Mary Antin, Zitkala-Sa, Sutton E. Griggs, and Sui Sin Far (Under the Direction of JAMES NAGEL)
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MARGARET CRUMPTON American Multiethnic Writing from 1890-1918: Mary Antin, Zitkala-Sa, Sutton E. Griggs, and Sui Sin Far (Under the Direction of JAMES NAGEL) An unprecedented number of immigrants and people of color were being published between 1890 and 1918, but their contributions to American literature have yet to be fully explored. Until very recently, most works by these writers were overlooked in the scholarship on American Literary Realism. American Multiethnic Writing from 1890- 1918 posits that the reason they have existed on the periphery of studies in this era is that for generations scholars were unable to recognize ethnicity as one of the central themes of the age. This examination of the theme of ethnicity in the age of Realism considers the works of four writers who represent distinct responses to race relations in the United States. Mary Antin, a Jewish American who emigrated from Russia, constructs a heartfelt and unselfconscious narrative of assimilation in her autobiography The Promised Land (1912). Antin’s contemporary, Zitkala-Sa, a Dakota Sioux, expresses a marked ambivalence to Americanization in a series of stories and personal essays that appeared in major periodicals between 1900 and 1902. In five novels published between 1899 and 1908, Sutton E. Griggs depicts a revolutionary racial cohesion, advocating social and political unity among black Americans so that they may enter into American society as a whole and unified culture. Sui Sin Far, a biracial writer whose father was British and whose mother was Chinese, portrays the possibilities of a multicultural world in which individuals can occupy any number of identity positions in her short story collection Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912). This dissertation explores these works in their historical context to show how national attitudes and government policies, represented by the nativist movement, the Dawes Act, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Jim Crow, and disfranchisement, influenced these writers and helped shape their texts. INDEX WORDS: American Literature, American Realism, Multiethnic Literature, African-American Literature, Asian-American Literature, Jewish- American Literature, Native-American Literature, Mary Antin, Sutton E. Griggs, Sui Sin Far, Zitkala-Sa, Ethnicity, Nationality, Identity AMERICAN MULTIETHNIC WRITING FROM 1890-1918: MARY ANTIN, ZITKALA-SA, SUTTON E. GRIGGS, AND SUI SIN FAR by MARGARET CRUMPTON B.A., The University of California at Berkeley, 1991 M.A., The University of Georgia, 1996 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2002 © 2002 Margaret Crumpton All Rights Reserved AMERICAN MULITETHNIC WRITING FROM 1890-1918: MARY ANTIN, ZITKALA-SA, SUTTON E. GRIGGS, AND SUI SIN FAR by MARGARET CRUMPTON Approved: Major Professor: James Nagel Committee: Hubert McAlexander Rosemary Franklin R. Baxter Miller Douglas Anderson Electronic Version Approval Gordhan L. Patel Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia August 2002 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to James Nagel for his advice, guidance, and support. I continue to be inspired by his rigorous standards and his kind words. I would also like to thank my committee, Hubert McAlexander, R. Baxter Miller, Rosemary Franklin, and Doug Anderson, who have each had a hand in my growth as a scholar. I was fortunate to have a network of support at the University of Georgia, and I am thankful to all who found the time to work with me. Special thanks to Katie Smith and everyone in the Office of Instructional Support and Development, Paul Quick and the members of our writing group, and to my professors in the Department of English, in particular my mentors Barbara McCaskill and the incomparable Judith Ortiz Cofer. I am also deeply indebted to the UGA Graduate School for granting me the Final Doctoral Year Assistantship, which gave me time to dedicate my full attention to this dissertation. Though writing is often a solitary project, I am strengthened by the love and emotional support I receive from my friends and family. I am endlessly grateful to my parents, Mickey and Mimi Crumpton, for all they have done for me. I would also like to thank my sister, Claire, and her family, David, Malcolm, and Michael Patrick, as well as Chrissy Grul, Gerry Martin, George Flath, Tiffany, Kevin, Pam, Tobie, Mike, the Winter family, and everyone else who helped me have a life outside the world of academics. Most of all, I would like to express my profound gratitude to my husband, Jarrod Winter, whose patience, encouragement, and cooking kept me going when things got rough. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: DIVERSITY IN THE AGE OF REALISM........................ 1 2 MARY ANTIN AND ASSIMILATION .......................................................... 53 3 IDENTITY AND AMBIGUITY: THE STORIES AND ESSAYS OF ZITKALA-SA ................................................................................................... 93 4 RACE AND NATION IN THE NOVELS OF SUTTON E. GRIGGS .......... 140 5 THE MULTICULTURAL PERSPECTIVE OF SUI SIN FAR ..................... 184 6 CONCLUSION: AMERICAN NARRATIVES ............................................. 232 APPENDIX: SELECTED LIST OF REALIST TEXTS THAT ADDRESS ISSUES OF IDENTITY ...................................................................................................... 273 LIST OF WORKS CITED .............................................................................................. 278 v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION DIVERSITY IN THE AGE OF REALISM An unprecedented number of works by immigrants and people of color were being published between 1890 and 1918, but their contributions to American literature began to be fully recognized only in the late twentieth century. Most of the scholarship on these writers tends to focus on their relationship to their particular ethnic literary traditions, and only a few critical works have attempted to view them in relationship to each other. Though they wrote out of their particular cultures, they are also connected to American Realism, which was the principal literary movement of the age. Influenced both by this tradition, which sought to portray the moral dilemmas of people’s everyday lives, and by the social and political forces that were affecting their respective communities, many of these authors tended to concentrate on ideas of ethnicity, identity, and nationality, issues of central concern to Native Americans, African Americans, and immigrants living in the United States. Four themes are prevalent in much of their writing: assimilation, ambivalence, racial cohesion, and multiculturalism. Although these concepts were vital to American literature at the turn into the twentieth century, they have not been examined in any systematic way in modern scholarship. 1 2 Four writers who clearly embody these themes in their works are Mary Antin, a Jewish-American immigrant from Russia; Zitkala-Sa, a Dakota Sioux; Sutton E. Griggs, an African American from the South; and Sui Sin Far, a biracial Chinese American who lived on the west coast. Though these authors in no way cover all the groups writing in America between 1890 and 1918, they represent a significant cross-section of ethnicities and perspectives. The group consists of three women and one man. Two of the artists were born in America, and two were born elsewhere. Their literary production includes autobiography, short stories, essays, and novels. Mary Antin wrote of the Russia of her early youth and of her experiences in Boston, where her family eventually settled after immigrating to America. Zitkala-Sa was born on the Yankton Reservation in South Dakota and wrote narratives that were set there and in boarding schools in Indiana and Pennsylvania. Sutton E. Griggs placed his novels primarily in the South, and Sui Sin Far’s short stories most often depict the Chinatowns of the west coast. What unites these writers is their literary focus on how immigrants and people of color situate themselves in the American landscape. The theme of assimilation has to do with the idea that there was an American model and that immigrants and native-born people of color could become American by conforming to this type. Sidonie Smith sees this proposal as deriving from the expectations of mainstream America: “The metaphor through which the country understood the process by which diverse inhabitants became a part of the corporate ‘nation’ called America was the metaphor of the ‘melting pot’ and its desired effect was ‘assimilation.’ To be truly American one had to assimilate by becoming the normative American subject, adopting the values, behaviors, dress, and point of view of the Anglo- 3 American middle-class and shedding differences of language, outlook dress, demeanor.”1 Mary Antin, in her autobiography The Promised Land, interprets the American character to be hard-working, patriotic, and democratic, and in the course of her narrative demonstrates how she, and by association other immigrants, could embody these ideals through the process of Americanization.2 Another dimension of the mainstream conception of American identity that was problematic for many ethnic Americans was that it was inherently white. This perception complicates the quest for national identity in the works of many writers of color. Some express