LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature

Sample Student Final Exam Submission, spring 2006

Sara Moreau

Native Americans

            The Native American narrative is full of images of loss and survival. When the Europeans came to America the Native Americans were forced out of their way of life. They were both forced out of and fenced in their lands according to what the Europeans wanted at that given time. The Indians’ natural way of life was now changed in many ways; leaving them always looking back to the past wishing things could be as they once were, and always hoping that if they just hold on they may be one day.

In the Black Elk Speaks narrative, Black Elk’s sorrowful tone tells stories of the tremendous loss the Native Americans have suffered. They lost many warriors, women, and children in battles with the Wasichus. The Native Americans were happy on their land and everything was in plenty until the Wasichus came and “made little islands for [them] and other little islands for the four-leggeds, and always these islands [were] becoming smaller, for around them surged the gnawing flood of the Wasichu; and it was dirty with lies and greed.” With the coming of the Wasichus, or the white people, the Indians suffer the loss of their lands and many of their people as they try to fight for their land.

 The Native Americans in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven suffer losses just as those in Black Elk, but in Lone Ranger the images of survival are more the center. The Native Americans in The Lone Ranger seem to have accepted the white people and their ways, and although they do not like them, they have found a way to live with them. The Native Americans still live on a reservation, but instead of living in a tepee, like those in Black Elk, they live in “HUD homes.” The white people have come in and Americanized the reservation. They even paid Thomas Builds-the-Fire to put up light posts on some of his property. The Native Americans have learned to live with the white people and assimilate to their culture where necessary, but they also keep themselves separate enough to survive with their own culture in tact. 

Mexican American Ambivalence

            In our class we define ambivalent as having mixed feelings or contradictory attitudes. Mexican Americans are known for being an ambivalent group of people. Are they immigrants, or are they minorities? Where do they fit in? Do they assimilate to the dominant culture, or do they resist assimilation and stay true to their old culture? The Mexican American narratives Bless Me, Ultima and Woman Hollering Creek both address these issues.

In Bless Me, Ultima, Antonio experiences both cultural ambivalence where he has to choose between his father’s life as a vaquero and his mother’s family life as a farmer. Antonio says, “My father had been a vaquero all his life, a calling as ancient as the Spaniard to Nuevo Mejico. Even after the big rancheros and the tejanos came and fenced the beautiful llano, he and those like him continued to work there, I guess because only in that wide expanse of land and sky could they feel the freedom their spirits needed.”  Being a vaquero meant being in the openness, having freedom, and riding horses all day while tending to flocks.  It was not like the small city where the land was not appreciated.

On the other hand, the Lunas, Antonio’s mother’s family, were farmers. They lived in the city with schools and churches. They cultivated the land, made gardens, and fenced in their property. Antonio could see the good in both sides. The vaqueros had freedom and appreciated the beauty in the open land; the farmers had civility and community. His parents each pushed him to be on their sides, but Anthony had trouble deciding just where he fit in.

Not only did Antonio have these feeling of ambivalence toward his family’s two cultures, but he also felt this way about their religions. His father’s side of the family had curanderas and relied on spirits and things like the golden carp. His mother’s side of the family was Catholic and relied on the church. His mother also wanted him to be a priest.

Antonio did not know what to do because he saw good things in both sides, but he also saw faults in both sides. The golden carp gave him peace when Catholicism failed to answer his questions. At the end of the story, Antonio comes to a resolution for his ambivalence. He says, “take the llano and the river valley, the moon and the sea, God and the golden carp- and make something new.” He decided that he could control his own destiny. He had to take the good things from both his parents’ pasts and combine them to make something good for himself. That is where he would finally “fit.”

Just as Antonio has to decide which culture he is part of- Marez or Luna- Sandra Cisneros’s character in “Eleven” has a similar experience. She says, “What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one.” Everyday when you wake up and you are a day older, you are not a new person, you are still the person you were yesterday only with a little more experience.

When Mexicans come to America they are not new people. They are still who they were before. After they are in the new place for a while small things start to change and feelings of ambivalence arise as they wonder which culture they really belong to.