Readings for Tuesday, October 5, 2004

Please read the following materials:

Blu's Hanging, by Lois-Ann Yamanaka.

Please also read the Atlantic article, "This Hawaii Is Not For Tourists," circulated in class via Xerox handout.

On Benedict Anderson's _Imagined Communities_

In Fujikane’s “Between Nationalisms…,” the author writes that Partha Chatterjee “argues that Anderson takes as his models Europe and the Americas, leaving untheorized the specific national formations in Asia and Africa” (6). Now, I will certainly grant that Fujikane has stated earlier on the same page that “[p]ostcolonial critics have found Anderson’s emphasis on the ways a nation is imagined particularly useful in analyzing the ambivalence of nationalist narratives” (6); however, that she goes on almost immediately to cite another critic who finds Anderson problematic seems to negate her premise. But Anderson need not be read as pro-imperialism, as suggested by Chatterjee’s reading of his text: “Europe and the Americas, the only true subjects of history, have thought our on our behalf not only the script of colonial enlightenment and exploitation, but also that of our anticolonial resistance and postcolonial misery. Even our imaginations must remain forever colonized (12, italics mine); rather, Anderson’s analysis of nationalism and the means whereby nationalism is constructed is inherently useful to postcolonial writers and critics. Indeed, if one reads Anderson, one may find a ‘map of nations’, if you will, by which one can see the ways nationalism is created. Anderson’s text is almost a set of instructions, and once one is aware of how something, such as a nation, is constructed, the object’s deconstruction should be possible. Thus, Anderson, by setting forth the foundations of nationalism, both illuminates how nations come to be and provides ground for comparison; furthermore, his text invites—rather than resists—other texts that “complicate [his theory of nationalism] by an analysis of the ways anticolonial nations negotiate their relations with each other” (6). What I’d like to do is give a truncated version of Anderson’s premises so that when we come together in class, we can have at least a Reader’s Digest version of what Anderson is doing. I also think that Anderson’s argument is useful for our discussion of Yamamoto, particularly in Anderson’s exploration of use of pictures or photography as a means of creating nationalist sentiment. Just an aside: for those of you who listened to my presentation on the book in Postmodernism, I apologize for redundancy, but I do think knowing a bit more about Anderson will be constructive.

What I find perhaps most interesting about Imagined Communities is the title, for immediately Anderson commits himself to the basic position that overarching the existence of a nation is the fact that it is an imagined entity. This in no way detracts from its power, but it does leave a nation in a fluid state. A nation has clear, definite, and defined geographical parameters, as well as ideology, but neither one of those elements of a nation is completely fixed. At any time, indeed, at all times, for a nation to maintain its nationhood, it must be open to change, to incorporation of challenging ideologies. The flip side of this is, of course, repression of challenging ideologies. In order to create the “horizontal comradeship” that Anderson identifies, nations rely on various means. Some of these are a national history that is created by emptying the history of the nation and refilling it with carefully chosen vignettes from both recent and ancient history; a reliance on national symbols that all can members can easily identify (read the flag, the national anthem—Anderson focuses quite a bit on the importance of music to nationalism, and other such symbols); language and the ability to master (something Fanon speaks of in this exact context); artwork and photography that creates a taxonomy of the geography of the nation and its people; and alignment of birth, death, sacrifice, and childhood with the nation itself. There are more, and Anderson teases out the nuances in much more detail than I’ve given, but the above list gives the most foundational of the means by which nationalist sentiment is instilled in members of a given nation. All of these things, Anderson argues, exist for the very purpose of taking something that is artificial and making it seem quite natural. For example, in “America the Beautiful” we sing (if you’re a singer, that is!) “from sea to shining sea.” In those five seemingly innocuous words is the reference to the beauty of the ocean, carefully and purposefully placed inside the parameters of America as a nation. Thus, the natural ocean is part of the now ‘natural’ America. That is just one very limited example—it does not take one long to come up with countless others.

