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Sauling Around: the Trouble with Conversion in African American and Mexican American Autobiography 1965-2002

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Sauling Around: the Trouble with Conversion in African American and Mexican American Autobiography 1965-2002 Sauling Around: The Trouble with Conversion in African American and Mexican American Autobiography 1965-2002 By Madeline Ruth Walker B.A. University of Toronto, 1981 M.A., University of Victoria, 2003 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of English Madeline Ruth Walker, 2008 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This dissertation may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopying or other means, without the permission of the author. Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-47324-5 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-47324-5 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non­ sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada ii Sauling Around: The Trouble with Conversion in African American and Mexican American Autobiography 1965-2002 By Madeline Ruth Walker B.A. University of Toronto, 1981 M.A., University of Victoria, 2003 Supervisory Committee Dr. Christopher D. Douglas, Supervisor (Department of English) Dr. Stephen A. Ross, Departmental Member (Department of English) Dr. Lincoln Shlensky, Departmental Member (Department of English) Dr. Jason M. Colby, Outside Member (Department of History) Dr. Susan Harding, Additional Member iii Supervisory Committee Dr. Christopher D. Douglas, Supervisor (Department of English) Dr. Stephen A. Ross, Departmental Member (Department of English) Dr. Lincoln Shlensky, Departmental Member (Department of English) Dr. Jason M. Colby, Outside Member (Department of History) Dr. Susan Harding, Additional Member ABSTRACT While the social sciences have interrogated religious conversions as intensely social, historically situated phenomena, literary studies has not focused the same scrutiny on these textually rendered events and the forces that shape them. This dissertation explores religious conversion and resistance to conversion in African American and Mexican American autobiography from 1965 to 2002, with attention to conversion's social context and its potential for harm. Constant change and the negotiation of resistance and assimilation to the dominant culture are seminal topics for ethnic Americans; the conversion narrative is therefore often seen as a normative genre in ethnic writing, particularly ethnic autobiography. For the most part, religious conversion in African American and Mexican American autobiography has either been ignored or misread as normal and beneficial, even though the binaries of black Christianity versus Nation of Islam, and Catholicism versus Protestantism are sites of religious and racial ambivalence in these two ethnic traditions. The autobiographical texts of Malcolm X, Oscar Zeta Acosta, Amiri Baraka, and Richard Rodriguez call into question rosy views of conversion and suggest that we need to examine how conversion stories sometimes erase difference and cover over discourses of power. The American multicultural ideal of religious pluralism has meant that critics are too ready to praise religious conversion in America as advantageous or beyond the ken of criticism because religious belief is seen as belonging to the untouchable arena of cultural identity. IV Table of Contents Supervisory Committee ii Abstract iii Table of Contents iv Acknowledgements Introduction: The Trouble with Conversion Chapter One: The Autobiography of Malcolm X: Conversion and the Return of the Repressed 40 Chapter Two: Conversion, Deconversion, and Reversion: Vagaries of Religious Experience in Oscar Zeta Acosta's Autofictions 85 Chapter Three: Amiri Baraka's The Autobiography ofLeRoi Jones, Blue- Black Marxism, Authenticity, and American Puritanism 127 Chapter Four: The Limits of Conversion: Richard Rodriguez and Gay Catholicism 175 Conclusion: The Trouble with Conversion is the Trouble with Religion 218 Endnotes 229 Works Cited 261 V Acknowledgements I am grateful to my two superlative supervisors, Dr. Christopher Douglas and Dr. Stephen Ross. Chris, you provided unflagging support, insight, and evenhandedness throughout this process. I particularly appreciate the respect you accorded my ideas and writing, making me feel I was your peer rather than your student. Your feedback consistently motivated me to improve my work, which speaks to your extraordinary gifts as a mentor and editor. Stephen, you were instrumental not only in supporting the dissertation-writing process, but during my entire graduate student career at the University of Victoria. Thank you for being there at pivotal moments: encouraging me to apply to the Ph.D. program, assisting with my S.S.H.R.C. proposal, stepping in without hesitation as interim supervisor, and providing expert guidance during times of need. Finally, you taught me much about rhetoric and scholarship, and I thank you for encouraging me to get mad and get an argument. I am very grateful to S.S.H.R.C. for generously granting me the Canada Graduate Scholarship, allowing me to pursue my degree free of financial worry. Additionally, the University of Victoria's Centre for Studies in Religion and Society awarded me with the Vanderkerkhove graduate student fellowship that assisted me in my final year of writing. I appreciate not only the financial support, but also the opportunity to share ideas with scholars of religion and religious scholars. Conversations during coffee mornings added nuance to my final chapters, and granted me insights into Catholicism, Puritanism, Protestantism, election, grace, faith, and my own atheism. I would also like to thank Leslie Kenny for graciously agreeing to copy edit this manuscript and for her exemplary job in doing so. On a more personal note, I wish to thank Stephen Eaton Hume for his love, friendship, understanding, and unwavering belief in my intellectual ability. Thank you to Lheisa Dustin for our satisfying friendship, which included daily conversations that kept me sane during the sometime harrowing writing and revising process. Thank you to my three wonderful sons—Evan, Sam, and Nat Churchill—for supporting my ambition to get an M.A. and then a Ph.D. over seven long years, even when it meant less time and less money for them. Last, but not least, thank you to my wonderful parents, step­ parents, and sisters for never doubting me: Ken, Virginia, Marion, Petros, Kathryn, and Judy. Introduction - The Trouble with Conversion There is an almost irresistible impulse toward at least a casual functionalism in the way most people think about religion, an insistence that in religion the contradictions of social and domestic life, the tensions of history and psychology, find resolution. This is why religion is so often imagined entropically, a phenomenon of closure and stasis. This is also the politics of religious representation in the United States. In a nation in which religion has been so wildly creative and innovative, where there seems to be no end to the fecundity of religious imaginings or to their violent and disruptive consequences, the public discourse of "the religious" instead presents faith and practice in ameliorative and consensual terms. Nothing happens in the space of the sacred, nothing moves, nothing changes, nothing ever spins out of control, no one is ever destroyed there. - Robert Orsi, "Everyday Miracles: The Study of Lived Religion," 1997(11-12) "You start Saul, and end up Paul," my grandfather had often said. "When you're a youngun, you Saul, but let life whup your head a bit and you starts to trying to be Paul—though you still Sauls around on the side." - Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, 1952 (381) While attending a literature and culture conference in Kentucky in February 2007,1 shared a lunch table with a South Texan college professor. As my panel was scheduled just after lunch, she encouraged me to read my paper to her, a "dry run" for an audience of one. My topic was Chicano writer
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