Reflections on Teaching Literature by American Women of Color.”

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Title “Reflections on Teaching Literature by American Women of Color.”

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Author Cheung, KK

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Reflections on Teaching Literature by American Women of Color Author(s): King-Kok Cheung Source: Pacific Coast Philology, Vol. 25, No. 1/2 (Nov., 1990), pp. 19-23 Published by: Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1316800 . Accessed: 15/08/2013 18:40

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Last yearUCLA receiveda Ford Foundationgrant to integratematerial by and about women of color into the undergraduatecurriculum. As someonewho has taught courses on Ethnic Americanwomen writersand co-facilitateda faculty development seminar funded by the grant, I would like to venture some suggestions on how to decenterlongstanding assumptions and approaches.1I believe thatthe greatestchallenge in teachingsuch classes is not introducingnew materialbut usheringin alternativecritical perspectives, especially if instructors seek to go beyond integrationof textsto transformationof mind-sets.To achieve thesegoals, it may be necessaryto crossall kindsof boundaries,not just ethnicbut also generic, disciplinary,political, epistemological, and even metaphysical boundaries.

1. Suspend establishedliterary criteria

Susan StanfordFriedman has demonstratedconvincingly that genre is often gender-,and one may also add, culture-specific:"A binarysystem in particularhas shaped the expectations governing the reading and writingof epic and lyric poetry,a dualism that intersectswith the culturaloppositions of masculine and feminine."She contends that in choosing to use the masculine genre, women poets such as Elizabeth Browningand H.D. "self-consciouslyreformulated epic conventionsto suit theirfemale vision and voice" (Friedman 203-204).We can detectanalogous innovationsamong ethnicwomen writerswho appropriatethe conventionalforms of autobiographyand novel and who frequentlydissolve the boundary between the two genres.Works such as Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street,Alice Walker'sMeridian, Maxine Hong Kingston'sChina Men pulsate with personal experiences,yet they are also imaginative works with strongpolitical implications. Instead of asking whetherthese authorsare capable of maintainingthe detachmentor artisticdistance of novelists,we must question our received notion that the renditionof certainexperiences is too personal or too political to be taken seriously as literature.Following the lead of feminist critics who have shown that women often express themselves artisticallyin journals and letters,we must inventnew criteriathat do not make lightof texts which deviate fromestablished norms. If we hold on to a critical apparatus designed to serve a white male canon, not only will some works by women of color seem to fall shortbut theircultural specificities and subversiveenergy will also go unnoticed.

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Similar cautions must be exercised against placing these works in a purely Westernliterary tradition. Both Kingston'sTripmaster Monkey and Leslie Silko's Ceremony(which incidentallyalso blurs the boundarybetween prose and poetry) abound with allusions respectivelyto Chinese epics and Native Americanmyths; and both authors draw on oral legacies of storytelling.No less influentialare musical formssuch as corridosand cancioneson Chicano poetry,or spiritualsand blues on Afro-Americanpoetry. These ethnicresources ought to be reckonedwith as partof the Americanheritage.

2. Question globalizingfeminist assumptions

Women of color have repeatedly challenged white feministtheories. Paula Gunn Allen argues that patriarchyas such did not exist in many Indian tribes (which had been gynocratic)till theywere colonized by whites.2Even common notions of masculinityand femininityare by no means universal. Both Tayo in Silko's Ceremonyand Lipsha in Louise Erdrich'sLove Medicine are "feminine" figuresby white standards. And then, there are men of color who have been emasculated in America.The opening mythin Kingston'sChina Men, in whicha Chinese man is transformedby force into a woman, underlines the parallels betweenthe racisttreatment of Chinese Americanmen and the sexistsubjugation of women. Even the misogynyof Cholly Breedlovein Morrison'sThe BluestEye or of Grange Copeland in Walker's The ThirdLife of GrangeCopeland must be viewed withinthe contextof racial inequality.Theories that at once polarize the sexes and equalize men and women tend to drown the particular pathos dramatizedin thesetexts.