Fujikane notes that Amy Kaplan describes American imperialism as something that has been “’invisible’ to America itself” (15). In terms of our discussion, what I find most problematic about Fujikane’s use of Anderson is the fact that she does not give the text credit for its illumination of the very invisibility that Kaplan references. And it seems that once the light shines into all of the corners, showing all that is lurking in the darkened corners, our task is to take advantage of the fluidity of nationalism in order to reject / accept ‘other’ and ‘different’ ideologies. That the texts we’re reading seek to do that hasn’t escaped me, but I do think that if Fujikane is any example, a certain hypersensitivity toward being ‘otherized’ certainly exists, and what we could be more cognizant of is the fact that if indeed an imagined community is a series of “horizontal” relationships, then what comprises that community is my relationship to the member next to me, and that member’s relationship to the person next to him/her, and so on. Therefore, we should be able actually to subvert the dominant ideology and then to change it by the proverbial ‘grass-roots’ effort. Idealistic? I am an Aquarius, after all.

I’m off to the Middle Ages, folks, and have a good night.

Readings for Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Please read the following materials:

"Between Nationalisms: Hawaii's Local Nation and Its Troubled Racial Paradise," by Candace Fujikane. (Circulated in class via Xerox handout.)

Introduction, Chapter Two, and Chapter Four from Masking Selves, Making Subjects: Japanese American Women, Identity, and the Body, by Traise Yamamoto. (Available in PDF format through clicking on the links below; also available on two-hour reserve in the USD Library.)

Click Here for Introduction and Chapter Two ("In/Visible Difference: Japanese American Female Subjectivity").

Click Here for Part One of Chapter Four ("Mothers, Daughters and the Trope of Maternal Absence in Japanese American Women's Fiction").

Click Here for Part Two of Chapter Four ("Mothers, Daughters and the Trope of Maternal Absence in Japanese American Women's Fiction").

You will need the Adobe Reader free software to read the PDF files linked above. If you don't have Adobe Reader installed on your computer, simply Click Here for the free download.

(Dis)entrenched Narratives in Baldwin

Another Country encapsulates Franz Fanon’s insistence on the concepts of ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness,’ as set forth in Black Skin,White Masks; however, while at least Fanon states that he searches for a solution (although I did not see it in the portion we read, other than his comment that the world needs to be entirely restructured—difficult, at best, to fathom, much less to implement, as I said last week), Baldwin leaves his characters and his readers wandering in a morass of chaos—and an inescapable dichotomy. Ida Scott, perhaps the most negative character ever to grace (yes, read sarcasm) the pages of American literature, seems to me to be the epitome of the inability to transcend or understand or practice tolerance, and if we must start somewhere, those seem to be practical, obvious choices.

Ida’s actions and attitudes entrench the concepts of whiteness, blackness, maleness, femaleness, and class. She refuses to allow any other character to venture outside the identity she has created for him or her. To Vivaldo she continually speaks of the ‘dues’ one must pay, and, too, she derides him for his whiteness. When he attempts to defend himself by saying “it’s not my fault I’m white. It’s not my fault you’re black” (656), her response is that “Nobody’s willing to pay their dues” (657). In that exchange, Ida has reduced humans to commodities—things for which there must be some type of exchange or payment exacted as part of existence. And it is true that she holds each of the characters in the novel to some type of payment: Cass’ payment is silence; Vivaldo’s payment is pain and humiliation (for Ida admits that he takes whatever she dishes out, which seems, even according to her, to be quite a bit); and Ellis’ payment is Ida’s success. In exacting payment from Ellis, however, Ida finds herself outwitted by a mind more narcissictic than her own—and her own unwillingness to pay dues is illuminated. Ida has thought that her affair with Ellis would bring success, but she seems to have neglected to count the cost to herself, and in her payment of dues she finds herself suddenly outside her own blackness, and thus outside the system by which she views the world and operates. For it is not fear of Vivaldo’s pain and humiliation that causes Ida to admit her affair with Ellis; rather, it is Ida’s realization that her blackness has been compromised, demonstrated to her by the musicians’ utter disrespect and rejection of her. Unfortunately for Ida, she focuses on the acts to which Ellis has ‘subjected’ her instead of her rejection by the musicians, thereby denying herself any true identity.

