Nora Ventura

December 10, 2011

 History and literature: Hope for breaking down cross-cultural barriers

            I signed up for the course well aware that by not being a literature major, the course would be challenging. However, the material covered is not only relevant to cross-cultural studies, but the core of it, and that realization early on the semester allowed me to explore how it is that colonial and postcolonial literature can “help more people learn world history, contemporary events, and the global future.” Cross-cultural studies are an intercultural dialogue and analysis of humanity.

I have to admit that what shocked me the most throughout the semester were the numerous times when classmates made comments themed around having no idea that such things had occurred, or at what magnitude, referring to genocide and other horrors of war. I realized that most of our learning about the tragic of humanity revolves around the holocaust and the Native American tragedy, and even then, those incidents are barely covered in our history classes prior to a higher education. I am by no means claiming to have known about all the historical events we covered in class, but I was able to recognize them as ongoing concerns. I am at an advantage though, having worked with immigrants and refugees for six-and-a-half years. In both Train to Pakistan and Jasmine, immigrants and refugees are given a voice, or we are able to see and understand the circumstances that lead to their journey. Although Jasmine gives us a glimpse to the lives of newly arrived immigrants, I fear the Jasmine and Du’s ability to quickly hyphenate may lead us to underestimate the hardships faced by immigrants and refugees outside of fiction. If I teach, I plan to incorporate these novels into my teaching curricula, and integrating Dr. White’s approach to inter-textual dialogue, I will extend the dialogue to include current events. For example, I will attempt to incorporate the ongoing sociopolitical instability in Pakistan and analyze how the relations between Pakistan, India, and Britain have evolved since the partition.

In my first research post I wrote briefly on Las Langostas (The Locusts) by Indigenous Playwright Feliciano Sanchez Chan. In the play, Mayan prophesy warns of the locusts who will end the indigenous way of life—the locusts are the conqueror, the white man. In Things Fall Apart I was intrigued to find that the Oracle also warns of the destruction that the white man would bring to the Igbo, specifically describing the white man as locusts. There are many writings dedicated to comparing creation myths from different traditions, but now I am interested in researching and comparing destruction prophesies in indigenous mythology. In regards to my research posts, I struggled to focus my research and to then incorporate it into a cohesive post. By my second post this shortcoming was more obvious, as I fixated on sharing all I had learned and instead failed to engage the reader. Nonetheless, this is the first time that I give my own history (Mexico and Latin America) a conscious approach beyond what has dominated what is covered in Latin American studies, which is the last few decades of sociopolitical instability in the region.

During discussion at one point in the semester, Jenny Brewer said that sometimes she feels embarrassed at how much of her history knowledge comes from fiction. I don’t think she should fell embarrassed; literature students are at a vantage point from others (aside from history students of course) by virtue of literature often being a reflection of contemporary issues. The “American ignorance of larger world and alternative worldviews” Dr. White asks us to consider is the result of not having enough persons like Jenny Brewer. I feel that the majority of Americans are like Mother Ripplemeyer. Stories of “world-class poverty” make us uncomfortable, and we are always protected “from too much reality.” That doesn’t make us apathetic, but rather sheltered. Mother Ripplemeyer has good intentions but remains within her comfort zone, which is limited to quilting for a fundraiser for Ethiopia. Postcolonial studies forces out of our comfort zone. Watching the Aljazeera film on Africa along with Heart of Darkness takes us out of the comfort zone that fiction gives, meaning that sometimes when reading novels, the authors allow us to imagine only as much as we are comfortable with.

Heart of Darkness served to remind us what the damage is when one is given information from a limited perspective. Since we are only allowed into the mind of Marlow, the Africans are voiceless. Tim Assel (2009) writes, “The voiceless characterization attributed to Africans in Hear [sic] of Darkness demonstrates Conrad’s utter disregard for Africans as humans incapable of being equal to the European race.” It is not enough that the Africans are orientalized, but they are muted. In a globalized economy, and with an increasing transnational population, it is important now, more than ever, that we learn to seek out the voices of the muted, as Achebe offers with Things Fall Apart. In discussion, it was fascinating to me to see the diversity in interpretation of the readings, or the parts that we all chose to focus on. With literary works as with historical events, what bring a cohesive understanding are the contributions that all offer. A single narrative is misleading.

I am glad that I took this course, and I would highly recommend it to all Cross-cultural majors, I only wish I had waited another semester to take it. I suspect that if I had taken courses on gender studies first, I would have been able to isolate and analyze the contrasting gender roles that the women in the novels were prescribed, which I wasn’t able to do. Nonetheless, I am leaving even more convinced that literature will be the bridge between cultures for all those who do not leave their ethnocentric islands. Dr. White is right, the course is not life changing per se, but it is perspective changing.