LITR 5731: Seminar in
American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake,
fall 2001
Student Research Project
Linda M. Harvey
LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature
Dr. Craig White
December 4, 2001
Journal:
The Emergence of Voice in Mexican American Literature
As I begin this research project I’d like
to focus my energies on the emergence of voice through the works of Mexican
American authors. In looking into this topic, I want to explore two of the major
course objectives. The first objective is 1b – "Voiceless and choiceless."
I want to show how Mexican American authors are telling the stories and giving
voice to cultures with which the dominant culture may not be familiar. The
second objective, which ties into linking voice to literature, is Objective 5
– to study the influence of minority writers and speakers on literature,
literacy, and language. As I develop this theme of linking voice to literature,
I’d like to narrow my focus to include Objective 5a – to discover the power
of poetry and fiction to help "others" hear the minority voice and
vicariously share the minority experience. However, I’d like to begin this
project with a broad scope and see where my research takes me. I’d like to try
to keep this journal in somewhat of a "journal" format, and I hope to
convey my thought processes within these pages.
My first stop in my search for authors giving
voice to the voiceless is to bring up Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on
Mango Street and Woman Hollering Creek. I feel this is a logical
place to begin my research. Mango Street is a story, told in a series of
vignettes, about a young girl growing up in inner city Chicago. The book is full
of rich imagery, symbolism, and ambivalence. One chapter in particular
beautifully illustrates my point. At the end of the chapter titled, "Boys
& Girls," Esperanza expresses one of her desires. "Someday I will
have a best friend all my own. One I can tell my secrets to. One who will
understand my jokes without my having to explain them. Until then I am a red
balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor" (Cisneros 9). As I read the book, I
felt as if I were experiencing young Esperanza Cordero’s trials and
tribulations with her. I felt as if I could hear Esperanza’s voice. Cisneros
does a wonderful job giving readers a glimpse into the life of the main
character. The final lines of the book show that with voice, individuals are
able to make choices, choices that will eventually help others. "They will
not know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones
who cannot out" (Cisneros 110).
Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango
Street. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1984.
Cisneros continues to provide a voice for Mexican Americans with her book
entitled Woman Hollering Creek. This is a collection of short stories
that gives readers more opportunities to vicariously share the minority
experience. Not only does Cisneros provide a voice for the minorities in the
United States, Cisneros also provides a voice for those across the border in
Mexico.
Cisneros, Sandra. Woman Hollering Creek.
New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1991.
From this point, I’d like to change course and switch to poets. I found
the names and some works of some Mexican American poets. I feel these poets also
give voice to the voiceless.
Teresa Paloma Acosta (1949 - )
Acosta was born in McGregor, Texas in 1949.
Her parents migrated to Texas during the Great Depression of the 1930s. She
holds a bachelor’s degree in ethnic studies from the University of Texas at
Austin and a master’s degree from the Columbia University School of
Journalism. She is becoming known as one of the leading poetic voices of
multiculturalism in America. She writes, in her own words, "partly to
re-envision and re-tell stories about myself, my family, and the Chicana/Tejana
experience."
My
Mother Pieced Quilts
By
Teresa Palomo Acosta
they were just meant as covers
in winters
as weapons
against pounding january winds
but it was just that every morning I awoke to
these
october ripened canvases
passed my hand across their cloth faces
and began to wonder how you pieced
all these together
these strips of gentle communion cotton and
flannel nightgowns
dime store velvets
how you shaped patterns square and oblong and
round
positioned
balanced
then cemented them
with your thread
a steel needle
a thimble
how the thread darted in and out
galloping along the frayed edges, tucking
them in
as you did us at night
oh how you stretched and turned and
re-arranged
your Michigan spring faded curtain pieces
my father’s sante fe work shirt
the summer denims, the tweeds of fall
in the evening you sat at your canvas
--our cracked linoleum floor the drawing
board
me lounging on your arm
and you staking out the plan:
whether to put the lilac purple of easter
against the red plaid
of winter-going-
into-spring
whether to mix a yellow with blue and white
and paint the
corpus Christi noon when my father held your
hand
whether to shape a five-point star from the
somber black silk you wore to grandmother’s
funeral
you were the river current carrying the
roaring notes
forming them into pictures of a little boy
reclining
a swallow flying
you were the caravan master at the reins
driving your threaded needle artillery across
the mosaic cloth
bridges
delivering yourself in separate testimonies
oh mother you plunged me sobbing and laughing
into our past
into the river crossing at five
into the spinach fields
into the plainview cotton rows
into tuberculosis wards
into braids and muslin dresses
sewn hard and taut to withstand the
thrashings of twenty-five years
stretched out they lay
armed / ready / shouting / celebrating
knotted with love
the quilts sing on
For more information on Teresa Palomo Acosta,
it can be found on the Center for Latin American Studies website by the
University of California, Berkley.
