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LITR
5831 World / Multicultural Literature: |
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Hanna Mak
Fiction and Nonfiction: Conditioning the Immigrant Narrative
Dwelling too closely on the theoretical differences between fictional and
nonfictional prose can be frustrating; cross-referencing those purported
differences with actual prose can make one cross-eyed. The deceptive, binary
nature of language certainly does not aid in elucidation. While the
distinguishing line between the two is often easily blurred, particularly with
the rising popularity of creative nonfiction, the impact that either distinction
has upon a work’s effect is as undeniable as it is often difficult to explicitly
trace. On the one hand, part of its effect is internal and embedded in the
creation of the text itself; on the other hand, it is also filtered through the
external perceptions of the reader, whose mind will naturally foster differing
assumptions about a narrative according to whether or not it is “true.” In
American immigrant and minority literature, perhaps this already intricate task
of distinguishing fiction and nonfiction becomes all the more contentious for
its link to this immigrant nation’s sense of identity and politics. Robert
Fulford asserts that “A story is always charged with meaning; otherwise it is
not a story, merely a sequence of events. . . . [T]here is no such thing as a
value-free story.” And yet, while fiction and nonfiction are
both essentially stories with
organized meaning and values, these meanings and values are often subtly
modified by the reader’s own expectations, altering the context of the immigrant
dialogue both consciously and unconsciously.
The problematic and frequently asserted cultural differentiations of
history as solid fact, and fiction as allegory, often mediates the ways in which
immigrant fiction and nonfiction are perceived. Perhaps one critical impact of
these differing reader perceptions may be effectively illustrated with the
example of “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano…the
African”—both in terms of its perceived historical significance as a text, and
the implications of its associated controversy. Although the slave narrative of
Equiano is technically not a work of immigrant literature, it demonstrates
multiple thematic similarities with the classic industrious immigrant narrative,
often in ways which reveal aspects of his exceptional character. For instance,
he starts his own merchant’s business with “but very small capital to begin
with,” demonstrating his business sense and hard work ethic, and at the end, he
secures his freedom without running away, displaying in Equiano an
immigrant-like trust in the same legal system which kept him in chains.
Strangely enough, however, perhaps it is these true characteristics of industry
and nearly perpetual optimism which most drew the critic’s baleful eye in the
first place. Although Equiano’s autobiography is currently defended as factual,
the controversy originally began due to the story’s perfect alignment—both in
terms of its publication timing and in its overall message—with the needs of the
abolitionist movement.
These
objections, in themselves, demonstrate the often problematic and unavoidably
complicated nature of historical narrative. Ultimately, one must confess that
Equiano’s autobiography does have a
detectable value; by its own nature as a story, rather than a bare sequence of
events, it must. And yet, it was the
detectability of its value and its selectiveness which originally brought
questions of its veracity, and prompted critics to dig for further
documentation. For having a detectably politicized message, it was suspected as
potentially discordant with history, and yet history itself is unavoidably
selective, with values and cultural currents of its own. To play devil’s
advocate, had Equiano written the work as a slave born in South Carolina rather
than as a slave taken from Africa, would the intrinsic literary achievement of
his “Interesting Narrative” be any less? In this sense, fiction is much more
forgiving. In the context of a historical narrative, if one ostensible fact is
loudly called into question, it often casts a shadow of doubt over all the rest,
whether accurate and warranted or not.
The
standards for “truth” in nonfictional versus fictional works are not merely
higher for the barest categorical reasons, however. A “fictional” work is
perhaps easier to disassemble in moments of disagreement, for our ideas (or
misconceptions?) about the role of raw creativity and invention in its
formation--with fiction as one message drawn from many disparate sources. If a
work is “non-fiction,” however, it often appears deceptively as a closed
circuit, a culmination of someone’s life knowledge—despite that author’s
undoubted exposure to influential external narratives. This perception of
invention, however, is a highly problematic way of differentiating between
fiction and nonfiction, and many skillfully written pieces of fiction will
ultimately testify to this. In fiction, the use of highly evocative imagery and
astute word choice often appears to indicate towards some lived experience on
the part of the author, but the reader will scarcely be able to distinguish
where imagination and experience begin and end with any certainty. Although
while reading “Gussuk,” by Mei Mei Evans, one is unlikely to mistake the piece
for an autobiographical work—at least due to the immediate indicator of its
third-person point of view—its effective use of realistic detail and
characterization is largely what makes it so compelling as a fictional story.
