LITR 5731: Seminar in American Multicultural Literature

Web Highlight, fall 2007

Thursday, 1 November: Bless Me, Ultima (complete)

Web highlight (either research projects or final exams): Gary Pegoda

Default Essay-exam topics from syllabus

Option 1: ethnic groups since the midterm

A.     One essay reviewing Native American literature in relation to a course objective

Speaker - This is about Black Elk using various teaching methods, perhaps a kind of self-romanticizing to the Anglo standard. The objective has perhaps been somewhat adjusted for the writer’s purposes, but stays within the course parameters. One objective it would fit would be—5a.  To discover the power of poetry and fiction to help "others" hear the minority voice and vicariously share the minority experience.

Crystal Reppert May 04, 2006

          Essay 1 - Native American literature in relation to forced participation.

Native Americans Using Alternative Teaching Methods

             Black Elk was wise enough to realize that appeal to the masses through the story telling techniques of the white people would promote more sympathy and good will from those who were in a better position than himself to petition authorities for more just treatment of the Native Americans. Reaching them was a technique of marketing. His story had to focus on his separateness from them to inspire them to read his story. To illicit their sympathy, he had to appeal to the similarities between Native Americans and Wasichus SYMBOL 8212 \f "Trebuchet MS" \s 12 family, home, spiritual belief, the value of contracts and honesty.

B. One essay reviewing Mexican American literature in relation to a course objective.

Speaker - Besides being a good example of the objective, this one demonstrates possible relative lengths of the two essays. That is why I want to go to the page with the whole essay and just look over the length of each section, before going back to a paragraph pertinent to the objective.

http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/5731/models/finals/finals06sp/f06spmoreau.htm

Sara Moreau spring 2006

Native Americans

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.

Option 2: ethnic groups + gender considerations

A.     One essay comparing and contrasting Native American and Mexican American literature and culture relative to “the minority concept”;

Susan Cummings fall 2004 -       Speaker - This one is self-explanatory.

12/9/04 9:32 PM

Assimilation and resistance in Native American and Mexican American Literature

            The adage “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” has some twisted relevance to Objective 4 (registering the minority dilemma of assimilation or resistance), especially with regard to indigenous peoples of the Americas. Neither the Mexican-Americans nor the Native-Americans were successful in repelling the European invasion and subsequent occupation, yet the two groups survived as minority citizens of their own lands in different ways. As noted in class, the indigenous peoples of today’s Mexico and Central and South Americas intermarried with the invaders early on, largely because the Spanish conquerors were unattached men, either priests or soldiers.

B.   One essay comparing and contrasting ethnicity and gender as minority categories.

Speaker - This is an example of a long exam, with line seven of the second essay, paragraph two showing discussion of ethnicity and gender as separate categories.

 Devon Kitch spring 2006 

http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/5731/models/finals/finals06sp/f06spkitch.htm

Ultima is given strong attributes, but her status as a female is overlooked in lieu of her status as curandera.  In fact, it seems that she is only strong because she is a curandera, an almost supernatural being excluded from the rules of men. Antonio’s mother is seen as only that, a mother and wife.  She occupies the kitchen and small den where she prays, but we never see her as a real person. Some of the articles I read when researching my project, commented that the women in the Mexican American culture (especially Ultima’s) are kept down by the men as their last means of control in a changing world.  Perhaps it is just one of the cultural differences that we tend to view as negative, whereas the women actually enjoy being only “mother” and “wife” within the household, doing chores, cooking meals, and keeping quiet.  Just because it isn’t normal to us, doesn’t mean it doesn’t provide happiness and fulfillment to others.