LITR 5731: Seminar in American Multicultural Literature

Web Highlight, spring 2006

Thursday, 20 April: Sandra Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek  

Web-highlighter: Anuruddha Ellakalla

Introduction:

Jennifer Branch mainly focuses her journal topic on course objective 3c. I am very impressed with the way she organized her journal. First, she gradually limits her discussion into the Mexican-American Women. Second, she asks herself a sequence of questions in term of specific thesis for her research.  Third, she divides her journal into a three sections.  Furthermore, at the beginning, Jennifer gives three separate introductions to her journal.  In the meantime, I believe her series of questions become the thesis of her journal.

link to Jennifer Branch's complete journal

Selections from journal

Jennifer Branch

7-Dec-04

Mexican-American Women as a Double Minority

            In reading literature by women of different ethnic backgrounds, I wondered about their status as a double minority.  It was clear to me that black women would fit more easily into this category because of the oppression that has faced both women and African Americans for so many years. However, I wasn’t sure how a woman of Hispanic heritage would fit into this genre.  If Hispanic people are considered an ambivalent minority, where do they belong?  What is it about their minority status that makes them ambivalent?  Is it as difficult for a woman of Hispanic heritage to get her book published, her voice heard as it is for a black woman?  Better yet, is it as easy for this Hispanic woman to get her book published as it is for a white woman?  A white man?  I went in search for the answers to these questions in order to establish some sort of thesis.

            In the first section of this research journal, I use articles by Christine Granados and Benjamin Marquez to establish whether or not Latin Americans are considered, in general, as a minority.  The article by Christine Granados confronts the ongoing debate that tries to determine whether the term Latino or Hispanic is the preferred label for the culture.  The second review by Benjamin Marquez attacks the research done by Peter Skerry that suggests that Mexican Americans are an ambivalent minority.  The third article by Maria Newman touches briefly on the difficulty that  Mexican Americans face in being of a different culture in the publishing industry.         

            The second section deals with establishing whether or not females are seen as a minority both in society and in literary circles.  The article by Michelle Sugiyama asserts that woman is discriminated against, and uses the example of high-heeled shoes in relation to foot-binding in order to prove this theory.  Jeff Thomson deals with identity in the characters of Woman Hollering Creek as a reflection of modern-day women and the way they handle their minority status.

            The research for the third and final section proposes that women of a Hispanic background can serve as a double minority.  This subject is dealt with by Jennifer Jue, who notes that women of color who write are finding a silenced voice and breaking ground for other women.  It is confronted indirectly by Ilan Stavans and Edward Stanton, who, in writing of the ‘Latino Literary Tradition’ have noticeably left out all of the female Latino writers.  Their absence in these articles perhaps speaks louder than their presence would.