This is noticeable even in non-climactic moments with minor characters, such as
in the scene after Lucy’s arrival, where the children, Amos and Mary, watch her
change and then lead her “around the village, making special mention of the
houses that had television. Theirs didn’t” (239). This scene is brief, yet it is
highly effective for its quick and efficient portrayal of the society’s lack of
privacy, the community’s poverty and isolation, and also for its seemingly
accurate rendition of children—no matter who the community may be, the
priorities of children are often as simplistic and pointed as Amos and Mary’s,
although their exact specifics may differ. Here, the reader might idly wonder
where these effective images were gleaned, but ultimately, the scene’s
communicatory effectiveness takes precedent. Upon close inspection, it is rather
impressive how much Evans conveyed about life in Kigiak in so small a snapshot,
and such efficiency almost speaks to a non-fictional sense of a town, existing
outside the flatness of a single story.
Without knowing directly, in fiction the
sources could be a combination of formal research materials or varying levels of
experience—even an experience with non-Eskimo children could be creatively
employed in the crafting of the aforementioned scene. In a more strictly
autobiographical account, however, we might assume that the author selected
those images from memory for their relevance to the narrative’s message, not in
pieces and fragments of inspiration, but relatively whole. In this sense, on the
level of the material’s source, the
creative process is different, and yet the narrative’s
motives for the selection of such
specific, meaningful details must be similar in both fiction and nonfiction, as
this scene of Evans’ could convincingly exist in a story of either category. In
both fiction and non-fiction, the selection of detail is highly strategic, as a
similar selection of detail also applies to much of Le Ly Hayslip’s
autobiographical Child of War, Woman of
Peace. Although her narrative differs substantially on a structural
level—largely for its frequent tendency to editorialize—her narrative is still
like Evans’ in its efficiency of concrete detail, particularly as it pertains to
the elucidation of her cultural viewpoint. In the scene where she first enters
an American grocery store, she notices a catalogue of details that most
native-born Americans fail to register, since they have been accustomed to their
sights and smells for so long: “American markets don’t smell like markets at
all. Everything is canned, packaged, wrapped in cellophane, and hidden in boxes
where, instead of seeing and smelling the fruit or vegetable or meat or
whatever, you get a pretty picture of what the product looks like. …Everything
in the supermarket reeked of Freon or cleanser or corrugated cardboard boxes”
(108). In vividly describing her unique viewpoint of American markets, she
implicitly describes the Vietnamese markets that she was once accustomed to,
imparting a lucid image without direct physical reference. By conscientiously
selecting the precise details which guide her narrative, she intuits that she
can more efficiently communicate these parallel worlds of her identity by
rendering alien the image her readers are more likely to know. While Evans’s use
of third person in her fictional piece is much of what limits the space for
personal reflection and humor that is so prominently displayed in Hayslip’s
autobiographical work, where the two meet is this selective strategy of detail
which allows their readers to more smoothly enter into a cultural perspective
which may otherwise have been entirely foreign.
While in many ways departing from overly pronounced similarities to the
narratives of both Evans and Hayslip, Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical play,
Long Day’s Journey Into Night,
similarly accentuates the blurring of fiction and non-fiction. However, this
pronounced overlap of the two categories may be at least partially attributed to
his chosen mode of storytelling. Due to a play’s inevitable primary constitution
of dialogue, O’Neill’s autobiographical work necessarily and intimately renders
the voices of his family in a frequency that is unparalleled by other works of
immigrant non-fiction in this course. Dialogue is often cited as a habitual
indicator of fictional works, and in correlation to this, much of the immigrant
non-fiction which featured substantial amounts of dialogue were marked at those
points by a brief and occasional moment of unreality. For example, in Anchee
Min’s The Cooked Seed—despite many
successful dialogue-heavy scenes—the serious conversation that Anchee has with
her roommate, Takisha poses something of a disconnect. On the one hand, the
broken grammar in many of Anchee’s lines, as well as her relatively common need
to ask about or look up the meaning of words continually reinforces the
considerable language barrier that the two roommates face. On the other hand,
the conversation is both long and highly detailed in terms of the politically
charged ideas that it expresses. One definite means of distancing a reader from
an ostensibly non-fictional account of events is to make them pause and ask,
“How did he know that?” (as historical critics did with Equiano), or in this
case, “How did she manage to remember that?” This distancing effect or unreality
is not necessarily a negative
feature—it simply heightens the reader’s sense of narrative as a selective
construction. In some respects, perhaps this heightened awareness may be
construed as a positive attribute, for its prompting of reflection and critical
analysis.
Returning briefly to O’Neill, however, the dialogue of his play—however
autobiographical—is as powerfully absorptive as many a straightforward work of
fiction. In large part, this may be due to the bristling intensity of the
writing from line to line, which often propels the narrative unrelentingly
forward, evocative of a real-time, bitter family argument:
EDMUND: Jesus, Jamie! You really have gone crazy!
JAMIE: Think it over and you’ll see I’m right. Think it over when you’re away
from me in the sanatorium. …And when you come back, look out for me. …at the
first good chance I get stab you in the back.
