LITR 5731: Seminar in
American Multicultural Literature: Minority
Sample Student Final Exam Submission,
Patricia M. Dixon
5 December 2007
Additional Essay Option #1
Personal Reflections on American Minority Literature
My Journey to Understanding
My personal journey to understanding the differences that each of us faces within our narrow cultural confines began more than thirty years ago. I was a new student on the Pre-med fast track to becoming an Occupational Therapist. Most of the students were multinational and came from a variety of places that I had only ever read about. I began with my early studies with courses in sociology, but there were few literature courses, at that time, that explained the differences that I discovered in the lives of the varied students around me.
The Indian girl whose father had selected her husband for her by age three, the West African girl who was afraid to go home because she had married a white man in America and her family was furious with her, or the Latin girls who ran in a clique and never spoke to anyone outside of class except each other. I had no clue about the complexities that made all of these people so unique, different, and, in some cases, downright strange.
My very first glimpse of the Native American experience came from reading excerpts from the letters of Christopher Columbus. I saw the Native American situation as being a worse case than that of the Africans brought to these shores as slaves. The African did not see his home and lands torn asunder to satisfy the greed of hordes of whites who then shunted them onto small reservations. However, they shared the devastation of having their families torn asunder through the removal of their children to “Indian schools” while slaves had their loved ones sold away from them.
Much of the literature for this semester left me with mixed feelings. But, I guess, the biggest thing that it did for me was to make me see things from a different perspective. The Song of Solomon showed me that we are all connected to our common past even when we don’t know what it is. Its effects on the lives of those that have reared us are passed down to us in ways that we may or may not understand. The family structure and connections that are the backbone of Native American society exemplified in “Black Elk Speaks” are totally absent in “Love Medicine”. It is also true that in “Love Medicine” the convoluted upbringing of the people in these various families would have been better served if they had access to their ancient tribal family structure.
Instead, they and their children were shunted off to Indian schools were they were lumped into buildings with the children of other tribes. Tribes that were often their ancient enemies and, yet, they are forced by circumstances to co-exist together inside these schools. All of their cultural points of reference were gone: short-circuited by this enforced sacrifice of the intricate connections that made them a functional society. Denied their own means of interaction and communication to pass knowledge to the next generation is it any wonder that their descendents are convoluted messes that cannot find their way home in an approaching storm?
Contemplation of the complexities of other minorities and cultural practices has fascinated me and, I believe, will help me with the insight that I need for, not only character development in the stories that I craft, but also in my daily interaction with people of other cultures. The depictions of the characters and the writing strategies that were utilized in the various novels and stories that we read have already given me insight into the minds of how writers from different backgrounds think. I have spent a large part of my life seeking to develop characters that are meaningful and rich to a wide variety of audiences.
I learned that all of us have borders inside and out that we may or may not be able to cross and that it is these borders that I have become more sensitive to when dealing with cultures different from my own. The use of sexuality by the Native Americans in “Love Medicine” helped me to understand that I am operating from a tradition of Romanticism that is not even native to my own African cultural heritage. It opened my eyes to the ways in which we evaluate others based upon our own biases and expectations. The stories in “Woman Hollering Creek” and “Bless Me, Ultima” likewise gave me an understanding of the pressures that Native Americans and Mexican-Americans are forced to deal with inside of their own cultural traditions—traditions of expectations to family, community, and how their personalities are shaped by these forces.
Finally, my journey to understanding takes me into a future where gender and sexual orientation are also causes for discrimination. Women have always been seen as less than men—from the first discussions about women’s natures to centuries of religious taboos and restrictions. Are we the same as the slave masters of Douglas’ and Equiano’s day? Do we have the right to withhold equal status under the law to those whose sexual preferences we don’t agree with?
Reading the excerpt from “The Best Little Boy in the World” made me examine my beliefs with regard to gay rights and, while I have not completely resolved the conflict within my own mind with regard to my spiritual beliefs, I do agree that under the laws of the land we cannot legislate morality. All citizens must have equal rights under the law. The United States of America long ago based its laws upon the foundation of the Holy Bible. Now, we are moving into a world that considers those values to be outmoded, unjust and intolerant. If we are moving to a more “scientific and rational” system of government than the Bible, then we must make sure that individual freedom to engage in personal relationships with either an opposite or same-sex partner does not affect the legal rights of the individual.
