LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature

Sample Student Final Exam Submission, fall 2004

James R. Hood

LITR 5731 - Final Exam - Essay Option 1

9 December, 2004

Native American Literature: A Narrative of Loss and Survival

            Prior to the arrival of European explorers, conquistadors, and settlers, the continents of the "New World" were home to entire nations of Native Americans whose cultures, though differing from one another on many points, shared a belief in a "living earth" as well as a respect for tradition. While the arrival of Europeans did not alter the Native Americans' positions on those subjects, the influx of explorers, conquerors, and settlers did impact the Native Americans' ability to practice those beliefs. The encroachment upon and the expropriation of the lands and resources of the Native Americans by the Europeans may be likened to an invasion of locusts that leaves anything but a "living earth" in its path, and the desire of the new government to fulfill a "Manifest Destiny" led to policies that were designed to disrupt or prohibit the Native Americans' practice of certain customs—in effect, trying to make the traditions of the Native Americans "vanish," along with the indigenous peoples themselves. The descendants of those "first peoples" still share a belief in a living earth and a respect for tradition, however, and Native American literature reflects that narrative of "loss and survival" that has come about as a result of having to endure the destruction of the Native Americans' "living earth" and the attacks upon and the disruption of their traditions at the hands of the new Americans.

            One example of Native American literature that illustrates this theme of loss and survival is Black Elk Speaks, which gives an account of Native American life from the perspective of the title character, as told to John G. Neihardt. Black Elk reflects on his people's culture, which, unfortunately, is defined more in terms of "what it no longer is," thanks largely to the losses his people have suffered at the hands of the Wasichus. He laments the Wasichus' attacks upon both Mother Earth and his people's traditions, but he longs not only for the past, but for a future as well where his peoples are reconnected with the earth and their traditions—he survives loss in hopes of one day seeing his people's way of life restored.

            This hope for a future return to their previous way of life is related to Course Objective 3(b), which states that

Whereas immigrants define themselves by leaving the past behind in order to get America, the Indians once had America but lost it along with many of their people. Yet they [Native Americans] defy the myth of "the vanishing Indian," instead choosing to "survive," sometimes in faith that the dominant culture will eventually destroy itself, and the forests and buffalo will return. (White 4)

In fact, Black Elk believes in this "Second Coming" to such an extent that one chapter of his book is entitled "The Messiah." Describing the hunger—both figurative and literal—that his people suffer, he writes that "The Wasichus had slaughtered all the bison and shut us up in pens. It looked as though we might all starve to death. We could not eat lies, and there was nothing we could do" (Black Elk 177). In searching for a means to mitigate this physical and spiritual hunger that his people suffer from, he tells of having heard of a Messiah who was "a sacred man among Paiutes who had talked to the Great Spirit in a vision, and the Great Spirit had told him how to save the Indian peoples and make the Wasichus disappear and bring back all the bison and the people who were dead and how there would be a new earth" (Black Elk 178).

The "Messiah" that Black Elk refers to is a Paiute mystic named Wovoka, and his message seems to echo that which we hear in Objective 3(b)—be patient, and the past way of life will return. Wovoka advocated the practice of the "Ghost Dance," a syncretic, trance-like mixture of dance, religious chants, and song drawn from several sources. The Wasichus sought to suppress the Native Americans' practice of customs such as this, however, and orders were soon given to the Native Americans to cease such activities. Unwilling to give up this last vestige of tradition, many Native Americans defied those orders, which only made the Wasichus more determined to exert their will over the Native Americans. This flammable situation erupted at Wounded Knee, and many innocent Native Americans were killed, marking yet another loss these peoples would have to survive if they were indeed to see a return to their former way of life.

Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven documents that narrative of Native American loss and survival as well, and while his stories do not describe loss on the magnitude of the atrocities suffered at Wounded Knee, they are just as powerful tales of his people’s survival. Beginning with "Every Little Hurricane," we hear Victor describe how he manages to survive within the structure of a dysfunctional family unit that might well be a metaphor for the Native American experience as a whole.

Alexie continues the theme of Native American loss and survival with "A Drug Called Tradition," which obviously alludes to the notion that tradition serves as a drug to his peoples. Recalling Karl Marx's suggestion that "religion is the opium of the people," it is conceivable that a belief in tradition serves Alexie's characters in much the same fashion—it provides them with a means for coping with having survived their people’s losses while waiting for that "Second Coming" that Black Elk's "Messiah" promised for Native Americans. Black Elk may have written of the suffering at Wounded Knee that “A people’s dream died there” (Black Elk 207), but keeping tradition alive through storytelling, as Alexie does through characters like Victor and Thomas Builds-the-Fire, might yet resurrect that dream of the Native Americans.

[End of Essay 1]

Mexican American Literature: A Narrative of Assimilation, Resistance and Ambivalence

            While much of Native American literature centers on the theme of loss and survival, much of what we find in the Mexican American narrative touches upon the related issue of having to choose between assimilation into or resistance to a dominant culture, as well as the feelings of ambivalence that come from dealing with those sorts of conflicts. Course Objective 4 addresses that “minority dilemma of assimilation or resistance” while posing the following question: “What balance do minorities strike between economic benefits and personal or cultural sacrifices?” (White 4). We see this dilemma of having to choose between assimilation or resistance manifested in some of this semester’s Mexican American readings, and Pat Mora’s poem “Depression Days” is an excellent case in point of the internal conflicts that arise from dealing with this issue:

“Depression Days”

            I buy the dark with my last fifteen cents.

