant culture subsumed African American letters. As I reviewed the material we studied in this course, I was struck by how prevalent white culture invaded minority narratives in general. This led me to look at how literacy. Objective 5 asks us to “study the influence of minority writers and speakers on literature, literacy, and language.” Literacy is a path to power. Frederick Douglass, for example, found freedom after learning how to read. Yet, in our post-midterm texts, it is not enough to be literate, but to be literate in a specific language: English. I would like to propose a seventh sub-objective for Objective 5: to study the hierarchical relationship between English and minority tongues. In general, English is regarded as having more authority than minority languages. This is especially apparent in Black Elk Speaks, Bless Me, Ultima, “Senora X No More,” and The Best Little Boy in the World.

            In Black Elk Speaks, English is seen as a superior language to Lakota in two ways: first, in John Neihardt's romanticization of Black Elk's Native American heritage, and in his decision to translate certain words and leave others as is. Many critics, as we discussed in class, find Neihardt's depiction of Black Elk troubling. Matt pointed out in his presentation that Black Elk was a devout Catholic for 45 years, but Neihardt disregards this fact. Issues of authenticity abound in Black Elk. In the preface to the 1972 edition of the book, Neihardt admits to blurring some of the facts: “it was my function to translate the old man's story, not only in the factual sense—for it was not the facts that mattered most—but rather to re-create in English the mood and manner of the old man's narrative” (xxvii). Thus, we do not get Black Elk's words, but Neihardt's interpretation of them. Rather than seize such an opportunity to render the text entirely in proper English, Neihardt carefully picks the right words to depict Black Elk as an outsider to dominant culture. For example, the Lakota term “Wasichu” means “white man,” and it appears without translation throughout the text. However, Black Elk's trip to Europe is not phrased in such exact terms. Instead of crossing an ocean, he crosses “the big water.” He meets Queen Victoria, but calls her “Grandmother England.” The phrasing does not represent the  language of an educated person, but rather as a child might interpret the world. Through the authority of the English language, Neihardt places Black Elk in an inferior position simply through translation.

            In Bless Me, Ultima, Rudolfo Anaya raises issues of English/Spanish language hierarchy. While Native American literature longs for a lost world, as in Objective 3B, Mexican-American literature has ambivalent and mixed feelings, Objective 3C. There is a sense of deep loss, but at the same time, extreme gain in learning English. In Ultima, Antonio faces adversity in the class room. He gets nervous about his command of English and understands that it is the language of authority. When his sisters tell him that the teachers in school only let them speak English, he worries that he will not be able to speak to them (35). Antonio's actual experience in the classroom shows how English literacy overpowers minority identity. Miss Maestas asks Antonio's name, and when he gives it to her, she writes it down as “Anthony Marez,” not “Antonio Marez” (61). Antonio learns how to write his name in the English spelling, not the Spanish spelling. After he masters writing his name, she takes Antonio in front of the class and speaks in English. Antonio says, “She pointed at me but I did not understand her. Then the other boys and girls laughed and pointed at me.” Distressed at the experience, Antonio decides to “stay away from the groups” and work hard at listening and mastering the language. He is driven to learn English because he sees that it is a path not just to power, but out of shame. Spanish, then, is a lower language and therefore does not have the social authority of English.

            Pat Mora's “Senora X No More” draws similar conclusions about the relationship between English and Spanish in minority language. The speaker of the poem is an adult learning how to speak English and write for the first time. She immediately floods the reader with self-deprecating language in association with speaking Spanish. She sits “straight as a nun,” recalling nunneries as a place for shamed or delinquent women to reform (1). Her fingers feel “foolish before paper and pen,” and “hide” in her palms (2-3). The heavily accented phrases are misspelled and come from lips that “resist' the sounds (3, 6). Later, the teacher corrects her by opening the “ugly soap-wrinkled fingers of [her] right hand” (16). The speaker has a sense of shame about her heritage specifically when it comes to language. Yet, at the end of the poem, there is triumph as the speaker writers her name for the first time, over and over again. Through learning English as a second language and how to read and write that language, the speaker has assumed an identity that has more authority than her previous identity. English is held hierarchically higher than Spanish, which in this case might as well be complete illiteracy.

            In Native American literature, English renders translations that sound distinctly detached from modern society, thus making the original language seem backward itself. Mexican-American literature, however, tends to approach English as a chance at obtaining social power and sacrifices Spanish in an effort to achieve that power. With LGBT literature, English is already the dominant language. In The Best Little Boy in the World, Andrew Tobias explores how the language of the dominant culture can be enough to put the codes and lingo of minority culture down. Tobias is constantly afraid that his homosexuality will cause him to lose his privileged status. One of his “defense programs” was to “remain as ignorant as possible on the subject of homosexuality,” as “the less [he] new, the less chance that” he would appear gay (37-38). By intentionally blocking out the language of the minority culture, he grants power to dominant, English culture. Unlike Mexican-American literature, where the benefits of speaking the dominant tongue have immediate benefits, the benefit for Tobias is coupled with an emotional taxation. When he takes a job with IBM in New York, he sublimates “sexual energy” into work energy, but admits to a terrible depression as a result” (85). In this way, English has an ominous power to it. There is a form of distrust that can only be shaken by embracing minority culture.

            Minority writers have had a huge impact on the English language. The world would be much worse off if we did not have the rich sounds of Spanish mingling with English prose in Woman Hollering Creek, or the equally poetic prose of Love Medicine. In minority literature, literacy plays an important role as a path to power and identity. However, I believe that there is a complicated relationship between English literacy and the language of the minority culture. In many ways, this mirrors the quest for the American Dream. As Juan Garcia writes in his 2010 final exam, “each minority must make compromises in order to find their place in American Culture.” Likewise, each of our texts makes compromises in terms of language in order to communicate with the English-speaking world at large.