3. DecenterWestern ideals and dominantmodes of seeing

While ideals such as rationalism and competitive individualism may be shared by people of color, ethnicwomen frequentlypresent competingsets of beliefs. Instead of seeing and judging diverse cultures from Eurocentric perspectives, these perspectives must themselves be interrogated and oppositionalviewpoints be entertained.For instance,when we encounterghosts and spirits in works such as Paule Marshall's Praisesongfor the Widow,Toni Morrison's Beloved,Silko's Ceremony,and Ana Castillo's Mixqiahuala Letters, we must not jump to the conclusion that the charactersare superstitiousor hallucinatory,or, what is equally problematic,assume that those beliefs are shared by all membersof the ethnicgroup under discussion(more on thisin 4).3 Unless we refrainfrom relegating literature by people of color to the realmsof the benightedor the exotic,it can never become a site for possible transformative thinking.

Harkingback to my firstpoint, the resurgenceof an alternativecultural ethos may well be one reason why works by women of color so often depart from

This content downloaded from 128.97.7.131 on Thu, 15 Aug 2013 18:40:37 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Reflectionson TeachingLiterature by American Women of Color 21 conventionalaesthetic structures. For instance,while a single hero is the normin traditionalnovels, fictionby ethnicwomen (e.g., Gloria Naylor's The Womenof Brewster Place, Erdrich's Love Medicine, Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club) is often family-or community-centered;it containsmultiple protagonists and points of view ratherthan a single hero(ine)or narrator.Granted that these writers may be influencedby modernisttechniques, their world views tend toward connection ratherthan fragmentation.

4. Contextualizewithout conflating text with context

Historically and socially anchored criticismis indispensable. For instance, knowledge of JapaneseCanadian internmentis crucialin studyingJoy Kogawa's Obasan, and informationabout the Korean independence movement will enhance our understandingof Theresa Cha's Dictee or Kim Ronyoung'sClay Walls.

At the same time, we must avoid seeing creative work by one writer as testimonyfor the entire race. The controversiessurrounding The Color Purple and The Woman Warrioramply reflectthese assumptions. Both Walker and Kingstonare accused of reinforcingstereotypes of sexismin respectivelythe Afro- American and the Chinese American cultures. Such insistence on representativeness,in precluding the possibility of a private vision, denies subjectivityto the author. It is, furthermore,a burden borne exclusively by ethnic--especiallyethnic women-writers. (Norman Mailer is seldom taken to be representativeof the entirewhite race.)

5. Confrontthe issues of marketabilityand audience

Bell Hooks argues that creative work by Afro-Americans"is shaped by a marketthat reflectswhite supremacistvalues and concerns,"that "in this social context. . . novels highlightingblack male oppression of black females while downplayingwhite racistoppression of black people would be more marketable than the reverse"(Hooks 53-54).Students can read more criticallyif they are made aware of thisinterface of literatureand politics.

A distinctionshould be made, however,between an author'saccomplishment and responsibilityand the forces of cultural production such as publisher's decisions,marketing strategies, reader's predilections and misappropriations.Just because a work is a nationalbest sellerdoes not necessarilymean thatthe author is a "sellout,"as some criticshave insinuated.

In addition,an author'sethnicity frequently skews a reader'sresponse. A work thatis perceivedto be progressiveand funnywhen writtenby a Mark Twain may be judged as militantor bitter(if not self-interested)when writtenby an Alice Walker. Texts, pace New Critics and Roland Barthes, are seldom read independentlyof the authors.

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6. Avoid tokenismor ghettoization

On the one hand, it is importantto show thatrace and gender do not merely affectthe literaryproduction of women and ethnicminorities but shape the work of canonized authors as well. (How anxiety about white ideology informs Melville's MobyDick has been brilliantlyillustrated by Toni Morrison.[14 ff.])