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu:7001/Events/Acosta.html
Lorna Dee Cervantes (1954 - )
Cervantes was born in San Francisco in 1954.
Her parents are of Mexican and Native American heritage. Cervantes began writing
when she was eight years old and compiled her first manuscript as a teenager.
She earned a bachelor’s degree from California State University in San Jose.
Freeway
280
by
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Las casitas near the gray cannery,
nestled amid wild abrazos of climbing roses
and man-high red geraniums
are gone now. The freeway conceals it
all beneath a raised scar.
But under the fake windsounds of the open
lanes,
in the abandoned lots below, new grasses
sprout,
wild mustard remembers, old gardens
come back stronger than they were,
trees have been left standing in their yards.
Albaricoqueros, cerezos, nogales . . .
Viejitas come here with paper bags to gather
greens.
Espinaca, verdolagas, yerbabuena . . .
I scramble over the wire fence
that would have kept me out.
Once, I wanted out, wanted the rigid lanes
to take me to a place without sun,
without the smell of tomatoes burning
on swing shift in the greasy summer air.
Maybe it's here
en los campos extraños de esta ciudad
where I'll find it, that part of me
mown under
like a corpse
or a loose seed.
Click on the link below to get more
information on Lorna Dee Cervantes and for a link to listen to Freeway 280 read
by the author.
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=81
Américo Paredes (1915 – 1999)
Paredes was born in Brownsville, Texas in
1915. He holds an associate’s degree from Brownsville Junior College and a
bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Before making a
career out of journalism, Paredes served in the United States Army. In 1953
Paredes earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in 1956. Paredes, considered
the foremost scholar in Chicano folklore, died in 1999.
Guitarreros
by
Américo Paredes
Black against twisted black
The old mesquite
Rears up against the stars
Branch bridle hanging,
While the bull comes down from the
mountain
Driven along by your fingers,
Twenty nimble stallions prancing up and
down the redil of the guitars.
One leaning on the trunk, one facing—
Now the song:
Not cleanly flanked, not pacing,
But in a stubborn yielding that unshapes
And shapes itself again,
Hard-mouthed, zigzagged, thrusting,
Thrown, not sung,
One to the other.
The old man listens in his cloud
Of white tobacco smoke.
"It was so," he says,
"In the old days it was so."
More information on Américo Paredes and
access to more links about his works and life can be found at the following UCLA
website:
http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/paredes/americo1.html
Gary Soto (1952 - )
Soto, born in 1952 was raised in a Chicano
neighborhood within the San Joaquin Valley of California. Soto has a
bachelor’s degree from California State University in Fresno and a master’s
degree from the University of California, Irvine. Soto is known for writing many
books of poetry as well as some novels and children’s fiction.
Oranges
by
Gary Soto
The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me, until
She came out pulling
At her gloves, face bright
With rouge. I smiled,
Touched her shoulder, and led
Her down the street, across
A used car lot and a line
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore. We
Entered, the tiny bell
Bringing a saleslady
Down a narrow aisle of goods.
I turned to the candies
Tiered like bleachers,
And asked what she wanted—
Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickel in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn’t say anything.
I took the nickel from
My pocket, then and orange,
And set them quietly on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady’s eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.
Outside,
A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl’s hand
In mine for two blocks,
Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.
