American Ethnic Literature Essay

What does it mean to be inclusive of â€Å"ethnic† literature in American â€Å"English† classrooms? Educators across the country struggle to comply with industry standards as well as their own sense of what â€Å"globalization in literature† may comprise. The ideology of teaching the British canon is breaking down, particularly in the wake of the post-colonial criticism movement two decades ago, as well as the more immediate and pervasive influence of the World Wide Web, which connects people in different countries with different communication practices at the speed of fingers tapping on a keyboard. Diversifying the standard literary canon to include writers and character of different cultural and racial backgrounds means opening the master list of great works to marginalized text and voices. Ideally, the goal of including â€Å"ethnic† literature into the American education traditional should be to create a more complete view of the American culture as a great cultural melting pot and expose the ways in which all Americans share â€Å"Otherness. † Multicultural literature carries with it certain stereotypes as to what gets included and what gets excluded. Part of this is a response to the reader’s own ignorance or misinformation. Mary Frances Pipino wrote that â€Å"Students often are unaware of their own cultural values and the ways their values can be contradictory or ambivalent.. † For example, a person may consider The House on Mango Street to be â€Å"multicultural† in that the author, Sandra Cisneros, speaks Spanish and her main character, Esperanza, relates the effect cultural machismo has on her life as a young Hispanic woman. The novel Ceremony functions in a similar way. Author Leslie Silko gives the reader a glimpse into the life of a young Native American man, describing his violent experience as a soldier and as a man caught between cultures in a turbulent physical environment. The main character, Tayo, functions as both an entry point for readers unfamiliar with Native American culture, and as the ubiquitous â€Å"Outsider† even in the Native American community. Both of these texts conflate the â€Å"traditional† American experience (that is, the paternal Anglo-Saxon Christian experience) with the experience of the â€Å"outsider† (the disenfranchised racial minority). Silko and Cisneros incorporate ethnicity as a factor that both unites and repels. Esperanza struggles against the expectations of her culture as she dedicates herself to her studies and writing. Tayo is at home neither in the â€Å"white† community where he is physically Other, or in the Native American community, where his â€Å"whiteness† is known regardless of its visibility. Readers and students have an opportunity to read about a culture that is perhaps different from their own , or perhaps novels such as these are an opportunity to see racially similar characters as protagonists rather than antagonists or worse, utterly marginalized if ever present background noise. Traditionally, American students have had to satiate themselves on a steady diet of Caucasian male central characters. Studies in literature often revolve around the icons of English writing, such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, and Dickens. American authors honored as â€Å"canonical† include Irving, Hawthorne, Twain, Emerson and Whitman. To a large extent, these rightly revered poets and novelists fore-grounded characters with similar visages. Hamlet and Romeo seem essentially â€Å"white† and noble, and their exploits are generally understandable to a Western-minded reading audience. Wordsworth’s reflections and Dickens’ soulful hero, Pip, are both embodiments of natural man as a participant in both Nature and the wilderness of the Industrial revolution. Hawthorne, Irving and Twain all convey elements of the American pioneering spirit, as well as the dangers of forging out into unknown and often hostile environs. Again, these American protagonists routinely mimic the author’s face in the mirror. This picture of the traditional English Literature syllabus in its barest of bones unquestionably gives rise to the sort of charges levied against it by New Historicists, Post-Colonialists, and gender studies scholars. Laurie Grobman (2004) wrote, â€Å"In 1990 The Heath Anthology of American Literature was published under the sponsorship of the Reconstructing American Literature project (RAL) of the Feminist Press. † She credited Paul Lauter’s research as she went on to write, â€Å"Inspired by the Civil Rights movements, the RAL project attempted to redress the limited, exclusionary conception of â€Å"American literature† represented in most university curricula, syllabi, and anthologies, and to affirm the literature classroom as a potential site of social and political change† (2004, p. 81). The study of literature has been a limited one in the sense of variety and diversity, but obvious and deliberate steps were being taken. Perhaps on one hand, it can be said that the study of literature is most naturally conducted in one’s primary language, thus negating the study of Spanish, Russian or French tomes (for example). Thus, British and American-born writers should obviously comprise the canon. Grobman wrote that, however, â€Å"†¦certain texts by writers of color have become ‘canonized’ in the sense that they are frequently taught, studied, and even anthologized both as part of a larger canon of American literature and as part of canons within specific racialized ethnic literary and critical communities,† (2004, p. 83). The issue of translation is still a challenging one, as early editions of what is now considered classic literature were poorly and inefficiently translated from their native language into English. Unique linguistic nuances, which both added to the words on the page and also reflected the ideas and values of the particular culture for whom that language is native, were irreparably lost. Unfortunately, those nuances were not as valued as the ability to read the text in English, and such disrespect was costly. Thankfully, more attention is paid today on both the sensitivity of the translation and skill of the translator. The original standard of thinking, surely flawed and wretchedly narrow of scope, ignores how language mimics society at large. That is, the English language is itself in a constant state of growth, adaptation, modulation and reconditioning. Other languages play a unique role in the English language’s evolution, particularly in the United States, where languages are over-lapped, superimposed and threaded through each other to form new expressions. The Oxford English Dictionary, considered one of if not the authentic authority on the English language, regularly updates its immense record of words and their individual biographies. Holly E. Martin (2005) wrote: For multilingual authors, switching between two or more languages is not an arbitrary act, nor is it simply an attempt to mimic the speech of their communities; code-switching results from a conscious decision to create a desired effect and to promote the validity of authors’ heritage languages. Literary code- switching between Spanish and English, English and Chinese, and English and a Native American language†¦creates a multiple perspective and enhances the authors’ ability to express their subjects. Also, by including their ethnic languages, writers lay claim to the languages of their communities and resist the dominance of English by proposing that these languages can accompany English in the creation of works of US literature. (p. 403) If the language fluctuates due to outside influences, should it not be part of the process to examine those languages also, particularly when the reader can see first hand how the languages interact? Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street is an excellent example of the role ethnic literature can and should play: Esperanza’s voice effortlessly glides between English and Spanish, revealing few if any linguistic speed bumps. Her voice is, perhaps, is a representation of the idealized cultural blend—she is the embodiment of a truly integrated person. The reader is offered a glimpse of a seamless blend of both languages, representing both cultures as mutually complimenting each other rather than as existing as binaries. Indeed, the languages are not binaries, as they both come from the same root. Martin went on to suggest: †¦the inclusion of languages other than English in US literature is a natural artistic development for the novel (and for other genres of literature as well). Ethnic minorities and their languages are part of the social stratification of the United States, and therefore, a mixture of languages within literary works—and varieties within those languages— reflects the dialogue that occurs regularly within the US. (2005, p. 404) This sense of fluidity can offer a sense of regeneration, or absolute creation. Martin wrote, â€Å"The mixing of cultures and languages along the Mexican/US border can have a synergistic effect, creating a third mode of expression that leads to a more multidimensional understanding of human life in general, (2005, p. 407). This blending has other, darker consequences, however. In the text, Esperanza’s voice may blend, but her life experience certainly does not. She, like Tayo, feels little sense of acceptance and integration in either of her two â€Å"worlds. † Like Tayo, that disconnectedness manifests in violence and pain. The ethnic literature invites readers to experience the pain of enforced or assumed binary identities. The term â€Å"ethic† takes on the countenance of â€Å"other;† the person termed â€Å"ethnic† the non-white, often female, often non-Christian character. This character’s differences are highlighted as that which makes her â€Å"Other. † Esperanza is not ethnic because she is a writer; she is â€Å"ethnic† because she is born into a Mexican-American family. She is part of the greater immigrant tradition that forms the basis for contemporary American culture. This immigrant status gets revised for Ceremony, in which Tayo is the true Native, being cast in the role of Other by the immigrant Anglo-Saxons. Silko complicates the matter by having Tayo go to war as an American soldier, thus leveling him with the â€Å"violent conqueror† image of Americana as well as marking him as yet another Other/Outsider. Unfortunately, including stories of ethnic otherness can create a challenging set of questions and resistances in a class that has largely been kept free of challenges to the literary status quo. Pipino wrote: If the purpose of the course [that Pipino taught] was to invite moral introspection through imaginative participation in the life of the â€Å"Other,† then students frequently found themselves in the shoes of an â€Å"Other† whose hard work and desire were not guarantees of success which, as we discuss at the beginning of the course, is an essential part of the rhetoric of the American Dream. Thus, students’ resistant responses may reflect not just â€Å"compassion fatigue,† but a real fear that the hard work in which they are engaged as college students may not yield success; the failures of the protagonists of fictional narratives perhaps pose a threat to the optimism with which they regard their own futures, that is, their own narratives. (2005, p. 179). That is, the narrative of the Other may be a little too â€Å"dark† for readers who are (or who imagine themselves to be) part of the majority establishment. This response is certainly not the goal or object of introducing ethnic literature into the study of the American literary experience. Readers who forget that value systems differ across racial and cultural lines, and attempt to impose their own understandings as a steadfast â€Å"norm,† find themselves unable to reconcile the way characters of differing ethnic origin engage in their environments. The level of anger deployed against the white establishment in certain works of fiction and poetry can become overwhelming if not carefully and conscientiously dissected. Reading the Other can and should give the audience an opportunity to either experience being an outsider for the first time, or more likely, remind that person of the experience and engender feeling of sympathy for the character and the situation. The emotional response of being â€Å"tired of feeling bad for people† is a misguided and misplaced one, as it does nothing to enrich one’s life or the lives of others. Ethic literature should function as a safe, secure environment where common humanistic themes such as feeling a part of a greater whole while simultaneously honoring one’s past can be explored using a variety of lenses. Regardless of race, creed, sex or age, all people have had the opportunity to experience some variety of â€Å"otherness† in their lives. Those who choose to ignore or forget the experience are most often the people who perpetuate great cruelty in the world. Literature can and should function as a means to explore other value sets and other cultural identities not to simply shrug and admire the view, but to begin to identify ways in which our differences are actually the themes we share in common. Fiction and poetry offer readers the tools to transcend the often bitter real-life experiences people have that reinforce imaginary (and authentic) boundaries between cultures and people. Division and classification are part of the human psyche’s attempt to deconstruct and â€Å"understand† the world around us. As a fertile landscape owing all to the readers’ mind, literature can meet needs and expectations in a way that reality cannot, and it is the reader’ opportunity to find the connectedness in the midst of the difference. References Cisneros, S. (1984) The House on Mango Street. New York: Vintage. Grobman, L. (2005). The Value and Valuable Work of Multi-ethnic Literature. MELUS, 29(3/4), 81-90. Martin, H. (2005). Code-switching in US ethnic literature: multiple perspectives presented through multiple languages. Changing English: Studies in Culture & Education, 12(3), 403-415. Pipino, M. (2005). Resistance and the Pedagogy of Ethnic Literature. MELUS, 30(2), 175- 190. Silko,L. (1977). Ceremony. New York: Penguin.