Interestingly, Ida is a reincarnation of her brother, Rufus, in many ways. Both of them hold others to absolutely impossibly levels of expectation in terms of identity, confining all characters to superficial categories. And, both of them destroy or at least try to destroy those with whom they come in contact because of their own inability to form identity beyond narcissism. Rufus seems to come to an awareness of this, which causes his suicide; as for Ida, the future is unknown. At the end of the novel, she is Vivaldo’s comforter, which suggests that she is not yet sufficiently finished with him to allow him to be free of her; however, the inscription at the end of the novel, “Istanbul, 1961, suggests that he has been able to remove himself physically to write his novel about Brooklyn. Notably, Eric, Vivaldo, and Leona, the characters most affected by Rufus and Ida, must all leave the geographical space inhabited by Rufus and Ida in order to escape them.

I’m fully aware that we are not supposed to be looking for solutions, but if we’re not, what is the point of the discussion? If all we do is wander around talking about issues of ‘ness’, then we become no more than Baldwin’s characters Ida and Rufus, both of whom expect blackness, whiteness, and all other ‘nesses’ to be completely separate, confined and total. And I suspect that Baldwin was a smart enough writer to be cognizant of that, lamenting and decrying it through his text.

Readings for Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Please read the following materials:

Another Country, by James Baldwin.

Please also make sure to bring the Xeroxed chapters from Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks to class as well so that we may continue to discuss them in tandem with the Baldwin novel.

Response #2 -- by Wanda Carr

When I was a little girl, it did not seem as though I was very old before I realized that girls and boys were expected to play with different toys, act a certain way, and dress appropriately for members of their gender. Because I was always somewhat of a tomboy, I found the scolding that I received from my kindergarten teacher for wanting to play with the building blocks and Legos a bit harsh. But, playing with the dolls, dishes, and kitchen center were really quite boring to me, and I protested against not being able to design my block creations to match those found in the pictures and diagrams inside the Lego box by hiding the Legos in the kitchen center’s refrigerator and building with them during recess rather than playing house with the rest of the girls.
When I reached first grade, my passion for building continued. For Christmas, my only request from Santa was for my very own box of Legos. It seems that my parents shared in Mrs. Nelson’s and Mrs. Haupt’s desire to keep me away from building blocks and rector sets because I did not receive Legos for that Christmas nor any other Christmas for that matter. Instead, I got a Barbie, several Barbie outfits, and various items with which I was told I could now accessorize. Angry at Santa’s cruel attempt at providing me with gender-appropriate toys rather than the ones I really wanted, I threw the doll and the clothes in an old shoebox and only played with her when my parents made me.
I was reminded of these incidents in reading both selections for this week. In “Black Skin, White Masks,” Frantz Fanon eludes to the notion that is language, which innately keeps blacks in their appropriate place in a society where an aggressor nation has colonized the uncivilized inhabitants of a backward nation in an attempt to christianize them. In the name of making the natives better, the colonizers have actually created a type of pigeon tongue designed to show the inferiority of the natives in the colony. Though the elite society acts pretentiously to civilize the group, their attempts to mold them into a dialectal tone of grammatical innuendos is really a grotesque means of portraying the image, which the aggressors feel the downtrodden should possess. They are shocked when for some reason, the words that come tumbling from the native’s tongue are really quite good English/French. Consequently, they accuse these blacks of trying to speak as though they are white, desperately seeking for a means to put them back in their place.
Fanon also denotes the improper emphasis, which has been placed on the false desire of black men for white women—an issue that even in our own country has been the abominable justification for many lynchings. He goes on to show that in all actualities, it seems justly appropriate for white men to desire black women—using them for a while, but never intending to marry them or make things right. The juxtaposition of reality and notion clearly show the horror of the oxymoron. Yet, in his opinion, women of color seem to thrive on the strange notion that even though they are aware of being used by members of the fairer skinned cult, the prestige of having whiter offspring makes the plight of the defamation sickly worth it.
On a lighter note, Gerald Early in “Life with Daughters: Watching the Miss America Pageant” blames the need for black women, his daughters included, to be more like white women because they have seen that sort of women win the Miss America Pageants time and again. He tries to act as though the whole thing is a joke, but in reality, he knows that even though his wife has insisted on getting her daughters black Barbies to play with and celebrating their cultural heritage, his girls have been subjected to the cultural views from American society at large that white is in.
Both authors are trying to show that despite attempts to prevent stereotypical notions about the role of gender and race, the larger society dictates the standards by which all of its members should play at acting their parts. There really isn’t anything wrong with girls playing with building blocks instead of Barbies, but those who attempt to step out of the appropriately dictated boundaries are destined to be the objects of much ridicule and scorn.