In conclusion, I want to add that the lesson that I have learned this semester is that we all have our borders and barriers, but they do not have to trap us into repeating the mistakes of the past. I challenge anyone reading this to ask of themselves the following questions: “What are my prejudices? And how did I acquire them?” If they cannot answer these questions they should put their prejudices aside and learn something about the people or thing that they are prejudiced against. This is the criteria that I used when reading the material for the semester and it has led me to, not only an improvement in my understanding of others, but a continued interest in the cultural dynamics that shape us into the people that we ultimately become.
What’s at Issue? The Recurring Argument
Additional Essay Option #2
The issue that kept recurring for me was the one of assimilation into the dominant culture with its resultant problems. This issue intrigued me throughout the semester. The process by which we are assimilated into the dominant culture and the things that we lose from our culture of origin: are they worth the gains that we make in the dominant culture? The slaves Douglass, Equiano, Jacobs, and all of the others had no choice in their assimilation into the dominant culture.
All were born into slavery, except Equiano, and he was made a slave so young that he lost all of his cultural ties that would have shaped him into the traditions of his native people. Their expectations were shaped by the dominant culture in which they lived. When Douglass resents that he must give his wages to his owner, he has come to understand that other men are free to take and utilize their money for themselves and their families and he desires that privilege for himself. His expectations and those of the others were shaped by the society in which they lived and were forced to work.
Native American assimilation into the dominant culture was also involuntary. In “Love Medicine” Lulu Nanapush talks of running away from the Indian school in search of her mother, while Nector Kashpaw speaks of himself as benefitting from going to the school, but it is his brother, Eli, who knows the old ways of their tribe. The loss of their tribal relations and interconnections make these people’s lives bitter and fragmented. They have loss something essential that makes them a coherent people able to interact and live together.
Essential family information is lost that would have helped Lipsha Morrissey had he known that he was Gerry Nanapush’s son and many others in their dealings with each other. Their assimilation into the dominant culture is involuntary and, yet, we see them doing little to try to recover those lost ties and traditions. They are emulating the whites that they learned from in the way in which they remain isolated and separated from each other. Never do we see them going back or trying to go back to the traditions that they have lost.
For others assimilation or partial assimilation is a choice: The Mexican-American who trades one life for another like the parents of Antonio Marez in “Bless Me, Ultima”. His father leaves the llano to work in a town to better provide for his family, but mourns his loss with his friends when they come drinking. He has traded participation in one group—the vaqueros—for isolation in the town. Even for Antonio, himself, assimilation is expected, but only by becoming a priest and fulfilling his mother’s dreams for his life. Assimilation is seen as a means to an end, never an end in itself. This is the choice that immigrants have over those whose assimilation was involuntary.
I think that the issue of assimilation was somewhat repressed within the class discussion because most of the students of the class either felt that they were already assimilated, that were resisting assimilation, or that their culture was inhibiting their assimilation into the dominant culture. For most ethnic groups, the topic of assimilation is a difficult one. Everyone wants to retain the individuality that makes them unique, while not losing the essential things that keep them part of their ethnic group. For the Mexican-Americans, who are more like immigrants than either of the other groups discussed this semester this is so important they even discriminate between those living on either side of the border. They feel that they have made a concrete choice, and yet, when asked they feel a lot of the same discrimination as those groups whose participation was involuntary. They do, however, have more freedom of choice as to what ethno-cultural traditions and values that they will either keep or discard.
Like the young woman, Felice, in “Woman Hollering Creek” or the one in the story “Bien Pretty” they can shape their values to what they want rather than accept the time honored way of dealing with things. Unlike, Cleofilas, they have made choices that assimilation into a different lexicon has given them and used it to place value upon themselves as women and to make decisions that their mothers, grandmothers, nor Cleofilas can understand.
In conclusion, I feel that I learned a lot about how people see themselves in relation to both their culture of origin and the dominant culture in America as well. The most important thing that came out of this issue for me was to examine my own values, traditions, and assimilation and to determine if the things that I have lost as a sixth generation African-American in America were worth the sacrifices of those who came before me and who suffered so much that I might have equal status under the laws of this country. It has made me re-examine my beliefs as to the issues of illegal immigration, gay rights, and many other issues that challenge the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in this country and, I hope, will continue to challenge me to not grow stagnant in my ideals, ideas, or beliefs in the future.
