LITR 5731 Seminar in American Minority Literature UHCL 2004 sample student final exam

LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature

Sample Student Final Exam Submission, fall 2004

Nicole Jackson

12/09/2004

The Culturalization of Race: Ambiguity in American Minority Literature

In January of 2004, I spent an entire semester in a disputatious yet enlightening course that sought to illuminate the construction of racialized categories in the United States. This class presupposed race as a social construct (ethnic and racial categories are socially defined categories, which are constantly being renegotiated, revised, and redefined) instead of adopting the primordial perspective (race is a fixed entity because it is a biological construct and is present at birth). While reading American minority literature, I found myself revisiting themes, allegories, motifs, legalese, and research from this course, as I sought to discern the complications among race, class, and gender. Although this course never proved one over the other, I learned that culture is often racialized and race is often culturalized and viewed as monolithic. But most importantly, this course taught me that class is a great cultural synthesizer and racial catalyst distinguishing the height of oppression and marginalization in literature. In other words, all groups in America belong to a social class even if they identify with different racial (to name perhaps the most obvious) groupings. For instance, while Ruth and Precious share a racial makeup, they are constituents of two totally different social classes.

I certainly witnessed the phenomenon of collapsing culture, class and race over the course of the American Minority Literature seminar. In regards to African American literature, I wondered if Toni Morrison was depicting a culture of African American ancestry byway of social class because her fragmented characters ranged from the very poor southerners to the assimilated northerners. Clearly, these characters’ racial experiences were definitely mediated by social class. For instance, even though Macon Dead is excluded from the mainstream society, he still believes that he can enjoy (at least) a slice of the American Dream. Meanwhile, Milkman’s southern kin had literally been excluded from the American dream and the mainstream white American society. With the exception of a common experience due to racial discrimination/prejudices, Milkman and these southern blacks really have nothing in common.

As the course objective describes class as a repressed subject in America, this is stifled in literature as well. And, attempts to predominantly explore class—along with race and gender—seemed to lose its appeal in the classroom. Thus, I think novels like Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek, Push, and The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up really allow the reader to explore social class. These novels accomplish these feats because not only do they offer critiques of the dominant culture, but, as cultural/racial insiders, they also critique those groups in which they identify with.

The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up is the prefect foundation for comparing and contrasting race, class, and gender within a culture. This novel, written by Andrew Tobias, narrates a young man’s struggle to come out of the closet. The paradox, in the context of minority literature, lies in the fact that Tobias seems so normal. His narrative offers no proof of lower social class markers. Furthermore, the motif of oppression, that provided the textual fluidity in the course, doesn’t seem to affect Tobias. He is not dependent upon social service agencies like Precious. He is not portrayed as being unstable or constantly transient like Cleofilas in Woman Hollering Creek. Tobias’s largest crisis is caused by his desire to come out of the closet. He is empowered because he knows that he has the ability to free himself. Unlike Precious who finds solace in a community school. Unlike the transitory Cleofilas who finds gender contradictions regardless of geographical borders, Andrew Tobias is stable, financially comfortable, and he discusses no personal racial tensions. For these reasons, we can rid ourselves of the other competing markers that create one’s politics of identity, and we can finally focus on social class.

The New [Trans Migrant} American

Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek is a novel that strays from the conventional narrative form. By doing so, Cisneros seems to voice a body of political, economic, and social contradictions. In her short story, also entitled Woman Hollering Creek, Cisneros manipulates the concepts of borders. Nevertheless, the conceptualizations of borders are numerous in this story. These borders begin with the protagonist’s gender. Because she is female, she is limited by patriarchal values. Even though she escapes a life of “chores that never ended,” when she marries, she reenters another patriarchal society and its never-ending chores. Perhaps the most peculiar aspect of Cleofilas’s marriage is her move to—''el otro lado''—the other side that introduces modernities, but it does not secure liberation from the lifelong chores that are made evident through motherhood and a loveless marriage. Sandra Cisneros does a wonderful job of intimating Cleofilas’s personal borders: caused by illusions of love. Cisneros suggests that Cleofilas is enslaved both by her desire to be beautiful (like the women on the television) and her fear of empowerment, which ultimately convinces Cleofilas to leave her abusive marriage. Though this dichotomy is plain to see, many critics fail to see a larger complicity that Sandra Cisneros is suggesting. By using feminist theoretical frameworks, Cisneros deconstructs those ways that society uses gender to feed on a woman’s insecurities. Although Cisneros deliberately describes the beautiful actresses and entertainers, they are women who have benefited from the allocation of women’s rights. These same women aid the entertainment and beauty industries in oppressing women like Cleofilas. This oppressive agenda is executed via a barrage of corporations/businesses that produce romance novels and the Spanish soap operas. Despite the fact that one can argue that these forms of media have a way of liberating the imagination, they bind Cleofilas to a romanticized notion of love in which everything works out as planned. Throughout the duration of the story, Cleofilas learns that this myth is simply not true. Nothing really works out as planned. But it is her renewed sense of self, her commitment to reconnect with her familial network in Mexico, and her unwillingness to tolerate the domineering tactics of her husband that transplants a real voice. Cleofilas’s finds her voice, a voice that overcomes insecurities, maltreatment, and speaks of her liberation. This voice allows Cleofilas to experience a liberated woman’s “holler” (at the river) as she transcends the problematics of residing in the U.S. Cleofilas crosses the final border (the river), which ensures that she is indeed home. The culmination of this story is of vital importance and hints to some critical examinations of Cleofilas’s fairytale return. First, the reader can become so entwined in this triumphant tale and forget to assess the totality of these geo-political boundaries that both help (modernity) and hurt (fluctuating politics of identity) Cleofilas. On the one hand, Cleofilas does not find her voice until she moves to the U.S. and experiences several hardships. On the other hand, Sandra Cisneros’s ambiguous ending—“Then Felice began laughing again, but it wasn’t Felice laughing. It was gurgling out of her own throat, a long ribbon of laughter, like water”—suggests that Cleofilas has not yet liberated herself. She does not holler. She only experiences Felice’s hollering. This is perhaps Cisneros’s way of forewarning the reader of Cleofilas’s return. Even though there is a possibility that Cleofilas will never reside in the U.S. again, she will be back. Moreover, though Celofilas is returning home to Mexico, she is forever changed in a number of ways. I postulate that this is a foretelling of signs to come in which more Americans will claim nationhood to different countries. This falls into the thick description of course objective 4a, To identify the "new American" who crosses, combines, or confuses ethnic or gender identities. Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek speaks of identifying, critiquing and transcending borders. The transcendence of these geo-political borders will (perhaps) ultimately create a new transnational American. Early statistics prove that, like Cleofilas, these individuals will be overwhelmingly females catering to a labor demand in the service sectors. This concept of the new American is slowly receiving the attention that it deserves.