The Stucture of Theory: Fanon's Exploding Textual Style

I am still not certain what exactly I have just read. Fanon’s writing seems to wander—it is a collage of stream-of-consciousness, non-linear style, social science, essay, story, “clinical study” (13), and more. I know what Fanon is saying, but I am troubled by so many things about the first three chapters that I am not certain how or on what to focus. I'm not at all convinced by anything I have just read, particularly since in an introduction and three chapters, I have not found anything to be convinced of. I have written “Okay, but HOW?” in the margin so many times that I am even tired of writing it. It seems that Fanon is looking toward some type of action—even, perhaps, a solution, considering his final comment of chapter three: “We shall see that another solution is possible. It implies a restructuring of the world” (82). I just have no idea whatsoever what type of action he may suggest, which is frustrating. Moreover, the idea of restructuring the world is so massive that I would love to see how he proposes getting it implemented and finished. The nature of not reading something in its entirety, I’m sure, but I had hoped for some idea of…something.

Through his writing style Fanon seems to be exploding the ideas of the way theory is written and read. He is anecdotal, which is unusual for theoretical writing. This may be because he doesn’t want the human to be removed from the reader’s thoughts while reading, which is frequently what happens when one reads straight theory. If maintaining ideas of humanity instead of thinking in terms of entities such as ‘society’ or ‘culture’ is what Fanon has in mind with his writing style, then the approach makes sense, for what purpose has theory either when it cannot be applied or when the process of its application so changes its original essence that nothing remotely resembling the original remains? He seems to be blurring an unquestioned binary that exists in literature: empirical theory non-fiction / narrative fiction. Perhaps this is so that the reader can see that the binaries need not exist—a text can occupy liminal spaces just as humans do, and be comfortable and successful in its liminal existence.

Still, I find some of Fanon’s comments problematic, primarily because they rely so heavily on stereotypes, which Fanon seems interested in destroying in terms of writing. If the text can obliterate stereotypes of writing, why then must Fanon pose and rely on them for his human study? Fanon begins by stating that “there are two camps: the white and the black” (8). Furthermore, he believes that “[t]he white man is sealed in his whiteness,” and “[t]he black man in his blackness” (9). He seems to turn this on its head when he comments, “[m]any Negroes will not find themselves in what follows. This is equally true of many whites” (12); nonetheless, he peppers the essay with such back-and-forth ideas that I am half convinced of Fanon’s delight in playing devil’s advocate. A deconstructive approach must, of course, turn ideology on its head, and at heart, what Fanon is exploring is language and its inherent power, so it does make sense that he plays with language and its indeterminacy. To throw the human part in with that, though, seems dangerous.

