LITR 5731 UHCL 2006 Poetry Presentation Summary

LITR 5731: Seminar in American Multicultural Literature

Web Highlight, spring 2006

Thursday, 13 April: Sandra Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek, through p. 83 (i. e., through “Never Marry a Mexican”)

Objective: I originally went in search of final exams that would help me to get a good grip on the upcoming assignment but was a little overwhelmed by all the potential writings. First, I chose Nicole Jackson’s essay because she focused on an aspect of this class that I am most fascinated with: social class. I next look at Brendan Foley’s essay as it also talks about class in regards to race issues. Truthfully, I liked his essay more as it seemed more coherent, but both essays revealed interesting things about the texts.

“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 particularly like her observations here. One of the aspects of the minority experience that interests me the most is social status and the impact of socioeconomic issues.

“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.” I think I question the soundness of her conclusions here, but the topic is compelling nonetheless.

“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. An important part of multicultural or immigrant literature is to close look the authors take at their own societies.

Indeed, the theme of ambivalence is used throughout Sandra Cisneros’ collection of stories, Women Hollering Creek, and through her use of this idea, Cisneros reveals an underlying discourse about class that seems to exist within Mexican American culture that may not be recognized otherwise.

The conflict that arises, however, is not geographic; it is a conflict centering on class. The father’s family considers him to have “married down” because of the class indicators that the mother either has or lacks. She, the mother, doesn’t speak Spanish, can’t set silverware, can’t fold napkins, or essentially, lacks the etiquette that comes from an upper-class upbringing. I like his point that class is important to these characters. Not speaking Spanish is seen as low-class and unacceptable in much the same way we perceive people who do not use Academic English well.

This class conflict present in the lives of the narrator’s parents is passed on to the narrator by her mother but is transformed into an issue of race, “Mexican men, forget it […] I never saw them. My mother did this to me.” What the narrator believes is an issue of race is truly a class bias. She attempts to hide by assuming a mask of ambivalence about class “I’m amphibious […] I don’t belong to any class.” The irony of the story is that her own lover, a white man, eventually leaves her for his wife, a white woman, which she assumes is because of race, “Never marry a Mexican. No, of course not. I see. I see. Yet, it is not race that is the difference, but class, and this becomes apparent in the description of her lovers home, “leaded glass lamp with the milk glass above the dining room table […] the four-clawed tub[…] a white robe with a made in Italy label […] Calidad. Quality.” These “qualities” are of an upper-class lifestyle that separates the narrator from her lover not racial difference.

Cisneros certainly has an interest in presenting an authentic representation of Mexican Americans, but she does not let ambivalence blind her to how both race and class influence and sometimes disguise each other within the culture that she lives in.

Conclusion: Reading over these essays gave me new material to think about for my final exam. I was the most surprised at the short length of all of them! Both of the authors seemed to look closely at the issue of social class and how it is treated in the books we have read in this class; a close look at how the authors used books that present themselves as being about race issues to address issues of poverty and class as well.