LITR 5731: Seminar in
American Multicultural Literature: Minority
Sample Student Final Exam Submission,
Leah Guillory
Minority Literature: a fascinating experience
Before taking this course, I had some experience with minority literature—mostly African –American male authors such Malcolm X, Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Frederick Douglass—habitually, I guess because I am the mother two African-American males, and part of my goal in reading these authors is to nurture the intellectual health of my sons using works of their culture.
Before this course, it really did not cross my mind to surround them with works of other minority groups. This course expanded my original objective—I I now encourage both my sons to read more widely in the minority realm, and lately, they seem very interested in the American Indian poems “The Sky Tree” and “Coyote Finishes His Work.” I’ve also noticed them eyeing my Black Elk Speaks copy that was a required work for this course—so maybe after they digest the poems they’ll try it out. However, at the moment, they seem satisfied with N. Scott Momaday's narrative The Way to Rainy Mountain where the narrator traces the heroic and tragic history of his people, the Kiowas who were expert horse riders, buffalo hunters and warriors. When ambitious American settlers encroach on their territory, they face rapid change and transformation like the Sioux in Black Elk Speaks. The narrator in Rainy Mountain returns to the Oklahoma home of his people, which is near Rainy Mountain, an important site in the religious history of his Kiowa ancestors, and he tells about their "loss" of their land and Buffalo. He also recounts their "survival" as a people when they regain their pride through The Sun Dance which brings the Kiowas together. We see a similar situation in Black Elk Speaks that depicts the dislocation of the Sioux culture who can no longer support its traditional ideas since they have lost their structured community—their sacred hoop, their lifestyle and their culture because of the forces of economic white American greed.
Also before this course, I had little experience with Mexican-American women authors such as Sandra Cisneros. I am familiar however and fascinated with her autobiographical essay "Straw into Gold" where she speaks to the idea of the challenge of change and transformation through a metaphor of spinning straw into gold. She asserts we can take something—even something considered a failure and make it into something successful. In this essay, she recalls being asked by some friends to make corn tortillas for a Mexican dinner. The friends assume this a small task for Cisneros since she is, after all, Mexican—however, she‘s never made them in her life. At this point she alludes to the fairytale Rumpelstiltskin, in which a woman is given a “mighty task”—an impossible task in fact of spinning straw into gold. Like the fairytale heroine, Cisneros "improvises" which is why she succeeds in making the tortillas. In the remainder of the essay she speaks to the idea that when we are resigned to invent, we realize that we can do many things that we first doubted. In the African-American vernacular community, we express this idea by the saying “do what it do.” In this essay, we see her speaking to objective 3, the alternative dream narrative, as she voluntarily participates in change and assimilation, and she discovers that it's a mistake to judge your future success on your past ignorance. Through tapping into the powers of making do, we make a difference and transform our lives.
This essay reminds me so much of her "fractured fairytale" "Barbie Q" in Woman Hollering Creek where two girls buy a doll at a fire sale. And even though the doll they buy is smokey and flawed and "water-soaked and sooty" they imagine her as perfect. They improvise or “make do” with what they have and they declare imaginatively that "If you dress her in…satin splendor...who's to know” she's flawed. With this announcement, Cisneros implicates imagination as a vital part of the act of improvising.
My most profound experience, though, with minority literature before this course has to be with Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous "Letter from Birmingham City Jail.” King articulates the ethical and religious foundation of his theory of civil disobedience, and he draws a distinction between just laws, which uphold the moral law of God, and those that violate it—such as the segregationist policies of the Alabama legislature. King asserts such laws should not be defied or evaded for selfish reason, but broken openly, with a willingness to pay the penalty for one's conscience. In the letter, we learn the reason for King's arrest. He was in Birmingham to lead a boycott of discriminatory stores. The goals of the boycott were to desegregate store facilities and establish fair hiring practices. But King defied the "unjust law" against marching, and led fifty peaceful protesters toward City Hall. They walked peacefully for four blocks, but then they were arrested. The theme of "resistance" is presented in this letter. We also see objective 2c that asks what the individual’s or group’s relation to the law or other dominant institution is. Does "the law" make things better or worse?
I’ve also had experience with Langston Hughes’s poem “I Too Sing America” which alludes to Whitman's "I hear America Singing" that celebrates inclusion and the joy of Americans working for themselves and for their country. Conversely, Hughes poem questions what people feel when they experience exclusion. He speaks to their loneliness, unworthiness, shame and depression since they have voices and wish to be heard. They feel frustrated when their important contributions go unrecognized, and they look forward to the day when they will be recognized as valuable American citizens. In the poem, Hughes’s feelings of being regarded as an outsider and looked down on are compared with being sent to eat in the kitchen when company comes--this experience reminds me of a scene in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird when the Protagonist Scout, who is white is sent to sit in the kitchen by her black housekeeper because she is looking down on her guest who pours syrup all over his food. Hughes is also excluded from the dining room, and his hopes for tomorrow—when he'll be accepted are compared with sitting at that better table.
Taking this course has challenged me to be both a better mother and a more varied reader. Because of this course, I now offer and expose my African-American sons to works by Americans of many culture—not just theirs. As far as I’m concerned, I’m still obsessed with the works of authors form my own culture, like Toni Morrison—in fact, taking this class as provided me with the courage to read her other works. As far as the Mexican-American works, I am still a bit “ambivalent” about those. They seem to celebrate the “poor-me” ideology instead of the ascendant ideology that I enjoy in the works of Morrison and Douglass. Especially in Love Medicine, after June dies, it was very hard to stay with the novel—she was such an interesting character, but she dies. On the other hand, I truly enjoyed Bless Me Ultima, specifically the healing powers of the curandera, Ultima who helps Antonio understand his world better. She assists him like Pilate assists Milkman in Song of Solomon in learning to overcome his fears and his fear of change by telling him stories of his ancestors. Both Milkman and Antonio with the help of their healers, Pilate and Ultima, gain strength to transcend their immediate fears and difficulties and move on. In the end, they both learn that change comes from knowing one’s past.
As a final point, the concept that intrigued me the most as we moved from text to text in this course has to be self-determination and self-expression revealed through the fundamental expressions of voice and choice. We saw the power of the voice in the varied works we read from Douglass to Equiano to Jacobs to Black Elk to Cisneros. In these works the protagonists struggle sincerely. But they teach their readers that asserting their voices and ours is vital to being heard first and second to moving out of our limited “social milieu” into the positions in the American center. The works assisted me in gaining the courage to start my own narrative—not motivated by the hope of publication, but by motivated by the idea that narrative shows ascendance; that is, we see Douglass, Equiano and Jacobs ascending in the slave narratives, and in Black Elk Speaks, even though he cannot physically transcend his dislocation, he spiritually models for his people strength and faith during their dislocation. Cisneros also illustrates the idea that narratives involve ascent—a leap out of reality and into imagination. All the narratives reveal their protagonists’ improvising—making do the best way they can. They could choose to suppress their voices, but they choose to express them showing their readers through voice we rise.