Although I do have to say that having waded through all of that to write this, it does make much more sense. In essence, to rid oneself of the imperialist collar, one must (re)claim language insofar as language offers identity. Hence, to play with the structure of the essay and the form of the theoretical claim allows the writer to ‘plant his or her flag’ in the text—i.e. the language—and in so doing, stake one’s identity as well. In the end, then, Fanon actually explodes the binaries by so exactly and overtly placing them in front of the reader that he can claim them in his own formulated text-identity, disposing of them in his space and time--exactly as he has deconstructed and re-produced the structure of the theorectical text.

Readings for Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Please Read the Following Materials:

Gerald Early, "Life With Daughters: Watching the Miss America Pageant" (circulated in class via Xerox handout)

Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks -- Introduction, and Chapters 1-3 (circulated in class via Xerox handout)

Please also bring the Susan Moller Okin article, "Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?" with you to class again, as we had to end our discussion a bit abruptly last night due to the end of class, and interest in taking a few more minutes to finish teasing out some of the issues a bit further has been expressed.

You may also want to begin reading James Baldwin's Another Country, which will be coming up for discussion on Tuesday, September 21, 2004.

Weekly Response #1 -- by Holly Richard

During a year teaching in a middle school, I exhausted myself trying to expand my students’ vocabulary for the sole purpose that they then could have more appropriate words to express their feelings and opinions. The sixth graders, in particular, had a few favorite words that could describe anything and everything; “gay” was one term that could describe anything/one that they detested at the same time as describing something/one who amused them.

I was an art teacher, which at the middle school level equated making messes and then cleaning them up. Nevertheless, we observed and discussed artwork from professional artists, from the past to present, from our village to abroad. The word “gay,” again, was a common response when I asked students what they thought about a piece that they didn’t care for. “What exactly about this artwork makes is gay?” I would usually add, “Perhaps you could be more specific in your opinion.”

Because of my mission that year and my lover-of-language background, Jacinth Samuels’ discussion of “queer” and “nigger” in “Dangerous Liaisons: Queer Subjectivity, Liberalism and Race” resonated in me. My students would ask what harm does using the term “gay” inflict on anyone? But there were other words as well, as our American culture rehearses many derogatory terms in private and public spheres. “Cunt” was a term that came up in class one day. A student said she heard it in the music she listened to and she’d been called on lots of times, but she didn’t know what it meant or where it came from. Furthermore, she had been called “cunt” when someone was mad at her and another time when she was with friends having fun. Inga Muscio’s book Cunt: A Declaration of Independence addressed this term and encouraged women to reappropriate “cunt.” Quite similar to Samuels’ discussion of how the term “nigger” is used within black cultures, “cunt” can be used in various ways among those who have one. Yet, when a man uses the word “cunt,” it most often signifies rejection, objectification, and describes a collective female inferiority, OR it ascribes feminine qualities – meaning negative and inferior, to a man (the terms “pussy,” “Sally,” “girl,” etc. do the same).

We have a generation of young people growing up practicing sexist, racist, narrow-minded language that many of their parents were trying to discontinue. How can we shift the use of certain terms in our cultural mainstream to be used in positive ways rather then the opposite? To celebrate difference, but not only out of intolerance? How can any epithet that has historically defined in opposition to the “normal” (read heterosexual, male, white, republican, etc. – perhaps this is a reflection of my own prejudices) and, as Samuels states, “thereby identif[ied] normalization, rather than simple intolerance, as the site of violence” be redefined?

Group vs. Individual -- by Cecilia Ragaini

The issue that Susan Moller Okin raises in her essay “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women” is very powerful because it leaves the realm of theory to embrace the very real lives of human beings. I strongly believe that minority cultures have a right to preserve their customs and values. At the same time, though, I feel that no religious, moral, or social belief can justify the oppression and/or repression of a specific group of individuals within a given minority. I agree with Will Kymlicka that a minority culture living in a more liberal society should not be allowed special rights when its traditions involve violating the human rights of some of its members because of “sex, race, or sexual preference” (quoted in Okin screen 7). I am thinking, in particular, about polygamy, arranged marriages, and clitoridectomy. Of course, the question becomes extremely inhuman when that violation takes the form of inflicting physical pain on children—as it occurs in genitals’ mutilation.
Women have always been discriminated in both western and non-western patriarchal cultures. True, modern societies now condemn it and protect women’s rights with appropriate laws, but religion still enforces that discrimination--even though in a more subtle way. While teaching that both men and women are God’s creatures, for example, the Christian religion emphasizes the Genesis’s story of the creation in which Eve was created out of Adam’s body, thus implying women’s inferiority. Interestingly, contemporary religious leaders who still affirm that the Bible teaches very specific gender roles generally omit to mention that there are two creation stories, and in the first, more ancient version, man and woman were created at the same time. The information is carefully omitted because it might irremediably damage the known social order. If this can happen in so-called modern societies, chances are that in more fundamental cultures women’s inferiority is more deeply taught.
Kymlicka observes that people can develop self-respect only when living within “a rich and secure cultural structure” (quoted in Okin screen 7). Okin adds that “our place within our culture” is as important as the necessity to verify “whether our culture instills in and enforces particular social roles on us” (screen 9). Considering the way religion works, even in liberal societies, Okin’s answer has already been answered. And societies are deeply infused with religious values and beliefs. The only debatable point is to what extend cultures enforce such roles on us. In fundamental cultures, each deviation from the religious/social norm is severely punished—if the violation is perceived to be very serious, death is the proper punishment. In more liberal societies, the perpetrator is subjected to more or less overt pressure that goes from ostracism of peers to public victimization in public trials—an example is when victims of rape are questioned by lawyers as it they were the ones committing the crime, and this despite laws that assumedly should protect the victim. The point is that no modern country in the world is entirely free of gender bias.
Okin is right when she states that even the apparently innocuous emphasis on female beauty and thinness slyly disguises enforced social expectations. The proof is that many girls today appear more interested in pursuing these aesthetic goals and pleasing boys than developing their own minds. Yet what matters is that in liberal societies those girls who do not care to follow the social norm do have the possibility to do what they want to do. And this is, I believe, the only reason that can justify, in liberal societies, the refusal to allow fundamental cultures to preserve customs violating human rights.
My position on this regard cannot be called “multicultural” in a strict sense because I reject the liberal concept of “inclusion.” I do indeed exclude fundamental cultures, but my act of rejection is based on a principle that I believe must be, at least to some extent, universal: the freedom that every human being has to choose the life he or she wants to live without suffering discrimination (or punishment) of any sort. It is right that different cultures have the same rights, but it is necessary to establish some basic and common values concerning all human beings and their rights. To defend clitoridectomy (or the even more mutilating infibulation) as a social/religious practice means to state that not all human beings have the same rights; it would equal going back in time and stating, for example, that Black people are inferior people and should be treated as such, or that non-Christian people who refuse to convert must be killed because they are pagan. It progress means improvement of human condition, then it must guarantee, first and foremost, that all human beings have the same human rights.
Okin suggests that it is also fundamental to make sure young women (and not old women who tend to perpetuate the oppressive system) have their representatives in negotiations about group rights. I believe this is the right direction. Despite living in repressive societies, women have shown unusual strength in fighting for their rights—the Afghani and Iranian women are a splendid example. Yet it is also important that women are allowed to speak freely during such negotiations. It is the responsibility of modern liberal societies to make sure they can do so without fear of being punished once they are back in the private sphere of their oppressive cultures. It is also fundamental for western women to increase their numbers as political representatives in their industrialized countries: only when their number will near that of men will we be able to say that women’s interests are democratically represented.

Multicultural Literature Seminar Response #1 -- by Wanda Carr

Multicultural literature seems to entail a variety of facets that show its characters in situations where they are attempting to break through the barriers, which they have been taught to accept as the proper notion of who or what they ought to be. Through their narrative incidents, the characters are striving to keep their individuality while at the same time attempting to blur the crisply hewn edges of the biological and sociological traits that individualize them in order to fit into the larger society. Attempts to mesh differences into oneness can and will inevitably create conflict. However, the stories created to enlighten an audience with the individual author’s reality in that situation have the ability to momentarily create some semblance of what it might have been like to walk through that time and space in his or her shoes.

