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Craig White's Literature Courses Critical Sources Introduction, LITR MA Thesis by Kristin Hamon on Mexican American literature & culture |
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Kristin Hamon
Dr. Craig White, Director
Dr. Kevin McNamara, Reader
[1] The
personal narratives of our nation have historically defined its promise of hope
and belonging, but the range of such stories is always expanding and changing
along with our national and cultural borders. The
[2] A
reappraisal of multicultural Literature that shifts the spotlight from racial,
social, and ethnic markers to stories rooted in our nation’s past that grow with
its future may help a nation built and reshaped by immigrant and minority
peoples continue to learn, share, and progress. Such subjects may sow confusion
and conflict because of a failure to distinguish between the overlapping but
divergent stories of immigrants and minorities. The cultural narratives of
immigrants in quest of freedom and the American dream are officially sanctioned;
the minority experience—particularly of African and Native Americans—as one of
racial inequality and injustice may also be acknowledged, but its definition by
the American Dream is less universally appreciated.
[3] This
confusion might spur anyone to question literary canonization and curriculum
development. Any perception that selection of school texts has been intentional
or conspiratorial ignores the local, happenstance nature of many teachers’
understanding of multicultural categories. A fair perception of such nebulous
terms and processes may derive from a multiculturalism that relates various
groups’ stories to a larger national narrative.
[4] Admittedly
an attraction of multicultural reading is the unique voice that may rise from
any literary tradition, but an equally striking and elevating appeal is that the
story of any individual or group often resounds with the experience of an entire
nation or cultural movement. Yet any individual or isolated ethnic narrative
might find its eventual and indeterminate identity on the shelves of the
“multicultural studies” section of the local bookstore: How can a narrative
identified with a single ethnic group be deemed
multicultural? In his article, “What
Does Culture Want?: Observations on the ‘Nature’ of Diversity,” Kevin McNamara
explains this problem as one that is “common to liberal multiculturalists who
have a set of values and a set of prescriptions, foremost to respect and
preserve the interest of cultures and the desires of individuals, but no method for resolving the
conflicts between them” (8). This unresolved struggle may make multicultural
literature appear as no more than the
sum of its parts, which, beyond embodying current conventions of repression and
emergence, represent less a collective truth than a set of familiar social
forces with which individuals or their identity groups might identify.
[5] Assuming
that a monolithic truth would emerge from an individual cultural narrative is
not unusual, considering the expectations of many readers who might wander into
the earnest sprawl of multicultural literature. In a pluralistic society, many
cultural groups may co-exist without necessarily understanding each other. Under
such conditions cultural relativism allows each group to find meaning and value
in its own set of conventions and practices. Such particularity accepts the
uniqueness of any cultural, familial, or individual narrative but offers no
practical guide to understanding and respecting the narratives of other groups
that may compete in the multicultural marketplace. On the other hand, a mere
amalgamation of all possible “ethnic narratives” to a single canon lumped
together in undifferentiated equality suggests that, except for names and
origins, each multicultural group or individual produces the same story.
[6]
A utopian ideal of limitless plenty for each and all might
attract liberal multiculturalists wishing to respect all individuals and
cultures, but such yearning diverts attention from the important differences
represented in each respective narrative. Binding groups to one massive category
in fact betrays the relativism required by cultural pluralism. A study conducted
by the Chicago Cultural Group explains this paradoxical effect:
a “new postmodern
celebration of cultural impurity and interpermeability . . . runs the risk of
effacing real difference and losing the subject into a global matrix of symbolic
exchange” (538). Thus the individual experience assumed in a narrative becomes
erased by desire to see oneself reflected in the personal narrative of anyone
and everyone. Why may not differences and similarities exist among multicultural
narratives, with each divergence supporting part of a larger national (and
occasionally international) narrative, instead of speaking for one entire
cultural group?
[7] The stories
of Mexican America offer unique insight and examples of possible divergences in
the realm of immigrant literature and multicultural narratives. These accounts
express characteristics of both the immigrant’s hope and the minority’s
repression. Border identity, economic incentive, geographical location, and
generational changes are standard narrative elements for both immigrant and
multi-generational Mexican American residents. These variable elements may
distinguish one family’s or individual’s story from another, but many Mexican
American narratives may be characterized by cross-tensions between minority and
immigrant identities—or even momentary fusions of the two.
[8] Richard
Rodriguez is one prominent Mexican American author who understands the
cross-tensions of the multicultural narrative.
In Hunger of Memory, he describes the confusing effects of writing in
this genre: “Mistaken, the gullible reader will—in sympathy or in anger—take it
that I intend to model my life as the typical Hispanic-American life. But I
write of one life only. My own. Here is the life of a middle-class man” (6).
Rodriguez recognizes that his own experiences might be misinterpreted by readers
who look to him for a resolution of differences between his cultural narrative
and their own. Many writers of minority and immigrant narratives are similarly
plagued with the task of trying to explain the meaning created by their own
story before another individual explains it for them. The Chicago Cultural Group
posits that “literary studies in general
assume a notion of ‘the text’ as a given or fixed entity, which can then have
multiple or contested interpretations . . . yet this [exists as a] highly
problematic assumption for anthropology and subaltern studies, where the fixity
of the object text is often precisely what is at stake” (539). Through the
memoir of his own education as an American, Rodriguez challenges his reader to
appreciate the fixed but elusive nature of his experience as that of one man.
