LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature

Sample Student Final Exam Submission, spring 2006

Karen Hrametz

Spring 2006

Optional Choice #1 – My Personal Reflections
on this Course

As I consider the minority experience our course has provided, I find that my conscience has indeed been challenged, my mind awakened in ways I did not expect. While the texts we studied are mostly fictional, the response they generated in my heart is very real. I find myself saddened for the Precious Jones that I may pass, but do not recognize, and grieving for the loss of talent from talent wasted on our failure to promote literacy to all those who desire it. I feel shame for the people who look like me, but who close the door on those who do not, saying, “you are different, you can’t enter.”

It isn’t that I’ve never before considered the pain of racial injustice; certainly I am aware that within the geographic borders of this country, where “all men are created equal,” a multitude of other borders exist which perpetuate separation and discourage unification. Minority literature reveals those borders, and challenges readers to destroy them. I chose this course because I was unfamiliar with the writers to be studied. I anticipated a review of various American minority cultures; I did not anticipate the strong personal reaction I would have to the readings. We read several texts this semester that I want to linger with me – most notably Song of Solomon, Push, and Bless Me Ultima. Solomon delivered a powerful message to me about family structure and the importance of finding one’s roots; this theme was echoed in Ultima. Ultima and Our Lady of Guadalupe made me reconsider my own religious beliefs, and Push rekindled the desire in me to champion the rights of abused and disabled children. In a similar way, Black Elk’s story and Sherman Alexie’s writing awoke in me feelings of shame and sorrow for the way Native Americans have been treated in our country. The weekly poetry readings added the exclamation mark to message of the texts we read. The Walt Whitman pieces touched me deeply, so deeply, in fact, that I plan to read more of his work as time permits.

Of all the texts, Black Elk Speaks is the only one that left me with negative feelings. I have given thought to why this is so, and I believe it is because the mention of scalping people is so distasteful to me that I almost missed the point of Black Elk’s story. Indeed, the words made me uncomfortable, but, at the same time, I recognize the power of such writing to effect change. My final project illustrates this point well. Certainly, writers such as Lydia M. Child, Charles Eastman, and Helen Hunt Jackson made readers uncomfortable, but that is probably why their work was so effective in bringing voice to the minority culture.  Some of my classmates were similarly dismayed by the frankness of Push and Best Little Boy, but if we read texts only because they were certain not to offend, we may well miss the messages they have to convey.

One of the most helpful aspects of this course is the list of objectives offered in the syllabus. With each of our readings, I was prompted to look for ways the material met the course objectives, and in every case, this activity helped me to focus my attention on the minority experience. Some of the texts are so well written that it would be easy to become absorbed in the beauty of the writing and, consequently, forget the task at hand. The objectives serve as the thread that binds all the reading together, and, as a result, the memory I take from this course is not so much the individual story, but the collective one. Instead of reflecting on individual stories and authors, I think of the overall minority experience, such as the importance of origin stories and finding one’s roots, the struggle for survival amidst overwhelming sacrifice and loss, and, most of all, the realization that every citizen of our country has a voice that deserves to be heard, and a right to pursue their own unique version of the American dream. 

Option # 2 -  Borders - a Recurring Theme in Minority Literature

          Before this class, the word “border” called to my mind a physical barrier, placed to prevent undesired entry. Within our study of minority literature, borders have been a recurring theme; some of them signify physical structures, while others imply something that cannot be seen, but can surely be felt.

          The first Africans to arrive in America were greeted with borders of both kinds. We know from their narrative stories that slaves were often physically separated from their loved ones and were isolated on their owner’s property. Linda Jacobs and Olauda Equiano  revealed a different kind of border – one that denied literacy to slaves and served to keep them “in their place.” From Push, we learned that poverty is often accompanied by oppression – and both serve as powerful blockades to success. In Solomon, we found families isolated in a less-desirable part of town, confined by the dominant culture’s fear and prejudice.

          Black Elk and Lone Ranger underscore the loss that Native American’s experienced when they were forced to relocate from their homeland to reservations, which could only serve to separate rather than unite. Sherman Alexie’s work remind us of the price Native Americans have paid for that separation – including the introduction of severe medical problems from the loss of their ability to live in the self-sustaining environment they had always known.  Black Elk and Lone Ranger illustrate the Native American struggle to preserve their culture within the demoralizing reality of confinement on the reservation.

          The border theme is central to the Mexican-American story of ambivalence – do they belong to America or Mexico?  Ultima mirrored this struggle with the Marez and Luna families each trying to preserve their own cultural roots. The Virgin of Guadalupe serves as a mediating presence within the converging European/Mexican cultures. Woman Hollering Creek begins with a story of a woman crossing the physical border from Mexico to America, and throughout the book continues to address non-physical “border” issues such as women trying to break from the traditional roles expected in their culture.

          The Best Little Boy is not concerned with physical borders, but indeed, creates his own boundary around his private life as he struggles to find his own identity and avoid being discovered as a homosexual. Because his confinement is self-imposed, the Best Little Boy may not garner the sympathy of many people, but his feelings of isolation are as real as those felt by any person who is seen as “the other.”   As he learns his true identity, the borders expand to include other homosexuals, but they, too, find that their happiness is best won by segregation within the gay culture.

          While minority literature is rooted in feelings of isolation brought about by borders of different kinds, the literature itself, ironically, helps break down those barriers.  We have made significant progress in that area. Thirty years ago, when Best Little Boy was first published, the author could not reveal his true name for fear of the hostility toward himself and his family; now, he is an extraordinarily successful author and businessman, and his gay identity is only a footnote to his story. Like Andrew Tobias, the minority authors we studied had the courage to reveal the borders that prevent their entry into the full rights of American citizenship; as readers and Americans, we are charged with the responsibility to help reveal and destroy those borders.