It would be difficult to say that any reader could completely understand just by reading the stories exactly what it must be like to live the life of the authors whose stories have been shared with us, but we are faced with a grotesque understatement of the oxymoron that it is to live as an individual in a society that expects everyone to conform to whatever notions and intentions it has created as what makes a person acceptable. We see from the visions shared with us through the author’s words “the triumph and the tragedy all at once.”(Mossman)

Just as members of the society in which they live, readers must be able to put characters in a story into some sort of an understandable category. The tendency is to read such literature and assume that after finishing, one can now associate with members of a different race, social order, or biologically disabled group. The problem is that the message being conveyed through the author’s voice is saying just the opposite. They are trying to show what it was really like, not so that the reader will after reading completely be Black or disabled or homosexual or whatever else, but rather to show their side of the situation in an attempt to convey the frustration that happens to people who are expected to assimilate into one, big, society and live happily ever after when there are still people out there treating them like some kind of freak. The truth is, it will never happen. And no matter how well versed a reader feels that he or she might be in the ways of Blacks, disabled bodies, and the like, what they know is probably in some way, shape, or form simply a forged set of stereotypical, preconceived notions that have nothing to do with the way things really are.

The authors of multicultural literature also don’t want readers to feel sorry for them. They don’t want to be treated differently once the reader finds out what or who the author might be. They don’t want to “end up having to listen for hours to the story of the” reader’s life in an attempt to make up for any preconceived misconceptions that they might have had.(Derricotte) And just because they write about what it is like to hear others make jokes about racial issues does not mean that they are writing about racism. They are artists like any other author. Their media happens to be their own life story. Yet they are in their story like characters on the stage of life, acting as the society around them dictates that they should act in any given situation in order that they, like everyone else who inhabits the earth, fit in.

So then one might assume that the role of multicultural literature is one of showing readers what it is like to be a member of a biological or social group different from his or her own when really one might argue it is rather the story of how one group learns to act in order fit in with another. In some cases, like Mossman, learning to use the disability or racial difference to play on someone else’s emotions in an attempt to make a buck or get some sympathy clearly shows that the reader’s insinuation to feel sorry for him is wrong. In other cases, like Kothari, learning not to draw attention to herself as an outsider by eating what the host serves is an attempt to be considered a polite visitor rather than resisting to eat something just because a stereotype says that someone from her country should not eat it.

One can learn about cultural, social, and biological differences through the reading of multicultural literature. However, there is more to be learned from the author than just what it is like to be different from the rest of society. Differences are not always what they may be preconceived as being. The story is not really about the differences that set people apart from the norm but rather about how the characters have learned to use their individuality to fit in with the group but still remain an individual.