More information about Gary Soto can be found
at the Poetry.org website.
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=234
My interest in exploring voice in Mexican American literature,
specifically poetry, was aroused as I did my research for my class poetry
presentation. So it only seems fitting I include that information in this
research journal. I presented "V" by Jimmy Santiago Baca. He appears
to be an up and coming poet providing a voice for the Mexican American culture.
His rich life experiences and immersion into the inner city culture provide Baca
the necessary information to share the experiences with society.
Jimmy Santiago Baca (1952 - )
Jimmy Santiago Baca is known as the poet of
the barrio. He calls himself a "poet of the people," and reaches out
to provide writing workshops to inner city children and adults who otherwise may
never have opportunity for such exposure. Born in New Mexico in 1952, Baca did
not begin his life as a talented writer, or even as one who shows signs of
greatness. His troubled childhood culminated in actions that landed Baca in a
maximum security prison when he was twenty-one years old. Illiterate and
trapped, Baca turned to literature. After nearly six years in jail, Jimmy
Santiago Baca "emerged from prison with a passion for reading and writing
poetry."
In 1984, Baca earned a BA in English from the
University of New Mexico. To date, in his short and promising career, Baca has
written many books of poetry including Martin and Meditations on the South
Valley, the book which contains the poem "V." Baca has earned
numerous literary awards and continues to work on book and film projects. In his
own words: "I am a witness, not a victim…My role as a witness is to give
voice to the voiceless, hope to the hopeless, of which I am one."
Going back to the objective of voiceless and
choiceless, words from an interview with Baca best concludes the discussion:
"There was a
tremendous connection between what was written in that book and their lives as
people. It directly affected their lives in such a way where it brought a wider
breadth of understanding to their lives…Because of it’s topics, the
structure of the poem, the power of the images, and in the barrios across
America, it was accepted with a type of hand clapping joy that somebody was
finally recognizing who the hell we are…It was with a sense of pleasure that,
yeah, we have a voice and people are talking for us now." (Meléndez 5)
Through Baca’s poetry, we are able to
vicariously experience his world and gain a better understanding of his people.
V
by
Jimmy Santiago Baca
Years pass.
Cattle cars in the downtown freightyard
squeal and groan, and sizzling grills
steam the Barelas Coffee House cafe windows,
as the railroad workers with tin hard hats
stop for coffee, hours of dawn
softly click on grandfather’s gold pocket
watches
in Louey’s Broadway Pawnshop, hocked
to get a cousin or brother out of jail
City workers’ tin carts and long-handled
dust pans
clatter in curb gutters
as buses spew smoldering exhaust as they stop
beneath
Walgreen’s neon liquor sign.
I lean against an office building brick wall,
nothing to do, no where to go,
comb my hair in the blue tinted office
windows,
see my reflection in the glinting chromed
cars,
on a corner, beneath a smoking red traffic
light,
I live—
blue beanie cap snug over my ears
down to my brow,
in wide bottomed jean pants trimmed with red
braid,
I start my daily walk,
to the Old Town Post Office,
condemned Armijo school building,
Rio Grande playa,
ditches and underpasses—
de-tribalized Apache
entangled in the rusty barbwire of a society
I do not
understand,
Mejicano blood in me spattering like runoff
water
from a roof canale, glistening over the lives
who lived before me, like rain over mounds of
broken
pottery,
each day backfills with brown dirt of my
dreams.
I lived in the streets,
slept at friends’ houses, spooned
pozole and wiped up the last frijoles with
tortilla
from my plate. Each day
my hands hurt for something to have,
and a voice in me yearned to sing,
and my body wanted to shed the gray skin of
streets,
like a snake that grew wings—
I wished I had had a chance to be a little
boy,
and wished a girl had loved me,
and wished I had a family—but these
were silver inlaid pieces of another man’s
life,
whose destiny fountained over stones and ivy
of the courtyard in a fairytale.
Each night I could hear the silver whittling
blade
of La Llorona,
carving a small child on the muddy river
bottom,
like a little angel carved into ancient
church doors.
