Subversive Identity in Asian American and Native American Literature
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Tribal Selves: Subversive Identity in Asian American and Native American Literature Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Suzuki-Martinez, Sharon S., 1963- Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 07/10/2021 02:45:22 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/565575 1 TRIBAL SELVES: SUBVERSIVE IDENTITY IN ASIAN AMERICAN AND NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE by Sharon S. Suzuki-Martfnez Copyright © Sharon S. Suzuki-Martfnez A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment o f the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 1996 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA ® GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Final Examination Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Sharon S. Suzuki-Martinez ______ en title d TRIBAL SELVES: SUBVERSIVE IDENTITY IN__________________ ASIAN AMERICAN AND NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy __________ Date Date Date — — Datei/i4z Date Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate's submission of the final copy of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. Dissertation Direc Date ' Dr. Larry Evers 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgement of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: 4 Acknowledgments I want to thank Washington State University Press for their permission to reprint my “Trickster Strategies” chapter that appeared in Reviewing Asian America. I also want to thank my dissertation committee: Larry Evers, Charles Sherry, and Marie Chan, for their guidance and “fierce belief’ that I could complete this dissertation. I am grateful to my family for their generous support and patience. And finally, I want to thank David for always being there for me, no matter how monstrous life (with the dissertation) seemed at times. To my parents, Edward and Jessie Suzuki and of course, David, with all my love. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT........................ ............................................. .......................... ............................ 7 INTRODUCTION................................ ........................ ....... ............................................... 8 ASIAN AMERICAN W RITERS........................................................................................ 16 •1. Storytelling asad Am bivalent Ghosts: CoEstractmg Identity in M axine Hong K ingston’s The W oman W arrior.................... ....................... ........... 17 2. Tridkster Strategies: Challenging American Identity, Commmnity, and A rt in K ingston’s Tripm aster M onkey................................................................ 37 Trickster Strategies...................................................................................... .............. 38 Camivalesque Hybridization. ............................................................................... 39 Chinese American Theater........................................................................................ 40 Postmodernism................ ...... ........ ;........ ............................................................. 40 Wittman Ah Sing—Postmodern Monkey.................................................................. 42 The Narrator—Androgynous Hybridky............................................. .............. ....... 45 Camivalesque Events—Converging and Emerging Theater of Identity............... 47 3. “Calligraphy in the Sand:” Local Identities in the Poetry off Erie Chock and Cathy Song................................ ................................. .............. 53 Eric Chock: The Meaning of Local (Or Fishing for a Definition)....................... 54 Cathy Song’s Zen Tribalism...,.................................................................................. 64 NATIVE AMERICAN WRITERS............................. ............:........................................ 83 4. The Langnages off Alienation and Tribalism: Modernism and the Oral Tradition in Silko’s Ceremony and Welch’s Winter in the Blood.............. 84 A Ceremony of Convergence.......................................................... ............... ......... 87 Winter in the Blood—Laughter Runs Through It............................ ....... ............... 92 §. An AmtoMography off Others: Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller....................... 100 ' 6. “That Perfect Leap into Everything:” The Edge and Identity in Joy Harjo’s The Woman Who Fell From the Sky............................... ................ 120 W ORKS CITED .............................................................................................................. 141 7 ABSTRACT In my dissertation I demonstrate a variety of innovative and strategic constructions of non-individualistic identity by analyzing the works of important Asian American and Native American writers. These writers* Maxine Hong Kingston, Eric Chock, Cathy Song, Leslie Marmon Silko, James Welch, and Joy Harjo, offer alternatives from the dominant culture’s understanding of who we are and how we are Americans in the late twentieth century. Escaping from the cult of the rugged individual, the writers assembled here explore the possibilities of tribal self. Tribal self is self that is interdependent on 1) a community, 2) a home place, 3) a history. I focus on how each writer develops his or her own version(s) of tribal self by analyzing with “double vision.” Coined by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., double vision is theorizing that considers the relationship between how subjects represent themselves and how they are represented within the dominant culture. To accomplish this, I approach each work with culturally specific perspective as well as literary theoretical perspective (mainly, new criticism, feminism, and postmodernism). The works covered are Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, and Tripmaster Monkev: Chock’s Last Days Here: Song’s Picture Bride. Silko’s Ceremony, and Storyteller; Welch’s Winter in the Blood: and Hatjo’s The Woman Who Fell from the Sky. She Had Some Horses. Secrets from the Center of the World, and In Mad Love and War. 8 INTRODUCTION “Through the stories we hear who we are” —Leslie Marmon Silko The quest for knowing oneself is an ever ongoing, ubiquitous journey that has led different individuals and cultures to different destinations and self-definitions. In my study, I trace journeys to self-knowledge and identity traveled through the path-ways of Asian American and Native American literature in the intimately connected forms of poetry, fiction, and autobiography. The works selected here are challenges not only to the limiting boundaries of individualistic identity, but to the limiting boundaries of genre and American literature as well. In order to be an adequate critic of these two emergent American literatures, I will use what Henry Louis Gates, Jr. calls “double vision.” Double vision is theorizing that takes into consideration “the relation between, on the one hand, how the subjects are constructed or represented to themselves and, on the other, how they are represented within the cultural dominant.” The critic needs to be aware of the interweaving of a text and its cultural and intercukural contexts. This is necessary to avoid becoming the margin’s worst threat, not assimilation or dissolution, but homogenization—becoming objectified monolithically as the Other. My intent is to show how Asian American and Native American literature may each be read with double vision. I will demonstrate how they may each be appreciated as different traditions of the American Others that have the 9 subversive potential to transform deeply, not only the American literary tradition, but also the American sense of self. In order to do these, two questions are central to this project : 1) How shall we acknowledge the necessity of the notion of identity without being limited by it? 2) What are specific ways of representing identity that might be empowering to marginalized groups and other Americans as well? The task of knowing and articulating the self has never been easy because it requires digging for one’s personal roots, tangled not only among one’s cultural roots, but often deeply buried in the ground of pain. The pain is recorded often in stories, sometimes in history, and even in the silence of what some writers call “blood memory.” But for all the writers assembled in this study, this ground of pain becomes the same ground of healing and beauty. In this paradoxical place, opposites meet to reveal a single face.