Taxonomy and the Child

Response to Mossman

I know a woman who was afraid to meet my children because, as she is a lesbian, she was afraid my children wouldn’t like her. Her reasoning? She believed that I, as the daughter of a minister, would have indoctrinated my children with a hatred and disgust for anyone homosexual (I realize that this term is not ideal, according to one of this week’s essays, but I find the term ‘queer’ to be pejorative, and as no one, not even the article, has been able to suggest an alternative that satisfies everyone, I’m not quite sure what to say.). I was upset by the woman’s fear for a number of reasons, including but not limited to my feeling that she had just rejected my children and me for easily as narrow-minded a justification as that which she claimed to think I would do. But more than that was my amazement and horror that she would think I’ve apparently sat my children (ages 14, 10, and 7) down and told them first, what homosexuality is (age-appropriate for fourteen, perhaps for ten, but definitely not for seven—if I did that, part and parcel of the discussion would include sex, which she’s certainly not ready for); and second, that it should be condemned and those who are homosexual stoned, tarred and feathered, and so on (please read that list as sarcasm in the Swiftian sense). What kind of parent would I be? I’m not willing to say that there aren’t parents out there who would and do have conversations like that with children, but I am willing to say I abhor the thought of it, and I honestly believe that many, if not most, adults, know that not only is the discussion age-inappropriate, it also holds little or no interest for a child.
Why? Perhaps an example from Mark Mossman’s article “The One-Legged Wonder and Other Names” will help to demonstrate. In the article, Mossman discusses the fact that his friend’s father couldn’t quite wrap his brain around exactly “what [Mossman] was” (3). Mossman comments, “[…] he needed to understand me, one of his kids’ playmates, to name me, to define me, to put me into some kind of manageable, identifiable space. Naming is an act of cultural management” (3). This taxonomic urge, a hangover from the Victorians (interesting and coincidental, isn’t it, that the Victorians were the first to name ‘childhood’ as a group and point in development?) and points before, is a clearly adult tendency. It is this adult tendency that caused the woman I know to be certain I would have told my kids that she is a lesbian. After all, it’s how she’s niched (both by others and herself), so why on earth wouldn’t I? Frankly, because the taxonomic urge is not something that children seem to possess, and I’m aware of that.
Open questions: Have you ever been around a child? Do you remember being one? Do you have any? I’m always amazed by those who can remember their own childhoods well, and perhaps have children themselves, but cannot understand the nature of childhood at all. I found Mossman to be one of these folks. The entire article, the premise of which I certainly don’t need to rehearse here, centered on childhood—his experience as a child, how he manipulated his experience, and what he sees when he looks back. I’m interested in the clarity of his vision, insofar as most people I’ve met don’t remember their childhoods nearly as vividly as he does, but nonetheless, Mossman recounts his childhood for us. He is, of course, discussing the space that he occupies and the fact that he actually moves between two spaces as an adult, just as he did as a child. What I’m more interested in, though, is the way he in which depicts childhood and children in his article, for while he gives himself credit for “simply s[eeing his] body as different (13), he comments that children (and adults, not surprisingly) who watch him take of his prosthetic leg feel “anxiety and strangeness,” “discomfort and uncertainty” (13). Why is he so certain that the children feel anything more than the difference that he felt? Children tend to see things very simply. They do not form judgments immediately that represent the binaries adults need so very much to set forth and articulate repeatedly just to convince themselves and others that the binaries are ‘true.’ I still remember one of my kids asking who “dad’s brown friend’ was. Nothing about ‘black,’ ‘African American,’ no loaded racial identity / stigma / space, etc—just a simple statement of actual physical color.
Indeed, Mossman himself is obsessed with binaries, which he apparently needs as do all adults. The spaces he moves between, the “poles of normalcy and abnormality” (12), and other either / ors along the way in the article demonstrate to me that adults—no matter whether disabled, physical body intact, white, green, purple, hetero, homo, metro, or what have you—are obsessed with classifying and binarying away. And I do not use that as a verbal lightly. It’s an action, right? It isn’t a noun with properties—a binary is…what? An action done by humans to niche people and ideas and things. If nothing else, for me this article is a reminder that the distinctions we make and the hairs we split are man-made…literally.
A closing thought, since I know this is longer than it’s supposed to be. Mossman comments that
As a child I often understood myself as a hero, a wonder. But really, I
now know that, in some sense, I always understood that it was an
elaborate game, a game that I could always play to my advantage if I
wanted to. Again, it was all about names, roles. […] I just did what all
freaks learn to do: I tried to avoid circumstances that would leave me
powerless, and create situations that would instead give me a measure
of power and control [… ] I put on the appropriate mask…(5)
It’s an interesting idea (and I’m certain not understood nearly to that level in his childhood), but can any of us really way that we didn’t, at some point in our growing up years, no matter our myriad situations, feel the exact same way? So long as adults keep teaching kids what makes a ‘freak’—and it seems to be for any arbitrary reason, those kids will grow into adults and binary away.