On Fridays, Jesus Christ appeared
on La Vega road, mounted on a white charger,
his black robe flapping in the moonlight
as he thrashed through bosque brush.
Sometimes Wallei, the voice of water, sang to
me,
and Mectallá, who lives in the fire, flew in
the air,
and Cuzal, the Reader of Rocks, spoke with a
voice
jagged as my street-fighting knuckles.
A voice in me soft as linen
unfolded on midnight air,
to wipe my loneliness away—the voice blew
open
like a white handkerchief in the night
embroidered with red roses,
waving and waving from a dark window
at some lover who never returned.
I became a friend of the old women
who hung out by the bars
on _Central,_Isleta,_and Barcelona,
blue tear drops tattooed on their cheeks,
initials of ex-lovers on their hands,
women drawn out from the dark piss-stinking
rooms
they lived in,
by the powerful force of the moon,
whose yellow teeth tore the alfalfa out of
their hearts,
and left them stubbled,
parched grounds old goats of tecatos and
winos
nibbled.
All my life the constant sound of someone’s
bootheels
trail behind me—thin, hard,
sharp sounds scraping frozen ground,
like a shovel digging a grave,
It’s my guardian, following me through the
broken branches
of the bosque, to the door
of the Good Shepherd Home on south 2nd
street,
for a hot meal.
More information about Jimmy Santiago Baca
can be found on his official website.
The interview titled, "Carrying the
Magic of His Peoples Heart" : An Interview With Jimmy Santiago Baca by
Gabriel Meléndez can be found on the Modern American Poetry website.
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/baca/melendez.html
Websites
A couple websites were particularly helpful in my search for the works of particular minority poets. Poets.org sponsored by the Academy of American Poets is a well-organized, easy to navigate site. http://www.poets.org/index.cfm
This site makes it easy to search by poet’s
name or by the name of the poem. One feature I particularly like about this site
is that is has an alphabetized listing of poems read by the author. I actually
spent many hours listening to poems as read by the author. I can be an addictive
site!
Another website that I found to be of great help in finding poet information is the Modern American Poetry website. http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets.htm
This site lists one hundred sixty-one poets
by name and the information provided can help any researcher learn more about
the poet. Each poet link takes the researcher to a page with additional links.
In many cases these links also offer information on how to listen to the poetry
read by the poet.
Objectives:
1b. "Voiceless and choiceless:
5. To study the influence of minority writers
and speakers on literature, literacy, and language.
5a. To discover the power of poetry and
fiction to help "others" hear the minority voice and vicariously share
the minority experience.
Conclusion:
I began my research with the idea that I just wanted to see if I could
find information specifically on Mexican American authors. As a student of
minority literature, I wanted to see just how many Mexican American authors are
published. I found many, therefore I decided to narrow my search to poetry. I
became fascinated with the words and the stories I read in all of the poems. I
feel that I have created a springboard on which I can further research the
stories that each poem tells. Within each story there is a voice, a soft voice
that with each reading becomes louder. I would like to take each poem I found
and gather more information on the message that the author wants to convey with
the poem they created. I think this would make for an interesting research
paper. I wanted to at least give a voice to Mexican American culture by placing
the words in my journal. I feel that by discovering and displaying the works, I
am facilitating the poets’ purpose of spreading the message. I am sharing
vicariously in the experience that enriches my life and hopefully the lives in
American society.
Bibliography and Internet Resources:
Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango
Street. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1984.
Cisneros, Sandra. Woman Hollering Creek.
New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1991.
Information on Teresa Paloma Acosta:
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu:7001/Events/Acosta.html
Information on Lorna Dee Cervantes:
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=81
Information on Américo Paredes:
http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/paredes/americo1.html
Information on Gary Soto:
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=234
Information on Jimmy Santiago Baca:
"Carrying the Magic of His Peoples
Heart" : An Interview With Jimmy Santiago Baca by Gabriel Meléndez can be
found on the Modern American Poetry website.
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/baca/melendez.html
Poets.org – sponsored by The Academy of
American Poets:
http://www.poets.org/index.cfm
Modern American Poetry website: