American Multiculturalism

A Critical Theory of Cultural Studies

American Multiculturalism

• Since its beginnings, America as a nation has been home to many peoples from many different cultures, ethnicities, and backgrounds.

• Many of these groups came willingly, as did (most) immigrants from Europe and other places, while others—African slaves in particular—did NOT.

• America is diverse and multiethnic, and as a result it is—and should be—multicultural.

• American multiculturalism has grown out of the idea that America was built on and is composed of not ONE “American” culture, but is of MANY, and that all are equally valuable.

Multicultural Critics Say What?

• One of the first and foremost goals of multicultural critics has been to increase the visibility of the literature produced by members of minority groups in the United States.

• Another goal has been to create a critical and academic environment in which these works can be properly understood and appreciated (and taken seriously!)– Due to the marginalization of minority cultures, many works by

minority authors were written out of a set of assumptions and worldviews different from those of the dominant culture and therefore not fully understood or taken seriously in academic circles.

American MulticulturalismOften Focuses On the Works Of:1. African American Writers2. Latina/o Writers3. American Indian Literatures4. Asian American Writers

Henry Louis Gates uses the word “race” only in quotation marks.

African American Writers• African American Writing often

displays a folkloric conception of a humankind; a “double consciousness,” as W.E.B. DuBois called it, arising from bicultural identity; irony, parody, tragedy and bitter comedy in negotiating this ambivalence; attacks upon presumed white cultural superiority; a naturalistic focus on survival’ and inventive reframing of language itself, as in language games like “jiving,””sounding,””signifying,” and “rapping.”

W. E. B. Du Bois, circa 1907

African American Writers• The Harlem Renaissance (1918-

1937) signaled a tremendous upsurge in black culture, with an especial interest in primitivist art the so-called New Negroes.

• Langston Hughes was a prominent member of the Harlem Renaissance -- a movement during the 1920s of black writers and intellectuals who engaged in intense debate regarding the place of the African American in American life, and on the role and identity of the African-American artist.

• Pictured here are Langston Hughes [far left] with [left to right:] Charles S. Johnson, E. Franklin Frazier, Rudolph Fisher and Hubert T. Delaney, on a Harlem rooftop on the occasion of a party in Hughes' honor, 1924.

Latina/o Writers

• Spanish-speaking people in the United States.

• The majority of Mexican residents stayed in place, transformed into Mexican Americans with a stroke of the pen.

• One of the primary tropes in Latina/o studies has to do with the entire concept of borders-borders between nations, between cultures and within cultures.

Latina/o Writers

• “Code-switching” is a border phenomenon studied by linguists. Speakers who code-switch move back and forth between Spanish and English, for instance, or resort to the “Spanglish” of border towns.

• Liminality, or “betweeness” is characteristic of postmodern experience but also has special connotations for Latina/o.

American Indian Literatures• In predominantly oral

cultures, storytelling passes on religious beliefs, moral values, political codes, and practical lessons of everyday life.

• For American Indians, stories are a source of strength in the face of centuries of silencing by Euro-Americans.– For many, American Indian is

often preferred over “Native American”. Even better—use specific nation/tribe names!

Wendy Rose – a Hopi/Miwok writer and poet

Sherman Alexie – grew up on the Spokane Reservation

American Indian Literatures

• Two types of American Indian literature have evolved as fields of study. – Traditional American Indian literature

includes tales, songs, and oratory.– Mainstream American Indian literature

refers to works written by Indians in English in the traditional genres of fiction, poetry and autobiography.• Many say that N. Scott Momaday’s House

Made of Dawn(1968), which won the Pulitzer Prize, and his memoir, The Way to Rainy Mountain(1969), began a renaissance of American Indian fiction and poetry and inspired a generation of Indian writers, poets, and artists.

Asian American Writers

• Edward Said has written of orientalism, or the tendency to objectify and exoticise Asians, and the countries and cultures of both the so-called “near” and “far” East.

• While Asian literature goes back for a millennia** , Asian American literature can be said to have begun around the turn of the 20th century, primarily with autobiographical “paper son” stories and “confessions.”

**Example: The first novel, The Tale of Genji, was written by a Japanese woman, Murasaki Shikibu, in 1021

Asian American Writers• Paper son stories were carefully

fabricated for Chinese immigrant men to make the authorities believe that their New World sponsors were really their fathers.

• Asian American autobiography inherited these descriptive strategies, as Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warriors: Memoirs of Girlhood Among Ghosts(1976) illustrates.

• Identity may be individually known within but is not always at home in the outward community.

Maxine Hong Kingston has won the National Book Critics Circle Award (for /The Woman Warrior/)

Asian American Writers• Chinese women make up the largest

and most influential group of Asian American writers.

• Jade Snow Wong’s female “coming of age” story was called Fifth Chinese Daughter.

• Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club (1989) traces the lives of four Chinese women immigrants starting in 1949, when they form their mah-jongg club and swap stories of life in China; these mother’s vignettes alternate with their daughters’ stories.

Directed by Wayne Wang

Apply It To The Literature:

• An American Multicultural reading of “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker might choose to focus on the quilts, and the significance of such quilts in African American art and history.

• Such a reading might also compare Maggie and Dee’s relationship to that history and how they differ.

• Example:African-American art has often been functional—that is, it is meant to be used. The quilts that become the subject of contention in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” are an example of this type of practical art. In fact, the title of the story is a specific reference to the functionality of homemade things that Dee wants to take from the family home and preserve. Given Dee’s newfound interest in African and African-American culture and heritage, it is striking that she is unable to appreciate this fact which seems so obvious to her mother and sister.

For Next WeekWeek Fifteen

Tuesday, May 19Topics: Dystopian Literature and The Hunger Games Homework Due:• Finish Reading The Hunger Games and come to class prepared to

take the reading quiz.

Thursday, May 21Topics: Applying Literary Criticism to The Hunger Games Homework Due: • Continue to work on your Lit Crit Research Papers