            Reel after reel, I hide on the decks with men

            who fill their chests with salt air of the high seas,

            who sing, “red Sails in the Sunset.”

            I try not to think of the men who climbed

            on the cold truck with me this morning,

            stomachs screechy as gears. We were hungry

            for paychecks. I try not to think

            of last night on my cot, my private reel,

            me a border kid, smelling Colorado, gripping an ax,

            slicing that old pine smell, playing CCC lumberjack

            in a house dark from my father’s death.

            Our skin puckered this morning, shrank from the desert

            wind that slid into the wooden barracks herding us

            around the stove’s warm belly, my joke to the do,

            “Am I alive?” limp as the clothes bags around our necks.

            I try not to think of the sergeant spitting, “Delgado,”

            and I step from the line, his glare at my dumbness.

            “I said Delgado,” me saying, “I am Delgado.”

            The twitch of his lips. The wind.

            Then his “see me later,” later trying not to hear

            his brand of kindness, “You don’t look Mexican, Delgado.

            Just change your name and you’ve got a job.”

            My father eyeing me.

            So I buy the dark with my last fifteen cents.

            I try not to think of the bare ice box, my mother’s

            always sad eyes, of my father who never understood

            this country, of the price of eggs and names and skin.

                                                                                         Pat Mora

The temporal setting for Mora’s poem is during the “Depression Days,” which explains the title. The narrator tells of the poverty of the depression creating the dilemma of having to make a choice between starving or turning one’s back on one’s own culture. The speaker (Delgado), who is Mexican American, recalls the Civilian Conservation Corps sergeant—who has the power to decide who does or does not get a job—telling him that “You don’t look Mexican, Delgado. / Just change your name and you’ve got a job” (Mora 120). The internal conflict is revealed, however, when he recalls “My father eyeing me” and trying “. . . not to think of the bare ice box, my mother’s / always sad eyes, of my father who never understood / this country, of the price of eggs and names and skin” (Mora 120). Fellow classmate Michael Russo pointed out that “the price” in the last line of the poem refers not only to the eggs, but also to names and skin, which implies that not turning one’s back on one’s own culture (e.g., one’s own “name” or “skin”) carries with it a price.

The reference to the “bare ice box” alludes to the issue of hunger, and Delgado states that “I try not to think of the men who climbed / on the cold truck with me this morning, / stomachs screechy as gears. We were hungry / for paychecks” (Mora 120), which describes two types of hunger—one a physical craving, the other, as Course Objective 4 suggests, a hunger for “economic benefits” (White 4). As stated earlier, however, Delgado’s dilemma involves a sacrifice, regardless of the choice he makes—If he chooses to keep his name, he must sacrifice the economic benefits that turning his back on his own culture will bring. If he chooses assimilation for the sake of the paycheck that he and the others hunger for, then he sacrifices his heritage.

We see, however, that Delgado refers to another element of American culture (film) with which he identifies, and that illustrates a certain measure of ambivalence that exists in the Mexican American narrative towards having to choose either culture to the exclusion of the other. In Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, Sandra Cisneros explores this aspect of the “ambivalent minority” as well. In her short story “Bien Pretty,” the narrative revolves around a woman of Mexican descent trying to reconnect with her heritage after having chosen economic stability at the expense of becoming ambivalent towards her own culture for many years, it seems. She meets Flavio, an exterminator, and is intrigued by his having retained a certain measure of his ethnicity, despite living in a country whose own system of values seems to dictate that minorities must choose between assimilation or resistance. She tells Flavio that “This is a powerful time we’re living in. We have to let go of our present way of life and search for our past, remember our destinies, so to speak. Like the I Ching says, returning to one’s roots is returning to one’s destiny” (Cisneros 149).

Rudolfo Anaya addresses that belief that “returning to one’s roots is returning to one’s destiny” as well in his novel, Bless Me, Ultima. In this work, young Antonio Márez must choose between the old customs of his people and those of his people’s conquerors. The old customs revolve around a belief in the powers of the curandera, or healing woman (Ultima), while the new customs center on the power that the church represents. He is torn between assimilation and resistance, and as he struggles with choosing between the two, he realizes that perhaps the best philosophy is one that embraces both cultures, again reflecting the role that syncretism plays in these narratives. His hesitation in either fully embracing or totally rejecting one set of customs to the exclusion of the other illustrates a measure of ambivalence that is to be expected from a minority group whose peoples have lived most of their lives “on the border,” caught between two cultures—one that promises economic benefits, while the other nurtures the roots that feed the destiny of la raza. Antonio’s choice is to straddle that border between the two sets of customs, and much of what we see in Mexican American literature seems to bear witness that this might be the most pragmatic approach to reconciling the conflicting emotions that accompany the dilemma of having to choose between assimilation into or resistance to the mainstream of American culture, even if it does breed a certain measure of ambivalence.

Works Cited

Alexie, Sherman. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven. New York: Harper,

     1993.

Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me, Ultima. New York: Warner, 1972.

Black Elk, Nicholas, and John G. Neihardt. Black Elk Speaks. Lincoln, NE: University of

     Nebraska Press, 2000.

Cisneros, Sandra. Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. New York: Vintage, 1991.

Mora, Pat. “Depression Days.” Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry. Ed. Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan. New York: Penguin, 1994. 119-120.

White, Craig.            LITR 5731 Course Syllabus. UHCL, Fall 2004.