LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature

Sample Student Final Exam Submission, fall 2004

Brendan Foley

December 11, 2004

Final Exam:  Question #1-“Class Issues in the Ambivalent Minority”

            In the discussion of issues that center on Mexican American culture, whether the issues are political, economic, social, or cultural, a descriptive term that has arisen out of the discourse is “ambivalent.”  Certainly, due to its somewhat negative connotations, it may not be the best term to attach to an entire segment of society when talking about issues of representation, but when one examines the cultural texts of this population the term certainly finds applications.  Indeed, the theme of ambivalence is used throughout Sandra Cisneros’ collection of stories, Women Hollering Creek, and through her use of this idea, Cisneros reveals an underlying discourse about class that seems to exist within Mexican American culture that may not be recognized otherwise.

            Cisneros’ story  “Never Marry a Mexican” is where both the theme of ambivalence and the issue of class are most predominant.  The narrator of the story is given the advice to “never marry a Mexican” by her mother due to issues that center on class.  The narrator’s mother, who was of Mexican descent, is from “el otro lado” or “the other side”, which is a reference to the U.S. side of the border, and she married into a family that still lived in Mexico.  The conflict that arises, however, is not geographic; it is a conflict centering on class.  The father’s family considers him to have “married down” because of the class indicators that the mother either has or lacks.  She, the mother, doesn’t speak Spanish, can’t set silverware, can’t fold napkins, or essentially, lacks the etiquette that comes from an upper-class upbringing.

This class conflict present in the lives of the narrator’s parents is passed on to the narrator by her mother but is transformed into an issue of race, “Mexican men, forget it […] I never saw them.  My mother did this to me.”  What the narrator believes is an issue of race is truly a class bias.  She attempts to hide by assuming a mask of ambivalence about class “I’m amphibious […] I don’t belong to any class.”  The irony of the story is that her own lover, a white man, eventually leaves her for his wife, a white woman, which she assumes is because of race, “Never marry a Mexican.  No, of course not.  I see. I see.   Yet, it is not race that is the difference, but class, and this becomes apparent in the description of her lovers home, “leaded glass lamp with the milk glass above the dining room table […] the four-clawed tub[…] a white robe with a made in Italy label […] Calidad.  Quality.”  These “qualities” are of an upper-class lifestyle that separates the narrator from her lover not racial difference.  

Cisneros certainly has an interest in presenting an authentic representation of Mexican Americans, but she does not let ambivalence blind her to how both race and class influence and sometimes disguise each other within the culture that she lives in.

Question #2:  “Queering the Frontier”: Finding a Place in The Best Little Boy in The World.

AdrianTobias’ memoir/confessional, The Best Little Boy in The World, tells the story of Tobias discovering and learning to accept his homosexuality.   The fact that the book centers around such an issue might initially turn many mainstream readers away from the book, and those who do read it might be turned off if Tobias was very graphic in his description of his sexual activities and fantasies.   Yet, Tobias cleverly uses some figures of speech that make the material, at least from a critical standpoint, very palatable and surprisingly tap into some very mainstream American myths.

The primary trope that Tobias uses early in his memoir to represent his desire to be with other boys or men is his recurrent reference to “being cowboys” or “running off to Wyoming to be cowboys.”   The cowboy image acts as a metonym for the mythic American frontier, which primarily has been seen, especially in American literature, as a place of escape from the claustrophobic conditions of civilization.   What Tobias does in his use of the “cowboy” image is “queer” the myth of the American frontier.  Such an act is done for several purposes.  First, and most obvious, the trope expresses the desire within Tobias to have a place where he can freely express his sexuality and develop the relationships that would meet his desires.  Second, and perhaps, more importantly, the use of the metonym and the myth safely give Tobias a voice to those desires.   The cowboy imagery and the frontier mythology all evoke common set of beliefs that allow Tobias to present material that some segments of his audience may find improper or, even worse, immoral.  Yet, for Tobias, the code of silence and the metaphor of “the closet” as an alternative certainly carry more dangerous repercussions, and as the memoir proves are not an alternative.