However, many readers doubtless absorb his narrative to their internal
definition of Mexican-American identity when they might rather recollect his and
other Mexican American voices in a national narrative that makes the literature
of the
[9] The
sympathetic urge to identify indiscriminately may be redirected by the rational
need to order and classify.
[10] Such
distinctions remain useful, but Mexican American literature proves that
immigrant narratives may be defined too neatly or archetypally—in ways less
adventurous and complex than the lives they narrate or the texts themselves. The
normative plot of the immigrant places the protagonist in situations where one’s
old identity is adapted to a new world by accomplishing certain tasks (e.g.,
hard work) and the conquest of certain obstacles (a new language or livelihood).
But what happens when an immigrant protagonist diverges from these expectations?
Compared to the archetypal immigrant journey from the old to new world, many
Mexican American narratives defy a path of automatic or total assimilation. The
historical base of this difference from other immigrants is the continuous
physical border between Mexico and the United States and the mixed identity the
border creates. This unique geographical condition distinguishes Mexican
American narratives from those of other immigrants, including non-Mexican
Hispanics.
[11]
The resulting multicultural narrative for Mexican Americans
defies a reductive classification to immigrant or minority, instead the
narrative operates in a domain of identity whose understanding requires
metaphor, which discovers the unknown by comparing it to the known. For many
Mexican Americans the metaphorical figure and existential fact of the land
bridge between the
[12] Each
Mexican American narrative exposes a fresh and intimate example of the border’s
power to define identity. Family dialogues, a narrator’s quiet reflections, or
bold exclamations from an author to his or her reader create a crossroads for
the reader, who must consider the place each character occupies on the
metaphorical land bridge between two oppositional worlds. Once a reader has
determined a character’s identity in relation to the bridge, a directional force
must still be considered. Identifying movement within an immigrant-minority
narrative is not always easy. The reader must discern the direction characters
are moving (towards or away from a new land) and also determine if they are
moving willingly or by force. If characters are being forced to move, their
stories more likely manifest characteristics of the minority narrative, while
those who cross willingly more likely continue on a normative immigrant pathway
of expected assimilation. Understanding such characters’ ambivalent physical and
emotional movements on the land bridge creates a recurrent space in which an
otherwise enigmatic existence finds and makes the choices essential to a
narrative.
[13] Latino
stories in popular anthologies and literary readers are often classified
according to characters’ physical or metaphorical movement across the bridge.
For example, editors Harold Augenbraum and Ilan Stavans organize the contents of
Growing Up Latino with subtitles: “Imagining the Family,” “Gringolandia,”
and “Songs of Self-Discovery.” Wesley Brown’s and Amy Ling’s anthology,
Imagining America, also groups its
wider collection of immigrant stories by stages of the journey: “Arriving,”
“Belonging,” “Crossings,” and “Remembering.” Such schematic tables of contents
appropriately reinforce the back-story of movement and, applied to Mexican
Americans, index character or family identity in relation to the land bridge.
From this implicit fluidity it follows that only multiple stories can describe a
more-or-less complete journey from one world to another. A single textual
narrative that attempted to represent every stage of the journey equally would
severely tax the industry of writers and attention of readers. Each narrative
offers unique knowledge of la frontera,
but each also contributes to a composite picture of a grander cultural journey
that continues to transit north and south, between immigrant and minority.
Provisional Primary bibliography
Anzaldúa, Gloria.
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.
2nd ed.
Candelaria, Nash. “El Patron.” from
Imagining
Cisneros, Sandra. The
House on
Paz, Octavio. The
Labyrinth of Solitude. NY: Grove, 1985.
Rodriguez, Richard.
Hunger of Memory. NY: Bantam, 1982.
Rodriguez, Richard.
Brown: The Last Discovery of
Villarreal, Jose A.
Pocho. NY: Anchor, 1970.
Provisional secondary bibliography
Acuna, Rodolfo.
Occupied
Allen, James P. "How Successful Are Recent Immigrants to the
Aranda, José F., Jr. When We Arrive: A Literary History of
Mexican
Augenbraum, Harold and Ilan Stavans, eds.
Growing Up Latino: Memoirs and Stories.
Brown, Wesley, and Amy Ling, eds.
Imagining
DeParle, Jason. “Struggling to Rise in Suburbs Where Failing
Means Fitting In.” New York Times. 1
August 2009.
Fuentes, Carlos and Julio Ortega, eds.
The Vintage Book of Latin American
Stories. NY: Vintage, 1998.
Gleason, Philip. “Minorities
(Almost) All: The Minority Concept in American Social Thought.”
American Quarterly 43.3 (1991):
392-424. JSTOR. U of Houston ,
Clear Lake
Lib. , Houston , TX
Golash-Boza, Tanya. "Dropping the Hyphen? Becoming Latino(a)-American through
Racialized Assimilation." Social Forces
85.1 (2006): 27-55. Project Muse. U of
Limón, José Eduardo.
American Encounters:
Greater
Limón, José Eduardo.
Dancing with the Devil: Society and
Cultural Poetics in Mexican-American
Moya,
Paula, M. L."’This
is Not Your Country!’: Nation and Belonging in Latina/o Literature."
American Literary History 17.1
(2005): 313-338. Project Muse. U of
Velasco,
Juan. "Automitografias:
The Border Paradigm and Chicano/a Biography."
Biography 27.2 (2004): 313-338.
Project Muse. U of
