LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake, fall 2001
Student Research Proposal

Linda Higginbotham

There is more to history than what is written in history textbooks. The dominant culture focuses mainly on its own past, relegating minority history to a few pages (if at all) with the dominant culture's submitting its own interpretation of minority history. With this in mind, I would like to do my research project on Toni Morrison's concept of rememory. All of Morrison's writings are based on the fact that she believes that remembering the past is essential for African-Americans to heal from the evils committed against them and to enable them to move forward into the future. It is also important to convey the importance of preventing "national amnesia" both for the dominant culture and minority cultures. Therefore, it is significant for minority authors to write fiction which remembers the past and reveals the emotions and reasons behind the actions of the members of their race. Hopefully, their writings will not be read solely by their own race but by members of other minorities and especially the dominant culture.

In addition, Morrison represents her concept of rememory as it relates to the past of the African-American race in all of her fiction. Her novels may be fiction; however, they are representative of the African-American race. Through her fiction, we are more capable of understanding the actions and emotions of African-Americans and their struggle to either become part of the dominant culture or to set themselves apart such as the residents of the town of Ruby in Paradise attempted. Therefore, I intend to review and summarize how Morrison has utilized her concept of rememory in each of her novels.

I am also researching background material which supports Morrison's concept of rememory by minorities in general such as Against Amnesia: Contemporary Women Writers and the Crisis of Historical Memory by Nancy J. Peterson. There are also a couple of books I am trying to locate which were in the bibliography of essays written about Morrison such as Maurice Bloch's essay, Internal and External Memory: Different Ways of Being in History, which is located in the book, Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory by Paul Antze and Michael Lambek and Social Memory by James Fentress and Christopher Wickham.

At first, I was going to research minority women writers and rememory, but I thought this topic would be too broad. I then considered researching representative women writers and the effect of rememory on several minority groups such as Morrison (African-Americans), Judith Ortiz Cofer and Sandra Cisneros (Mexican-Americans) and Dorothy Allison (lesbians). Do you think my focus on Morrison and rememory is an acceptable research project or should I extend my focus to include other women minority writers? I would like to submit my research in journal form unless you feel that a paper would be more appropriate.

Sources of criticism on Morrison's concept of rememory that I have located and intend to review are:

Barnes, Deborah H. "The Bottom of Heaven: Myth, Metaphor, and Memory in Toni Morrison's Reconstructed South." Studies in the Literary Imagination, Vol. 31, No. 2, Fall '98, p. 17-35

Grewal, Gurleen. Circles of Sorrow, Lines of Struggle, The Novels of Toni Morrison. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1998.

Hamilton, Cynthia S. "Revisions, Rememories and Exorcisms: Toni Morrison and the Slave Narrative." Journal of American Studies. Vol. 30 Dec 1996. p. 429-45

Matus, Jill. Toni Morrison. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.

Morrison, Toni. "Memory, Creation, and Writing." Thought. Vol. 59, Dec. 1984. p. 385-90

Morrison, Toni. "The Site of Memory." Inventing the Truth. Houghton Mifflin: 1987, p. 101-24

Peach, Linden. Modern Novelists, Toni Morrison. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.

Rushdy, Ashraf H. A., Rememory: Primal Scenes and Constructions in Toni Morrison=s Novels. David L. Middleton, ed. Toni Morrison's Fiction, Contemporary Criticism. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997

Ryan, Judylyn S. and Estella Conwill Májozo. Jazz ... on "The Site of Memory." Studies in the Literary Imagination, Vol. 31, No. 2 Fall '98, p. 125-152.

Samuels, Wilfred D. And Clenora Hudson-Weems. Toni Morrison. Warren French, ed., Twayne Publishers: New York, 1990.

Dear Linda,

The question whether this is an essay or a journal may hinge on your decisions regarding the breadth of the focus. That is, a focus on Morrison and "rememory" sounds more like an essay, since it has a single theme and a single author. If you expand the range of research to include other writers, especially from other ethnic groups, that might still be an essay--but it would begin to introduce the kind of variety that a journal can also handle. Yet the continuation of a single-theme (cultural memory) might argue for an essay; the journal seems more appropriate for situations where the student has lots of materials on a given subject area but no definite thematic focus. Still, you can decide by what I started with--the more diversity of groups and the more variation on the central theme, the more likely a journal will develop.

Putting that decision aside, another cultural group that participates in this process is American Jews, especially regarding the Holocaust. What I'm going to say next is hardly the absolute truth but has become something of a cultural position in recent decades: Remembering the Holocaust can stand as a badge of continued Jewishness and ethnic resistance to assimilation. Otherwise one has assimilated?

As things now stand, you have a good start on a standard literary-critical essay on a well-established theme that may be related broadly to an important concern for "separate" cultures. Feel free to confer further as your decision or research process continues.