On the otherhand, we must overcomethe prevailingassumption that works by womenor people of colorare studiedlargely because of theirgender and ethnic quotient.In many Surveyof AmericanLiterature courses and even in courses on women writers,it is not uncommonto see these works assigned only in the one week thematicallydevoted to "Gender and Race." Instructorsmay want to consider distributingthese works throughoutthe syllabus and unlockingthem frompreconceived categories. Writers of whatevergender and color go forstyle, poetic or narrativestrategies, and "universals."

7. Stretchthe bounds of genderand culturalidentities

Gender and culturalstereotyping is not peculiar to "outsiders."The pervasive belief withinone school of Asian Americancritics that there is a "fake"and a "real"Asian Americansensibility and the reluctanceamong some black scholars to address feministand gay issues (dismissed as "white")suggest that thereare certainessentialist prescriptions for being Asian American and Afro-American. (Yet no one says, "White men don't do this.") In place of paradigms which furtherexclude the marginalwe need feministand cultural theoriesthat allow forfluid identities-identities that are neithercolorblind nor colorbound,that are definedneither by nor merelyin binaryopposition to white male constructions. Julia Kristeva,for one, has advocated a new "signifyingspace, a both corporeal and desiringmental space" beyond gender dichotomiesensuing in exclusionand violence (33).4 Perhaps a similar space is needed thatcan go beyond racial oppositionand thatcan accommodatemultiplicity of identifications.

These points, I must stress,are more reflectionsthan considered or proven pedagogies,and certainlynot the finalword. In fact,a bonus of the Ford seminar, in which everyonewas challengedat one time or another,was the displacement of authority.Where livelyexchange, passionate confrontationand criticaldissent can take place, however painful at times, there is still hope for radical transformation.

NOTES

1 I owe manyof my ideas to my students and tothe participants ofthe Ford seminar. I would like to thankin particularKaren Rowe, the principal investigator of theFord project, and BrendaMarie Osbey,my co-facilitator.

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2 Paula GunnAllen, guest lecture in theFord seminar. See also TheSacred Hoop: Recovering the Femininein AmericanIndian Traditions, 30-42. 3 Suchcondescending attitudes not only interfere with appreciation of the texts but also provoke hostilityin theclassroom. According to Johnnella Butler, one ofthe forces polarizing the classroom intoblack vs. whiteis that"white students insist on reducingall experienceto thesame-theirs" (232).An exampleoccurred within the Ford seminar itself, when a blackcolleague was askedto explainwhat she meantby "spiritualencounter." She said she knewshe was visitedby the spirits whenshe felt a suddensurge of energy while jogging. She was understandablychagrined and offendedwhen another colleague rephrased her experience as a "secondwind." 4 Waxmanalso discusseshow Kristeva's idea maybe usedto expand the borders of the black Americanliterary canon (88). WorksCited Allen, Paula Gunn. The SacredHoop: Recoveringthe Femininein AmericanIndian Tradition. Boston:Beacon, 1986. Butler,Johnnella. "Toward a Pedagogyof Everywoman'sStudies." Gendered Subjects: The Dynamics ofFeminist Teaching. Ed. MargoCulley and CatherinePortuges. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul,1985. 230-239. Friedman,Susan Stanford."Gender and GenreAnxiety: Elizabeth Browning and H. D. as Epic Poets."Tulsa Studies in Women'sLiterature 5 (1986): 203-228. Hooks,Bell. "The Politics of RadicalBlack Subjectivity." Zeta Magazine,April 1989: 52-55. Kristeva,Julia. "Women's Time." Signs 7 (1981):13-35. Morrison,Toni. "UnspeakableThings Unspoken:The Afro-AmericanPresence in American Literature."Michigan Quarterly Review 28 (1989):1-34. Waxman,Barbara Frey. "Canonicity and BlackAmerican Literature: A FeministView." MELUS 14 (1987):87-93.

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